Cultural Gift

I hate to lump people together culturally but the reality is that people from different cultures are different. Their temperaments, their views and even their work ethics. Yesterday, my sister received a beautiful gift from one of her Japanese students. The student was a woman in her 70's who was taking a GED course. My sister called me and said to come over and see the gift, but she wouldn't give me a hint as to what it was. I walked into her house and headed towards the den, when I saw it. It was a portrait of my sister in oil paint. I have seen many people's portraits over the years, but none like this one. The attention to detail was startling. Every wisp of hair, every fold of skin, every facial shading was so exact. It was almost scary. It was a twin of my sister, almost lifelike, hanging on her wall. I kept repeating, "Wow" until it seemed silly, but that was the only word that I could find to express my feelings. My sister said that the attention to detail in the painting is the kind of attention to detail that Japanese people pay to everything.