In 1900 a Japanese writer named Natsume Soseki visited England for the first time. While he was there he was surprised to discover that few of the locals appreciated or even noticed all of the beauty that he saw. Soseki was so captivated by the snow that he invited some friends over for a "snow-viewing," but they just laughed at him. When he told another group of that the Japanese are deeply emotional about the moon, they looked at him with confusion. Then Soseki told the following story:

One day, when [my host] and I took a walk in the garden, I noted that the paths between the rows of trees were all thickly covered with [beautiful] moss. I offered a compliment, saying that these paths had magnificently acquired a look of age. Whereupon my host replied that he soon intended to get a gardener to scrape all this [ugly] moss away.