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Phrase: Off the beaten track
When we get off the beaten track, we take a way that few people travel.
The path is rough, and it’s not easy to move forward.
That is a literal description of the phrase.
A beaten or well-travelled track is one that people use regularly.
Therefore, it is relatively smooth and easy to travel.
Today’s phrase can also be used in an idiomatic sense.
In life, when we get off the beaten track, we’re doing something different, branching out on our own or making our way, for example.
In Japan, branching out on your own is especially challenging and discouraged.
Here, people are encouraged to follow the same life path as everyone else because it’s easier and much less complicated.
This approach to individualism has contributed to people’s reluctance to make their own choices or do things on their own.
I’d say that’s one of the main cultural differences between North Americans and the Japanese.
North Americans enjoy getting off the beaten track, both literally and figuratively, whereas the Japanese prefer to follow a well-travelled path.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is likely to be understood by a reader who has at least an 8th-grade education (age 13-14) and should be fairly easy for most adults to read.
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 61.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.