Welcome.
Despite the title of our first assigned blog entry being "first impressions of Japan" I, being one of the remnant of last semester (with an ever-persistent penchant for youthful rebellion), will be writing from a viewpoint four or so months after my arrival.
One question that I've found myself asked a considerable number of times since coming here, though far behind "How tall are you?" in terms of popularity, is how many guns I own (the answer being none). The more relevant question, however, has been something to the effect of what about being in Japan has surprised me most about the country. The food, perhaps? The small size of everything ("You probably hit your head all the time, right?")? Since starting homestay the barrage of questions regarding my adjustment has only increased.
Not being one to skimp on vaguely controversial allusion, I remember a passage from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses which went something along the lines of, to paraphrase, a businessman traveling in a plane from Bombay(?) to London experiences a less perilous and strange journey than a farmer traversing the road from his village to the city.
At a rather large risk of sounding blasé, I've found my experience to be largely the same. This is not to say I've not experienced new things: going to castles, wandering about the less-reputable parts of Osaka, walking an obscene amount around the lovely industrial city that is Hirakata-shi and surrounding areas. I've had experiences a-plenty, but what has struck me most is the nostalgic familiarity of it all.
It might be seeing the leaves change and snow fall for the first time in eight or so years, but the experiences I've had here do more to call back my (relative) youth in Chicago than my time in Florida ever has. This is not to say there are no differences, as any movement to a new area requires readjustment, but the readjustment from one modernized area to another seems to be considerably less. The comforts that form the foundation of my first-world lifestyle, though they may appear in slightly-less-familiar forms (such as the seemingly-omnipresent electrical towers looming in the distance), are never lacking.
The spectre of culture shock may still loom in the distance for me, but my experience thus far has been one of a place where it's much more likely to find the traditional. New things a-plenty, but this has struck me as a country where, despite images of samurai and geisha, giant robots and pantyhose vending machines being unleashed willy-nilly on the internets (among other forms of media), one will be hard-pressed to find incredibly exotic as opposed to the traditional in contrast to the almost overwhelmingly modern. This may be, given that my period spent here is still considerably short in comparison, a blind assumption. Stay tuned to see exactly when I'll have my ears boxed for an especially serious faux-pas.
1 comment:
I enjoy reading your text and your youthful rebellion. A very nice introduction to your blog. I look forward to your future posts. The theme for this week demands a certain amount of reflexivity but in future please make sure to keep the focus of your text Japan and Japanese culture. That being said, I still wonder how your feelings will change as a result of your visual anthropology in the weeks to come.
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