A Few Scratches Deeper than the Surface

Four months abroad, four months of experiences, four months living a different culture.  Just enough time to scratch the surface and realize just how much you don't know, haven't realized and haven't experienced.

Most people think of ancient traditions, festivals, samurai and geisha when Japan is brought up.  They're true enough notions, and easy enough to come across to the unsuspecting visitor.

But they're events, aspects of life.  They're things to enjoy and spectate upon.  The geisha above aren't geisha at all, but normal girls who likely paid to be dolled up for a day at Kiyomizu Temple and the surrounding Kyoto area.  The samurai above are very likely a branch of the SCA (wiki) or a similar local group.  The Danjiri festival is a time for communities to come together and showcase their bond on the streets of their town (and get drunk).  Like with Halloween, renaissance faires and parades in American and the Western world, these are side activities of life day-to-day or year-to-year.

Others may immediately think of the oddities that seem to belong to Japan alone.

While working with balloons is hardly crazy or uniquely-Japanese, this particular guy (whom I saw in Hiroshima) was on one of the channel 10 variety shows this week.  The works showcased were human-sized.  Landscapes, fairies, ridable horses.  Art that would receive very little attention outside children's programming and entertainment.

And then we have Colonel Sanders here.  One of my friends sent me a picture of him in a summer yukata, holding a watermelon, and asked if he really looked like that in Japan.  Americans don't think much about the colonel (if they even know who he is), so it's understandable to find Japan weird for dressing him up.

Or the crazy things the Japanese do.  I wish I'd taken a picture of my Okaasan vaccuuming the wall this past weekend.  Or that flesh-colored neck pillow I saw at Hirakatashi station someone had put a thong on.

But that's not unique to Japan.  It's just different.  I'm sure from a Japanese perspective, us foreigners are just as crazy, just as weird, and watch things just as peculiar on television.

My four months here have reaffirmed that much.  Japan is, while foreign, just another group of people struggling to make their way in the world of today.  They have their own fields of expertise and their own passtimes, many of which overlap with those of the West and some of which belong to the Japanese alone.  Japan isn't the magical place for otaku to come and thrive (though if they were to never leave Akihabara, they might be able to delude themselves).  Japan isn't any more extroverted or off-the-wall than America.

 

Japan is a place that yearns for the past and yet can't get enough of the new.  They embrace aspects of other cultures they like (whether or not they completely understand said culture) and leave the rest.  It's been said that Japan has a habit of taking what other countries invent and making them better.  I'd probably have to agree, but that's not to say that Japan doesn't have its own hurdles to overcome.

That sense of normalcy established and much of the mysticality demistified, Japan is a wonderful place if you're a foreigner--to visit.  It keeps its novelty that way, and allows one to more appreciate their home culture.