Category Archives: Travel

Mind the Flash

Posted on March 4, 2011 | 1 comment

Japanese people have mastered the camera pose. Crafted it into a fine art and bequeathed it unto their young in such a fashion that one might even begin to think it genetic, a biological imperative perhaps, an evolutionary tweak that has emerged along with the technology it is bonded to.  Because in the mere instant one has to pose correctly for a photograph, the Japanese are already there, two fingers held aloft in a peace sign yelling, “cheezu!” Meanwhile, I’m blinking like a deer in headlights, stunned by the blast of camera flash.

One photographic incident in particular got me thinking. I was at Fuji Q Highland, an Amusement Park that resides at the base of; you’ve guessed it, Mt. Fuji. Inside are three particularly amazing rides: Eejyanaika (translated to, ‘isn’t it good?’ Ok, not everything translates in a cool way), FujiYama and the mind bogglingly fast Dodonpa.

I was waiting to ride the incredibly fast Dodonpa with a friend whom, repeatedly terrified by announcements over the tannoy as to just how fast this machine is, responded with yelps of, ‘muri!’ or in English, ‘impossible, I can’t do it, argh!’ Once aboard the ride she continued to yell this phrase except for one brief moment that I realized had been the camera flash, only to continue on with her cries afterwards. Instinctively, during an experience otherwise dominated by the excitement and fear of the ride she had twisted, smiled and posed for the camera. I on the other hand was more concerned that my cheeks not tear from my face due to the g-force.

Photography is everywhere in Japan. From high quality camera phones to the ever-present purikura. Photography is incorporated into life here in a way that goes beyond any other nation. The stereotype of a Japanese travel group abroad, all wielding state of the art cameras, endlessly pointing and snapping photographs is a well earned and thoroughly deserved one. While the teenage love of purikura, essentially photo booths with a variety of special effects that can be applied to your group photos are so popular that they can be found with ease almost everywhere you go.

That photography is such a significant part of life here is at times hard to believe, particularly when one considers that the camera industry only began to emerge in Japan in the 1930’s. When of course it was beyond the reach of even the comparatively wealthy as,

“In those days, the average starting salary of a graduate of an elite university in Japan who was hired by bank, the best-paying job, was around 70 yen per month. In contrast, the price of the Leica camera was 420 yen.”[1]

Yet, from those early days has sprung an enormous industry fuelled by a love of technology that is visible in all walks of life and among all ages in Japan. At arcades I have seen young people with staggering coordination in pursuit of the high score on a dance machine and a vast number of people with a mind numbing addiction to Pachinko (a low stakes gambling machine with a resemblance to pinball, without any of the skill). While undoubtedly gaming technologies such as these have had and will continue to have such an affect on us, I still believe that the camera and its simple yet beautiful power to capture a moment will continue to be of greater significance. At least until the day that Wii bowling is entered into the Olympics.

However, the truth is, I can’t help but feel that here in Japan is where technology and society meet first. Through computer games, mobile phones, 3D TVs the Japanese people engage with technology faster and with an aplomb that perhaps only South Korea can beat. As such, if technology and biology are going to crash into one another it’ll happen here long before reaching foreign shores.

While visiting home this summer I met a friend of a friend, a Japanese Doctor no less and I took the opportunity to pitch this very theory to him. Essentially I believe that the response to the camera has become so ingrained at a biological level, that just as one can tell the sex of a child from an ultrasound, that one could also tell the child’s ethnicity… well, in one particular case.

Note: This picture is the fine work of Max Joseph, find his blog here.

This blog post was originally featured on travelblogs.com as a guest article. The original post can be found here.

 

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Adults Onry

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 1 comment

The other day, while I was dashing around between lessons, running a few errands and the like, I stopped by the local convenience store, otherwise known here as a konbini. While there, I saw a most unusual sight; a Japanese man, that busiest of breeds, finding time for a moment of relaxation in his otherwise busy schedule… to peruse the porn.

For a country with a declining population, a youth apparently less and less interested in sex and a general lack of privacy Japan is surprisingly open about its pornography.

I remember when I used to work in a petrol station mini-supermarket the elaborate dances people would go through in order to somehow, “stumble” across their chosen fare. First to the fridge at the back of the store, then a slow and meandering stroll past the pet food and then… “oh, how did I end up here?” Indeed one of the saddest sights I ever saw was a lorry driver whose basket was filled with a single can of extra strong beer, a pack of ten party sausages with dipping sauce and a Nuts magazine. I almost directed him to where we kept the man sized tissues.

In Britain the more risqué magazines are of course generally kept out the reach of the young and the unusually short by dint of their location on the top shelf. Yet, in Japan the magazines in convenience stores aren’t lined up against a wall in a tower of glossy mediocrity and z-list celebrity gossip. Instead they are kept on a rack just below the shop’s front window where passers by and those parking their cars out front can see who is reading them quite clearly.  Generally, these magazine racks are seen as a local library and it’s not unusual to see four or five people standing in front of them enjoying a leisurely leaf through the pages of a magazine. That they choose to do so even with porn continues to astound me, as I live in a country where the adjective most people would use to describe themselves is, ‘shy.’

Although, I should note that there is a place in my town to buy porn away from the prying eyes of children, a shop that the bus always passes on its way out of town that loudly declares itself as being for, ‘Adults Onry.’

However, this behaviour is not only confined to the konbini. When my father came to visit me last summer I’d mentioned in passing to him about how dirty Japanese men could be and in particular how flagrant they’d be about it. After his first few days in my sleepy little town we hopped on a bus bound for Tokyo. Some hours into the long journey he nudged me and said, ‘Matt I see what you mean, look over there.’ Across the aisle and a few seats ahead was an older Japanese man, admiring the centerfold in his porno mag, holding it vertically so as to fully appreciate the two-page spread.

A friend of mine while visiting Japan was rather stunned by just how visible pornography is here and asked me, “Why on earth don’t they have a top shelf like everywhere else?”

In a country with an average height of five foot seven, the more pertinent question might just be; how would they reach it?

 

 

 

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Neon Nagano

Posted on January 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Japan is littered with modernity. Quite literally littered, as when one drives through Japan at night one gets the impression of a land where technology, bright flashes of light and commercialism were merely dropped along the edge of the road with little thought to the world they were creating here. Indeed planning permission would appear to most people to be an alien concept to the Japanese. While the biggest cities are full of impressive architectural accomplishments it’s hard not to feel that Japan’s more rural cities were dragged into the blueprint for a modern Japan as something of an afterthought.

Last weekend, driving from my relatively quiet city, where the centre of town can charitably be said to be rather quiet, I drove along a major Nagano route heading for a neighbouring city where a friend of mine lives. In the daylight I know driving in Nagano to be a breathtaking thing. The countryside appears to endlessly stretch out to a horizon that is so beautiful that from time to time I wonder whether in truth I might be the victim of a Trumanesque hoax, that someone has in fact painted this skyline, a vast and beautiful deception where every winter armies of workers abseil down the face of a giant metal dome in order to paint the mountaintops white.

However, at night it’s a different story entirely. Where once fireflies and the stars were the only thing to light up the night sky, now an endless stream of neon runs alongside the rivers and roads in Nagano’s valleys. All the stores are the same wherever you go along this long stretch of road, Department store followed by McDonald’s, supermarket by pachinko parlour, glasses store (sporting a giant neon pair of spectacles of course) by the same shoe shop you saw 5km earlier. All marked at regular intervals by a Familymart, a Lawson’s or Seven/Eleven.

I’ve said before that Japan has managed to deal with globalization in a fascinating way, picking and choosing what aspects of culture and commerce that set up shop here. But when confronted by this long line of identikit construction and expansion it’s hard not to feel that in some places they let the flood barriers collapse.

While on that road returning home I might have been more saddened by the show of lights were it not for a few things. I had spent part of the previous evening at an open mic music night in a small town. The place was filled with a mix of Japanese and foreigners alike all enjoying the music, whether the lyrics were Japanese or English. My friend and I swiftly followed it up with a few beers in an Indian themed bar where the food was warm and the owners welcoming. Finally finishing our evening by devouring one of the best cheeseburgers I am ever likely to taste at a bar covered in Americana bric-a-brac.

These places were the product of globalization at its best, a place where two cultures can meet and get the best from one another. Do I wish these places were only a short walk from my own apartment? Yes, of course. But then they’d probably build it next to a department store and since you wouldn’t be able to see it behind that behemoth it’d need something bright and colourful so you wouldn’t miss it… maybe a splash of neon would do the trick.

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The Thousand Autumns of David de Zoet by David Mitchell – A Review

Posted on December 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

One thing I did while back home in England for a few weeks, which perhaps gave me a hint that I wasn’t quite ready to finish my time here in Japan, was read David Mitchell’s latest novel The Thousand Autumns of David de Zoet. I suppose that this was my attempt at anchoring myself at least in part to my current home, like a Dutch ship harboured at Dejima. Apart from Japan, but somehow still a part of it.

I’d read a little about David Mitchell a few months ago when a friend of mine sent me a link to a review of Mitchell’s latest effort, knowing my love of literature and of course Japan. Reading the drooling review that seemed to elevate Mitchell into the great Pantheon made me a touch suspicious, as any reviewer that does that for an author rather scares me. Literature being such a varied creature I’ve always been loathed to elevate or decry any work too greatly (except Harry Potter).

Personally, I found my way to the giants of literature via Asterix, Spiderman, my brother’s Tom Clancy and Biggles novels and probably most importantly Nick Hornby. The very notion of a literary canon, never mind one that someone can be elevated to by a single reviewer bothers me immensely. Indeed, the most loathsome old bint I ever encountered while working in a library was one who claimed that, “some people just aren’t readers.” Nonsense, it’s just a case of finding the right book for the right person I told her and off she scuttled thinking far less of me. Hence my annoyance at the notion of the ‘right kind’ of novel that fits neatly onto a mahogany bookshelf in a country pile.

In the end I approached this book partially on the back of endlessly positive, if not always as idolizing reviews, in addition to a little tidbit of information regarding Mitchell’s life. Namely that he lived in Hiroshima for eight years as an English teacher. As such I thought that perhaps, I’d find a relatively honest depiction of the Japanese, not some product of research or a homage to the Chrysanthemum and the Sword.

The novel itself follows primarily the path of the titular character David de Zoet, though fortunately takes the perspective of two important Japanese figures in de Zoet’s life as the novel progresses so as not to leave this a one sided depiction of an outsider perpetually looking in. Like many men de Zoet has ventured to the Orient to seek his fortune and like many men, he has not done so by choice. Sent by a potential father-in-law who views de Zoet as presently unworthy of his daughters affections, de Zoet arrives on Dejima, the artificial island in Nagasaki harbour (designed to allow limited trade with originally the Portuguese and then the Dutch during the Edo period without breaking the Japanese policy of sakoku, or self-imposed isolation) on a daunting and in all likelihood fruitless mission, to clean up the corruption of the Dutch Trading Company. Inevitably this makes him few friends. Couple this with the inevitable mismatch of cultural mores, a clash between emerging modernity and tradition across the land bridge in Japan itself and one has more than enough to keep the pages turning apace.

The Thousand Autumns of David de Zoet, is a wonderful novel. It is ostensibly a story of love and longing that doesn’t fall into the usual traps fiction of this ilk often does.  It manages to finely balance the feelings of disconnection and longing for home, the certainties of a life left far behind. The separation from Japan itself feels tangible and the longing to experience life upon shores, which foreigners dare not have tread alone, is balanced finely with the orientalist mystique that lures them in the first place.

Inevitably, what endears this novel to me so greatly is a feeling of connection with the ideas it articulates. As despite the multitude of reasons each of us currently living in Japan chose to venture here in the first place, it is nice to know that the reasons that beguile us and bid us to continue here are shared by others.

Even if they are fictional.

note: This article first appeared in Yomayama Magazine in their Fall edition.

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Karaoke Fever aka Turning Japanese part II

Posted on November 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

Karaoke is a phenomenally popular pastime in Japan. Really, it’s not hard to understand why.  Just think about that most famous of world intersections at Shibuya, the mass of bodies that makes London seem quiet and bucolic in comparison is in a way Japan personified… albeit many times over.

So how does Karaoke fit into this?

There is the simple fact that this is a  cheap private space. In a country with an average population density of about 873 people per square mile, where three generations of a family will live together with paper thin walls between them and not bat an eyelid, a space you can rent relatively cheaply, drink cheap beer and snack to your hearts content with your mates long into the night when other Izakayas have shut up shop is a valuable commodity

Karaoke in Japan can be as private or as social as you want it to be. This is because big Karaoke places have rooms, or boxes as they are sometimes known, where one can sing alone to your hearts content or in the company of friends. Thus allowing both a rare opportunity for privacy or the ability to limit your potential humiliation to a handful of friends or sufficiently drunk co-workers.

Also, it’s liberating. While every other aspect of life in Japan may require a level of conformity and groupthink that some of us in the west might baulk at, Karaoke is about letting go of these constraints. You can be salary man by day and J-Rock star by night if that’s what you want to be.

It is a sense a way to recapture your youth in a big way. We all like to think that we’d sing something current, up to date and unassailably cool. But the truth is, that when the beers are stacking up something of your true and once youthful self emerges and unlike in High School, it isn’t shy. My litany of crimes to music within the confines of a karaoke box are now many, including my own attempt at doing Sad Kermit’s version of the Nine Inch Nails classic Hurt as covered by Johnny Cash, various 1980’s rap numbers and the odd *cough* …Springsteen classic… though strangely I regret them not.

Now I’ve been so often I’m beginning to develop minor pet peeves. Mainly that the aging Karaoke videos for any english language songs are a montage of 1980’s Europe, so when midway through singing any song you are likely to be confronted by the horror of a permed woman attempting to solve the same crossword over and over and over again, amid a sea of London Buses, just before a flood of images rotating around the leaning tower of Piza, before finally falling to despair and plummeting into a belly laugh at the sight of San Francisco tram cars.

It wasn’t long ago that the thought of Karaoke made me chuckle and wince in equal measure, but slowly bit by bit, inch by inch its grown on me. Like some airborne virus it’s caught me off guard. Passed unnoticed into my bloodstream and set up shop and worst of all it’s a fan of The Vapors.

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Manga, Manga everywhere but not a jot of Cricket

Posted on November 18, 2010 | 8 comments

My first experience of manga in Japan was not the best of introductions. I used to teach three boys, aged about eleven or twelve, at that annoying age where suddenly everything they liked two weeks ago is no longer cool. But one thing spans the gap from childhood to teen hood to adulthood like no other in Japan and every week, before their lesson started they would go looking for it.

Looking for it, just so you know, is my polite way of describing a deafening cacophony of tweenage screams and yelps that oscillated wildly between glass shattering and the noise an old man makes when getting out of an overly plumped sofa. Punches would be thrown, they’d scratch like a cat fighting for a fishbone and all this would be before they’d even collapsed through my office door. Every bit of chaotic energy they possessed was directed in a desperate attempt to be the first to one particular drawer at the base of the office bookshelf. For you see, that’s where they kept their treasure, their manga.

And when all the fighting was done, all the scraping, scratching, yelping, poking, picking and pinching, they’d lay on the office floor, all in a row with feet bobbing in the air reading the damn thing together. Turning pages at a frantic pace and utterly silent, a peculiar calm would descend over them, almost as if someone had just slipped them a sly sedative (note: I’d be lying if I said I’ve never been tempted to do this, but frankly I find making language games very active e.g. endless racing for flashcards, has a similar effect without the high costs and danger of prison time associated with drugging your students).

Soon after though I saw the side of manga and Japanese Anime that often draws raised eyebrows in the rest of the world. Having taken the magazine off the boys as they tried to read it during the lesson I had quick flick through the enormous tome and stumbled across a picture of a young school girl, with Barbie like impossible curves, half bursting out of her uniform and staring down in shock at her now quite see through underwear having somehow spilled a large bowl of spaghetti on herself.

Creepy…

However, to take Japanese comic book culture on such a small sample would be to ignore an enormous amount of history and tradition in an art from so popular, that to dismiss it based on this small sample would be foolish… or baka gaijin/stupid foreigner.

So the last time I was down in Kyoto I took a trip to the Kyoto Manga Museum.

It wasn’t quite what I expected. Granted it was as quiet as most museums as the people within focused with great care on their respective subjects. Yet, this was no ordinary museum. Rather it blended the best elements of a library, a museum and a truly public space. One that was as much for tourists as it was for locals, children and adults or pretty much anyone with a passion for Japan’s favourite art form.

And it is considered a serious art form now because as of 2002 it has been included in the MEXT Junior High School Curriculum. Though I can’t imagine Spider-Man making an appearance in the high school curriculum in the US generally, or Dennis the Menace in England really. ‘

The Kyoto Manga Museum was formerly Tatsuike Primary School and much of the feel of a school still pervades the place. Granted the Astroturf out front problem helps to a large extent, but the museum’s long creaking corridors, lined completely with an astonishing amount of manga gives the place a peculiarly appropriate feel, as if a konbini magazine rack (Japanese convenience store) fell into an old school house. It’s an odd mix, yet seems somehow to me to be matched perfectly. It captures both the childlike quality of comics themselves, in that they offer an escape into an imaginary world populated by creatures from our school day imaginations and just occasionally our more… shall we say wayward, teenage imaginations. It also places the comics in the locale where the frenzy my very own students illustrated was in all likelihood fostered.

Now while the museum was a truly impressive place, having a long list of special lectures on its calendar, some beautiful displays and a good introduction to manga for novices like me, what amazed me most was how well it functioned as a library.

I should probably note at this time that I once worked in a library, so I’ve seen it at its best when it acted as community hub offering homework help clubs to kids and great resources for the local community to add to their CV while continuing to fulfill its basic remit with ease. However, I have never, ever seen a library like the Kyoto Manga Museum. Every bench was full and not just with kids, but an almost perfect cross section of Japanese society. The reason for this is that the Museum offers a year long membership, so you can wander in almost any day of the week, find (if you feel so inclined) the best manga from 1972 and drop yourself onto a bench for as long as you wish. As public private partnerships go, the museum is an outstanding example of how it should be done. In as much the way as British rail service and any construction undertaken by Jarvis in the UK is a prime example of how not to do it.

Now when I say perfect cross section, I really do mean it. Manga covers pretty much every part of society. In their pursuit of profit manga magazines have tried to cater for all ages and both sexes. Although, in the end they discovered that manga aimed at kids was being read by adults, ones aimed at women are read by men, while pretty much every combination imaginable is read by someone completely unexpected as well as their aimed for demographic.

One variety of manga, I have however found deeply disappointing.

Sporting manga is huge and supposedly encapsulates the Japanese spirit in a way that samurai and warrior tales used to before the end of World War II. Every moment of any sport depicted is a heroic struggle; emotion pitched at either end of the spectrum, highlighting just how much sport is more than any mere game. Thanks to its popularity almost every sport has received such a treatment; baseball, volleyball, football (soccer for those who don’t know better), rugby and any other sport you can think of.

Except cricket.

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