Japanese Society

Well its been another interesting and crazy week in Japan....

I put up an ad for language exchange a week or so ago. At first I just recieved the one reply which I was quite content with. Then two, three, four and now its about twenty million at my last counting, all female all looking for a western boyfriend. I actually got quite excited at the prospect of teaching a guy but it turned out to be another girl. Dont get me wrong its flattering to recieve so much attention but now its starting to get ridiculous.

The longer I have been in Japan the more fascinating and intriguing Japanese society has become. I think it would be an amazing job to be a psychologist out here. There is such a schizophrenic sense of "seeming" and "being" out here that is pretty screwed up from my western perspective. "Seeming" is everything, your appearance, your manners and above all not losing face. "Being" is totally different you can act totally different and be totally different as long as your under the guise of seeming. The one exception I have seen of this is evening drinking culuture at night where the rules of what is acceptable change dramatically. Things often simmer on the surface too, hence you have totally normal looking "bookshops" that are basically 90 percent porn, playing videos for anyone to see, men reading pornos in bookshops and school girl knicker vending machines. Japanese morality dictates therefore that as long as nobody knows im doing wrong then its ok.

The only thing that has really been bothering me however is David Beckhams shameless advertising of chocolate coated macadamia nuts.