Cool 日本nia

After an eventful and relaxing break things are starting to get boring and im losing my motivational mojo, fortunately things are going to pick up as im recommencing proper employment and have my visa in the bag, hoorah!

Had an interesting discussion with a British friend last night about the perception of Japan and the Japanese abroad and how the image is quite different from the reality. This is particuarly interesting with regards to the image one has in Britiain, especially london where everything Japanesey is super trendy and cool with everyone flocking to Yo Sushi and watching the latest manga movie. But this kind of image in Japan I soon learnt is quite far detatched from the actual reality of the country and the people, it almost seems to me now as a completely different commercial entity.

This misunderstanding of Japan i think greatly enhanced my culture shock to the country. With the proliferation of modern arts Japanese and the fact there are lots of intelligent and cosmopolitan young Japanese people in London I had the impression that Japan was a modern very integrated country in the world at the cutting edge in all senses. Upon coming to Japan my preconceptions shattered into a thousand pieces, if there is one phrase that probably summed up my feelings it was if I was living on Mars.

True it was my first visit to Asia, so the feeling was bound to be even more "alien" but it was more than just asia shock. Japans isolation has been the ultimate ingredient into defining its cultural, social and political identity and what makes the place the people and their values very unique and are very difficult to relate to anything western.

Japans trendiness in Britian is often linked to its modernity, but i soon discovered that Japan could only really be considered modern within the strict technological sense. Many travel authors contest that Japan is a unique fusion old and new but its not. The view that Japan is a "now place" is just window dressing, a way of it seeming fully integrated with the developed world. Japan is a thousand years old place that has recently had to embrace modernity leading to a rather screwed up result. They had to absorb so much in such a short time. Take for example the numerous political and philosophical thinkers at the time of the french revolution. It fell to one 23 years Japanese student to have to translate all of the works of this period into Japanese! somehow he managed it in 5 years.

Another image of Japan that gets on my tits is the cliche of it being a harmonious place where everyone is in a zen like state of nirvana like peacefulness pooness. I was travelling with an Ozzie recently and he seemed to take this at face value bowing deeply and clasping his hands in prayer with a pious look on his face after every encounter and saying "doooomoooo" like he was doing a voiceiver in a porno. Japan isnt monksville you know!

Japan is a place i think that is greatly misunderstood from abroad, films such as Lost In Translation symbolise these misunderstandings (although its certainly true that most Gaijin including myself are rather self vacillitating and dont know what we want to do with our lives!).

However perhaps one of the greatest fallacies though is that JPop is good whereas its actually shite. I dont get down and boogie to the venga boys and nor do I to SMAP.