yinvis

As I mentioned in a previous post, this has not been my first semester here in Japan. Once May 30th rolls around, I will have stayed nine months in this country. Nine solid, crazy months. Japan has taught me a lot about itself in that amount of time. Sure, there's the obvious fact that Japan is not only what is shown or told in its stories. That Japan is not just a bunch of temples running from end to end and blurring until you can barely tell one from the other anymore (although that can happen if you let it). Instead, Japan has shown me the layers that exist within its vast structure and how something innoculous can show something about a country.



Take those three guys for example. For those of you who may not know, those three are the red rangers for the first three Super Sentai (スーパー戦隊) shows ever created. Super Sentai is a series of television programs for children that dates back to 1975 with Himitsu Sentai Goranger* (秘密戦隊ゴレンジャー) and was created by Shotaro Ishinomori (石ノ森章太郎), the same guy who created the Kamen Rider (仮面ライダー) series. Now as I mentioned, Japan is not what is portrayed in its stories, so why mention sentai? Well aside from my growing obsession with the tokusatsu (特撮) or "special effects" genre of Japanese media, I believe that my relationship with sentai best illustrates my relationship with Japan.

I was introduced to tokusatsu a couple of years ago by someone in the Anime Club that I was a part of. I didn't think too much about it and never watched it again, thinking that it was cheesy and too ridiculous for my own taste. Fast forward to this year, when I am again introduced to it by a friend of mine that I hang out with on a nearly daily basis. He's really into it and I decide that I might as well give it another go, if for no other reason than to do something with a friend. My interest turned on its head that day and now I can't seem to watch enough. Sure, its meant for children and is cheesy as anything, but there's a certain quality and charm about it that I just can't get enough of. Which brings me back to my original point: Japan's grown on me.

When I started out, and to an extent at the start of this semester, I didn't think I would enjoy and love this country as much as I do. In the beginning, there was the whole "Ooo, shiny" newness about it, but on the whole, it was just another place to be. Once the newness wore off, I thought that I would go home and be happy and done with it. That's not so much the case anymore. The longer I have stayed here and more people I have met, the more this country has become like a second home. Everything feels as familiar as if I had lived here for several years, not just nine months. Japan has taught me about itself and even a little about me and what I can become. And I thank it for that.



* - This link is in Japanese.

Image taken from fuzzyco.com

MINI-GOLF! Man's greatest challenge! For eons has man tried to put a tiny ball inside of a tiny hole. Long has he done battle against windmills with putters that are far too small for him. And seeing as how you can't throw a stone in a city in an American city and not hit a miniature golf course somewhere, I figured that the Japanese would have some some sort of equivalent.


I should have known something was up when the club was as big as my head.

For the most part Grand Golf, the closest thing to Mini-Golf that I could find in Japan, is the same as that found in America. The aim of the game is to complete the hole in the fewest number of strokes possible. Aside from that, however, the games start to diverge and the differences become noticable. For one thing, there's no par in Grand Golf, or at least none that I could discern. Also, this:

is the hole at the end of the green. For another,

can you tell me where the flag even is?

Grand Golf (or Gate Golf as it can also be called) is actually much harder to actually play than mini-golf is. Taking into account the increased size and weight of the club and ball (which is about as big as your fist), more force is required to actually get the ball to move than with the American putter/ball combo. Also, the course itself is not dissected into separate holes, but instead is a giant green with flags sticking out out of it that basically say "Hit this way for course."


Map of the course.


This is three separate holes; I kid you not.

The game is all about precision, which one could argue is also what mini-golf is all about. Mini-golf, however, doesn't have you trying to hit a ball the size of your fist 50 meters to try and get it inside a ring. And stay there or else it doesn't count. I acquired 7 strokes on two different holes because the ball would not staying inside the ring.



Overall, my experience with grand golf were basically the same as mine with mini-golf: I suck at it. That being the case however, it wasn't bad an if it wasn't so late in the semester, I'd probably want to go again.

Several of my fellow classmates have previously talked about their expriences with 花見 (hanami) or what can briefly be surmmarized as "cherry blossom watching." Believe me when I say that this is one of those "Better Than It Sounds" scenarios. Sure, sitting around and basking in the beauty that is the sakura blossoms is part of it, but that's by no means the only reason that people go out and do something like this. And considering that virtually everyone in Japan participates in the festivities of this event, you can see why it's a big deal.


I wasn't kidding when I said everyone participates in this

Now, given the circumstances of my homestay, my hanami experience is more than likely a little different from my classmates. My host mother can not get out of the house for the most part, due to leg pain problems, so instead of taking her to hanami, my host family and I basically decided to bring hanami to her in a round about sort of way.

Occasionally, namely after a period of a couple of months, I ask my host parents if I can invite somebody over for dinner or have a picnic somewhere. It lets my host parents meet my friends and allows my friends to experience a taste of Japanese homelife that most of my friends don't get to experience due to living in the seminar houses. Seeing as how hanami was right around the corner the last time this happened, Okaasan suggested that we take my friends out for hanami and then have them come back to the house. It turned out rather well, I think.

If there's one thing I associate with Japan it's anime. Call me what you will, but I'm not going to shy away from the fact that it's what got me interested in Japan in the first place. The thing is so pervasive in Japanese culture to the point where anime style, "super-deformed" characters are used for basically everything. Take this for example:


A picture of a "super-deformed" construction worker on a sign outside of a construction site.

With anime as common as it is in the country, it's no surprise that there have been a few monuments to some of the lager names in the industry. For example, Osamu Tezuka (手塚治虫), the creator of 鉄腕アトム (Tetsuwan Atomu or Astro Boy in the States) as well as many other beloved characters in Japan, has his own museum in 宝塚 (Takarazuka).


The Tezuka Museum in Takarazuka.

The Phoenix statue outside of the Tezuka Museum

And until recently, a life-size Gundam stood in Tokyo Bay.


The 1/1 scale Gundam that stood in Tokyo Bay before it was taken down in August, 2009. Image taken from robot-dreams.com. Dates for when the Gundam was on display can be found at here.

Recently, I was in Kobe and managed to grab a few pictures of the life-size replica of Tetsujin 28-go (鉄人28号 or Gigantor in the United States).

Tetsujin was created in 1956 by Mitsuteru Yokoyama (横山光輝) and ran for 10 years in Shonen (少年) magazine (link here). Yokoyama was born in 1934 in Kobe, Japan. In 1949, Yokoyama, having read Tezuka's Metropolis, became inspired to become a manga artist and strated submitting works around this time (Yokoyama's profile on yokoyama-mitsuru.com). When he started writing and drawing Tetsujin, Yokoyama was already a fairly established manga artist, if not necessarily well known. Looking at his list of works, Tetsujin 28-go was Yokoyama's 38th work, but the one that I would argue that had the most impact upon the Japanese populace.



Why would I argue this is fairly simple. With the plethora of manga and anime available to the Japanese populace at this point in time, the local government of Kobe decided to build a life-size version of Tetsujin. I don't think something like this would happen unless a person was deemed important enough to have their work immortalized like this. Yokoyama's work spread far enough to be recognized in America with Gigantor and Kobe seems to be rather proud of its son. While not quite as prolific as Tezuka or as well known around the world as the Gundam series, Tetsujin 28-go and Yokoyama are still widely read today, having spawned 4 TV series,live action movie, and an animated movie as recent as 2007. Imagi studios, the creators of the recent Astro Boy and the upcoming Gatchaman films, also released a trailer featuring Tetsujin, but no movie has been announced as of yet. Put all of these different factors together, and the Japanese love of Tetsujin (along with a good helping of Americans who are old enough to remember Gigantor) becomes readily apparent.

There are somethings that you just have to wonder about photos. Whether they're what you could call "the real deal" or photoshopped and completely fake like another person who's doing this particular project has pointed out. I'm going to admit it, I'm not familiar with photoshop and I'm terrible with cropping and the like (I can't even figure out how to make my photos black and white). But then you see a photo like this:


Photo by James Nachtwey

or this:


Photo by Annie Leibovitz
and suddenly the question of whether the picture was faked or not doesn't matter anymore.

Leibovitz and Nachtwey are very good at what they do, and what they do is take pictures.

Annie Leibovitz can generally be considered the go-to person for celebrity photographs. Her compositions are such amazing combinations of lighting, setting, and personality that the fact she stages them is irrelevant. Okay, "stages" might be too strong of a word. While it's true that Leibovitz gives general directions to her subjects, a lot of her photos have this strange, intimate quality about them that makes them feel completly natural.


Photo by Annie Leibovitz
Take the above for instance. It looks totally natural and unrehearsed. For all I know, it very well may be something that happened at the shoot and Leibovitz was lucky enough to get a shot of it, but I'd be more willing to bet that asked for that particular pose. Either way, it's a beautiful piece. Leibovitz is famous for getting to know her subjects and to ask them to do things that they would probably do anyway for a portrait. And the results tell a lot while saying little. Case in point, the Lennon/Ono picture from the Jan. 22nd, 1981 issue of Rolling Stone:


Photo by Annie Leibovitz
I can not begin to start going on about how beutifully put together this photo is. So I won't. I'll let Leibovitz herself comment on it instead:
    
"What is interesting is she said she'd take her top off and I said, 'Leave everything on' -- not really preconceiving the picture at all. Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn't help but feel that she was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her" (taken from the Rolling Stone website).

And then there's James Nachtwey. I have a healthy respect for this man and I wish I could take photos even half as good as his. He's right in the action and I'm beginning to wonder why he isn't dead yet when it comes to his war photos. But everyone talks about those and how amazing they are. So I'm not going to talk about them. I'd rather direct your attention to these particular photos:



Photos by James Nactwey

I think these two photos in particular draw the neatest comparisons to Leibovitz's work (and hey, that's the point of this post, right?). Whereas Leibovitz's photos are full of life (even the one of the Queen of England up there), almost every photo done by Nachtwey makes the viewer feel quite lonely and melancholic. About 90% of them can be just downright depressing, but that's certainly not a bad thing. Each photo, as was pointed out by another of my compatriots, has a story behind it. Unlike the previously mentioned compatriot however, I don't believe that the photos need a caption. I believe that a photo should be able to convey itself without words (or a very bare minimum) and Nachtwey's do that. Sure, it's nice to know a bit about what's supposed to be going on, but I don't believe that's the point of his photos. As I, and a few other of my classmates have mentioned, Nachtwey's photos are his testimony to the world at large and the horrors within (see his website for the full quote). They are harsh and unforgiving, but that's what makes them so good. And while knowing where these horrors are taking place can lead to trying to change these predicaments, I feel that they lose some of their power that way. Don't ask me why, it's just my own personal thoughts on the matter.


Photo by James Nachtwey

I also have to say that Nachtwey's photos feel more organic than do Leibovitz's. Do not get me wrong on this. I just spent about half of this post praising Leibovitz for the genius she is, but my God. Nachtwey becomes invisible, it's the only way he can get the photos that he does. Leibovitz may know her subjects, but Nachtwey sees them as they are without them noticing. And that, I think, is what leads to just how amazing and provoking his photos can be. Humanity is a dirty, lonely being on this planet, and that's what he captures. It strikes us because it shows us at our core, at our very being and does not look away.


Photo by James Nachtwey

Sources:
All James Nachtwey photos were taken from www.jamesnachtwey.com
Annie Leibovitz photos (in order of appearence):
www.guardian.co.uk
condense.fr
davideubank.wordpress.com

As I hinted at in my last post, I don't live in the Seminar Houses like most of the exchange students at Kansai Gaidai. Instead, I get to live with a wonderful host family that's been kind enough to put up with me and my crazy self for the past six months (not counting January, as that was largly winter break...but I digress). Now I could probably devote two or three entries to my host family, but for this particular assignment, I would like to turn your attention to this guy right here:


Otousan in one of his trademark gestures.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my Otousan (actual name omitted because I can't remember what it is).

Otousan, to me, represents what most Japanese men grow up to be: an office man who probably has a bit too much to worry about on his plate. He just never lets outsiders see it. The only way that I can tell is from having knowing him as long as I have. You can see it through the lines on his face, most likely brought on from having to bring up two girls around the time the economy crashed in the 90s, but that didn't stop him from moving forward. Now that both of his daughters are out the house and one of them has started a family of her own, he gets to relax for the most part and a more playful side of his personality gets to shine through.


Otousan with one of his grandchildren.

I swear he spoils his two grandchildren rotten, which you can't exactly blame him for doing. When it was just him and Okaasan around the house, life was pretty quiet. He goes to work (he doesn't retire for another couple of years, despite the fact he's in his late 50s), comes back for dinner with his wife, they talk for awhile before Okaasan gets tired, and then he goes to sleep. Rinse and repeat five times a week. Whenever his grandchildren show up to the house, you can just see his face take on a more youthful tone, it's like twenty years just wash away and there's the man he used to be. But maybe I'm just looking too far into this. Grandparents might always spoil their grandkids, no matter what culture they're from.

Neighborhoods mean a lot of different things to people. They could be the place you were born, the place where you have the most connections with people, or just the place you just happen to be living at the moment. Some neighborhoods might seem more "real" than others have, past or present. Or you can define your neighborhood by what it is not, and that's pretty much how I define that little place where my host family's house is fifteen minutes away from KGU by foot.



Welcome to Nagisahigashimachi (bit of a mouthful, isn't it?), that little part of Hirakatashi that I call home here in Japan. But even that might be a little big for the purposes of this post. You see, Nagisahigashimachi is actually divided into two distinct parts by a canal I don't actually know a whole lot about the part of the neighborhood on the other side of the red bridge that connects the two sections together.



The opposite side of the bridge probably contains one of the strangest juxtapositions that I've found in Japanese city planning. We have this:

right next to this:


Now call me on this if I'm wrong, but I was under the general impression that parents didn't want their children playing around graveyards. I know I've heard of stories where one of the kaasans of the seminar houses where they wouldn't let students from Sem House 4 inside the seminar house because it's next to a graveyard and they're impure or some such thing. And then there's the idea that the Japanese have a deep respect for the dead and this seems even more bizare to me. I have to pass this every day on my way home from school and it still boggles me despite seeing it for six months.

But regardless of what I may or may not find relatively strange of the neighborhood section across the bridge, that's not necessarily my neighborhood. As far as I know, I didn't meet anyone from over there when I dropped in one the annual mochi beating(?) that the neighborhood association put on last December. It also feels completely different from my side of the bridge. Whereas that side feels relatively open space-wise (at least for a Japanese neighborhood), my side is basically your typical Japanese neighborhood with tiny back-allies and a coffee shop. Or at least that's what it says it is, I can never seem to hit it up when it's actually open to find out. I seem to have a new mission for this semester.

You ever have one of those stereotypical images of somewhere? An image that's so iconic, so typifying of a place that even if said place has nothing to do with the image that it's still hard to shake that first impression? An image that you can look at it and say, "Of course I know where that's from, that's a picture from Place A." Most countries have them. America has the Statue of Liberty, England has Big Ben, and so on and so forth. Mention Japan to the average person and, more often than not, they'll probably think of this picture:


The Great Wave at Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai (ca. 1830-32). Image taken from The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's website

Which is all well and good. The painting is striking in how the wave looms over Mt. Fuiji and is heavily stylized in the tradition of Japanese ukiyo-e (浮世絵) paintings. And it's a beautiful peace of artwork, giving Japan this sense of powerful awe and beauty to most foreigners. Now if you had asked me seven months ago what my impressions of Japan were, I'd actually have probably gone with something a little less...majestic:



While I only took this photo a few weeks ago, had you shown this picture to me before I had come to Japan and I would have probably told you that this was what I thought about Japan at the time: that it was a country obsessed with tiny, cute things that were used in advertising (this photo is of a sign outside of a card shop in Moriguchi-shi (守口市)), as well as the home of anime,manga, torii gates, and about a dozen other stereotypically Japanese things.

Wow, have my ideas about the country changed in the past six months.

I will be the first to admit that I really didn't know anything about Japanese culture other than what I had learned in my language courses, film/literature course, and what I could glean from various anime and manga that I had watched and read before coming here (with some heavy editing due to the nature of those mediums). Let's just say that those aren't exactly the best introductions to Japan, seeing as how when I first got here, I was pretty much blown away. Everything was new and exciting because it was nothing like I expected going into it. I've nearly worn out my shoes from walking around and exploring as much of the area as I could. I was initially expecting my host family to be rather aloof, as most people I'd talked to who had been to Japan described them as such, but they, along with most people that I've had the pleasure of talking to in Osaka, are some of the nicest I've ever met. Might be some of that Japanese courtesy that you keep hearing about, but it feels genuine to me.

But now things are different. I've been here for six months, and have gotten to know the area quite well (my shoes can attest to this). Vending machines on every corner don't fascinate me and I've gotten used to being the only white guy on the train for the most part. I've found that the school really isn't all it's cracked up to be in a few things. Essentially, the honeymoon's over.

Now, the real journey starts. And for that,