First lets talk about Japan as a country. It is a country of rapid change. Japan was late in coming out from it's feudal era, compared to the rest of the world, which is said to have ended in the late 1860s. The time before this was the time of legends, ninjas, samurai, martial arts, geisha and an overall culture of mystery. Most fiction of Japan takes place before the 1860s. The rest is remembered in history. Most history isn't internationally well known until after 1941 with the bombing of pearl harbor by the Japanese. The most unforgettable being that the first (and only) atomic bombs were dropped and detonated on a live population in Japan during 1945. Then the country of samurai became the country of salary men. Bamboo forests replaced with neon. Fields of rice to fields of concrete. Or well, this is what many people think. In all reality, Japan is still somewhere in between. Where the salary man is in many ways still the loyal samurai, working hard for their company instead of their fief.
Trading in the Katana for tie.
A highly developed nation with huge concrete metropolises like Tokyo and Osaka but also having lush bamboo forests, rice fields that meet the mountains, and no central heating. I live in the later. My neon is the stars, my apartment so freezing in winter that I have to put my vegetables in the refrigerator so they don't freeze, my crowds the migratory birds. It seems when people think of Japan, they think Tokyo. Although Tokyo is part of Japan, I would say it is the least like the rest of Japan. I myself misunderstood Japan to be the robot wielding cybernetic ninja capital of the world, that is before I came here and saw differently. Las Vegas still puts the lights of most Japanese cities to shame, and a 10 year old American probably has more electronics than a 10 year old Japanese!
The Japanese people, considered honorable and polite. This is true for the majority, but honor and respect are declining in popularity as those younger than 30 don't care about these traditional values anymore. There are punks everywhere in the world, and Japan is no exception. With this uprooting, it is harder for older generations to respect the younger generation and thus the vicious cycle is in full swing.
Rockabilly anyone?
Japanese people have weird concepts of race. Being a country that is basically 99 percent Japanese with most foreigners being from other Asian countries or Japanese-Brazilians, xenophobia and racism are everywhere. Being white in Japan is the major minority. Unless your in Tokyo which just looks like if you replaced New York's white population with Japanese and the Asian with white, but still yielding a pretty decent mix. In my town of 23,000 people, I think there is one other white guy that I see out of the corner of my eye when I am walking the narrow streets. Otherwise most are Japanese, although my prefecture is a special case in having many Brazilians. On many government signs in Shiga prefecture, the second language is Portuguese. I can walk down the hall at my school, and I normally hear Japanese, but it isn't unheard of to hear some Brazilian kids going at it in Portuguese. Overall, a pretty cool experience although I know that many Brazilians are highly discriminated against by the Japanese police.
Teaching English I always come across, "I can't learn English because I am Japanese." Which is strange. Why not? I know many Japanese that speak English well. How do you explain Japanese-Americans? But the same goes if you are foreign (not Asian), you can't understand Japanese (which you can play to your advantage) or know how to use chop sticks. If you say "Hello" in Japanese you speak very well and then get flooded with a language you are only just learning, and if you can use chop sticks, you are "amazing."
Blendy: Japanese coffee company.
The food, is amazing! Half the reason why I came back. But honestly, Japanese people don't eat sushi very often, but white rice everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Some foods also like to play with my gage reflex, but it's all apart of the experience! The modern Japanese diet isn't more healthy than the American one, although the obesity rate is much lower. 5% compared to 35%. Unfortunately this is slowly changing, both due to the convenience of Japanese junk food and American influences such as McDonald's. Will Japan continue to claim the worlds longest life expectancy with the amount of cigarettes the majority smoke and binge drinking from societal stress combined with Micky D's?
Where will Japan be in the next 100 years? The last 100 years have changed so much that I could technically talk to a 90 year old man who's father was a samurai, remembers the bombs being dropped on Japan, the U.S. occupation, the rise of Japan being the strongest economy in the world, to the present day that we live in now. That is more change than most current 1st world countries see in 200 years! It surprises me that the slogan used by Obama, "Change," is so popular in a country that has been anything but the same for the last few decades.
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