Reactions to Japan

My nine month study abroad in Japan will be over in two weeks. Time went by a lot faster than I had expected or wanted it to, especially this past semester. The 2011-12 academic year was a whirlwind of new experiences and friendships, and I'll be sad to leave them in a mere fourteen days.

A friend's birthday party

Modesty, Fairness, and Grace

Being a student not only of Japanese language, but also Japanese gender expression and popular culture, Japan's all-female theater troupe, the Takarazuka Revue (宝塚歌劇団 takarazuka kagekidan) thus offers a highly interesting view of female gender expression and highlights the differences between demonstrations of sexuality and romance that cater to women and those that cater to men; offers insights into the structures of other aspects of Japanese society (i.e. the senpai/kouhai hierarchical system) and even idol culture despite the revue's not being an idol company in the strict sense of a company like Johnny's & Associates, which produces such huge acts as SMAP and Arashi.

Sign for the revue portion of the current Grand Theatre show (Cosmos Troupe)

What do Japanese people do?

I don't have the authority to answer a question like that, but I suppose I have no choice but to try. To begin, for fun, I googled "what do Japanese people do" to see the sorts of ridiculous questions and answers that might pop up, and the very first was this: "How do Japanese people spend their spare time?" The individual who answered said rather astutely "Japanese people are just like you and [sic] I," with which I agree. They play sports, listen to music, work, go to school, travel, read, teeny-bop, etc. I asked a Japanese friend what Japanese people do, and she responded "they go to school, come home, and go to sleep."

Although, I think if I had to choose one thing that Japanese people do, it would be gift-giving.

Omiyage I received from my speaking partner after she went to Universal Studios Japan with her boyfriend last December.

Gift-giving in Japan is as established a practice as giving gifts during the winter holidays or on birthdays is in America. In Japan when an individual visits a person's home for the first time, that individual brings a gift; one brings a gift back for someone after a trip (お土産 - omiyage); there is a gift-giving tradition for the mid-year (お中元 - ochuugen); there is also a gift-giving custom for New Year's (お歳暮 - oseibo); etc. This tends to seem a bit excessive to Americans who may only bring gifts back from trips for family members and close friends outside of birthdays and the holidays, but gift-giving is a legitimate social practice in Japanese culture. Japanese social interaction is run by the ideas of giri (義理) and ninjou (人情), which are (loosely translated) as being one's obligations to society and one's obligations to oneself, respectively; thus, the social practice of gift-giving is predicated on the idea of giri, which is essentially one person being motivated by giri to give someone else a gift, and then person then being motivated by giri to reciprocate.

The gifts I got for my host family and speaking partners because I figured that they would be expecting something based on the cultural obligations of gift-giving.

Here are a few websites that give the topic a more detailed treatment, such as outlining typical gifts for particular occasions; gifts that should be avoided; how the gifts should be presented; how to properly receive/give gifts; etc.: (1) (2) (3)

Portrait of a Japanese Person

Making Japanese friends at Kansai Gaidai is both easy and difficult. During the first few weeks of the semester, there are a lot of new exchange students so Japanese people come to the lounge at the Center for International Education to make new friends with whom they can practice English--although I don't speak much English with my Japanese friends. But because it can be difficult for the Japanese to approach foreigners on their own--and, of course, for exchange students to do the same--Kansai Gaidai has started the speaking partner program (which has been renamed to something fancier--something about a friend for helping one to function in Japanese everyday life). Initially I signed up for one before coming to KGU last fall, but received an email from the school a few weeks before school started asking us if we would like a second speaking partner because the number of Japanese people who signed up for the program exceeded the number of exchange students who did. So I signed up for a second partner in case one of the others didn't work out.

Indeed, one of my speaking partners and I did not click instantly--not because we had any problems or even a lack of similar interests--but my other speaking partner has become one of my really good friends. We have a lot in common: We're both fans of johnny's idols (she took me to see Kanjani8 in concert last December), as well as fans of Takarazuka (and in return I'm taking her to see Cosmos Troupe in April); we like to shop; we like eating gyoza; and both of us are weird, haha. We like taking crazy purikura:

Neighborhood Tanoguchi 2-chome

The baby goods store with the giant bunny sign.  It lets me know where I am at night because the roads are so poorly lit, haha. And there have been times that I've missed the turn to my apartment complex entirely...

At the end of the fall semester, I moved out of my homestay and into an apartment about a fifteen minute walk from Kansai Gaidai's Nakamiya campus. It's relatively residential (although, due to lack of space, most of inhabitable Japan is pretty residential)--west of my apartment is the main road that runs past campus and to the station, and east of it is houses and apartment buildings. In the middle of the fall semester, my host mother called up a real estate agency out of the blue after we had talked one evening about how expensive seminar house is and how an apartment would be better, which is how I ended up where I am now.

Impressions

The Takarazuka Revue! One of my favorite aspects of Japanese pop culture.

I arrived in Japan five and a half months ago with a mind full of preconceptions about the Japanese, but relatively few concerning the Japanese lifestyle. Needless to say, there was very little that surprised me about Japanese people, but quite a bit about everyday life in Japan struck me as being markedly "foreign," whatever that means. The things that stick out most in my mind are as follows: