まだ見ぬ日本の姿 Changing Impressions of Japan

My impression of Japan has definitely changed from that of the beginning of the semester. Ever since I started taking this course, I become more aware of the subtle details of the everyday things. The ideas that I used to think were normal - for example, how Japanese people are extremely loyal to their assigned work, even if it seem like an unimportant job - now seems a lot more special, since I know it is particular to this country's culture. Had it not been pointed out by the international students in my class, I would have never taken the time to consider the concept of 我慢 ("gaman", to endure) or 一生懸命 ("isshou-kenmei", to do one's best).


When I started this Visual Anthropology course, I did not think that there would be so many things that I could learn from through various kinds of medium. Having to look at Japan from an outsider's view certainly gave me a fresh perspective, and prompted me to question things about my own culture that had never before caught my attention -- Japan, in my mind now, seems so much more interesting and vibrant, and I am pleased to know that there are still many more discoveries to be made (and thus many more pictures to be taken) here.

八百万の神 8 Million Gods of Japan

2 weekends ago, I visited Arashiyama in Kyoto. It was one of the few opportunities to put my mind off of the trivial things that I face every day and simply escape from my busy student life.

While I was going through the mountains on the Arashiyama Trocco Train, I was astonished by the nature surrounding me. I could not help but think about how such a beautiful landscape came to be, and who - if anyone - had created it.

If you are interested in Japan, you may already be familiar with the country’s influence from Shinto (神道), literally, "the way of Gods". In Japan, there are all sorts of Gods; God of Prospericty, God of Education, God of Agriculture, God of Sun...according to Shinto tradition, it is said that there are 8 million Gods. While I was walking through the bamboo forest in Arashiyama, I even came across a Shrine of "縁結び(en-musubi)", or good relationship.

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/hodaka57/m/200609

Unlike in a monotheistic culture, there are so many forms of "kami-sama" in Japanese that people have a hard time pin-pointing what specifically they mean when they use the word "kami-sama (god)". Sokyo Ono, in her book, "Shinto: The Kami Way" (1962) writes that "[t]he Japanese people themselves do not have a clear idea regarding the kami ("God" in Japanese)....They are aware of the kami intuitively at the depth of their consciousness and communicate with the kami directly without having formed the kami-idea conceptually or theologically."

Interestingly enough, even though I don't have a clear understanding of the concept of the Gods myself, I experienced what Japanese call "kami-sama" in the great nature of Arashiyama. It was certainly a presence of somekind of a grand and divine being.

I would like to think that it this kind of breathtaking experiene that takes to understand the concept of God in the Shinto context. Perhaps I may be wrong, but for now, that was as close to my idea of "kami-sama" as it can get...

働かざるもの食うべからず No Work, No Pay

Last weekend I was asked to be in the promotion video for my university. Several people including myself were asked to come to school at 9AM, bright and shine, on a beautiful Sunday morning.

The shooting started out incredibly slow - 6 hours in, we were still working on the first couple of scenes of the video. Since me and this other girl were asked to be in the very last scene, we spent the whole time sitting in the cold lounge, waiting. At this point, I could not help but wonder why in the world I had agreed to participate.

With the never-ending repetition of the same scene, it was apparent that everyone was feeling the tension in the air. The director was getting frustrated, and the crew members were all on there toes. About 20 shots later, we moved on to the next scene - and the same process went on for an additional 6 hours.

After 13 hours of shooting, I was convinced that this day had been a day to confirm that Japanese people are indeed 一生懸命 ("ikksho-kenmei"). It was incredible how each and every one of the crew shared the same passion - not even one of them failed to pay attention to the smallest details. Not a single member complained or showed signs of exhaustion (again, this was taking place on a late Sunday evening) and this truly showed how much Japanese people cherished the notion of group harmony, or 和 "wa" when working as a team.

Aside from my not being able relax on the my rare holiday, I was glad to have been able to witness my culture's 頑張る ("gambaru", to strive) spirit with my own eyes.

I genuinely hope that the shooting crew rested up properly before another week of hard labor started for them....

ご苦労様でした ("gokurou-sama deshita", Good Work)!

火の中にも三年 Perseverance Prevails

『火の中にも三年(hi-no-naka-nimo-san-nen)』is a famous proverb in Japan, which literally means "perseverance prevails". Indeed, in Japan, you can see the notion of 我慢("gaman") or

patience, in all aspects of people's lives.

It was not a coincident that I encountered this "Gaman Spirit" at the Fire Festival, or 火焚祭(Hitaki-sai) as the locals call it, which took place in Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto a couple of days ago. As Shokaku Karasawa explains in his book, "Inari Okami Reiken Ki", every year on Novermber 8th, the shrine burns wooden votive sticks to show appreciation of the year's harvest to Inari Okami, one of Shinto's well known Gods.

During the festival, several hundred thousands of wooden votive sticks gathered from the venerators from all over Japan are burned. The fire shows gratefulness to Inari Okami, and the sticks being burnt represent people's sins.

What astonished me the most was that for over an hour, a single man kept throwing the sticks into the fire, almost non-stop. Meanwhile the priests chanted 大祓詞 "Oharai-no-kotoba", one of the Shinto prayers, for what seemed like and endless amount of time. It was hard enough for me (who was standing about a good 5 meters away from the fire) to manage to take these pictures because of the heat. After a while you cannot help but wonder what it was like for the young man to repeat the same action, over and over again, facing the open fire. When you looked into his eyes, you could clearyly see his 忍耐力("nintairyoku") or perseverance - his amazingly strong will and concentration to stay with his given task.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't more than half an hour before the audience got bored of the same move. Even those who were pushing their way to the front of the crowd at the beginning had apparently lost interest several minutes after the dramatic opening of the fire. As for me, I stood there until the very end of the festival, mesmerized by the young man's soul. With his eyes saying so much about our country's culture, I felt there was nothing more that could be better explained by words.

Inspirational Photographers: Leibovitz and Natchwey

Annie Leibovitz (Source)

James Natchwey (Source)

How could these two brilliant photographers be compared to each other? One thing that they do have in common for sure is that did not miss their calling in life....

Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz (Source)

It is hard to have a preference in either one of these photographers. Leibovitz's work is like a piece of jewelry - everything is just flawless. In fact, many of the people in her work are world known celebrities and some can even seem a bit too idealized. If Leibovitz's pictures are portraying the world as we would wish to see it, Natchwey, on the other hand, is depicting the part of the world that perhaps most of us would like to keep our eyes away from in our everyday lives....

Photo Credit: James Natchwey (Source)

The approuch the two photographer takes, however, are quite similiar. They both blend with the environment that they are in. Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was getting his shots taken by Leibovitz, eventually forgot that there was someone with a camera in the room and started taking off his clothes. As a student of Visual Anthropology, I was amazed by how she manages to get so intimate with the peoeple she has just met. This also goes for Natchwey, in that he becomes apart of the caotic scences that he constatnly finds himself in. Often times I would go through my pictures and feel that they are not what I was initially seeing to through the lends - that somehow they seemed so unnatural. It dawned on me that in order to reveal the nature of things through photographs, I had to spend time and get to know them first. If only I had the ability to tear down the walls between my camera and the object, as Leibovitz and Natchwey do....

アイエンキエン meets ANTAL

Young Ambition from Butapest, Hungary.

This blog post is a snap-shot of ANTAL, who is currently doing his study abroad in Japan. He majors in Art and is hoping to open a gallery someday. With a cigarette in one hand and a "Genki" textbook in another, ANTAL shared about himself in the garden of where he is residing now. The pictures were taken in his cosy Japanese-style room.

Q1. Please tell me a little about yourself.

“I like travelling, collecting art, scuba diving…my new hobby is to learn Japanese (giggle). I also like magic. I appreciate honesty in people.”

Q2. How long have you been in Japan?

“Six months.”

Q3. What brought you here?

“Hmm….there are many reasons why I came to Japan, and if I mention only one of them, it would sound ridiculous. But, one of the main reasons was that the scholarship offered by my home university to come to Japan was very good, and only one person could get it. It required at least one year of study aboard experience; I had done a study abroad in America for almost a year and a half when I was in high school, went to France with a scholarship named Erasmu [Mundus], and did my internship in London for a summer for three months. In order to get this scholarship, you had to be ambitious and interested in East Asia, and be willing to overcome cultural differences there. I applied for it because I wanted to challenge myself. Also, I am hoping that my future would have something to do with one of the Asian countries.”

Q4. What, if you had any, was your first culture shock incident?

"It was during one of my first Japanese classes. The [class] speed was unbelievable, and to learn a new language (Antal had only studied Japanese for two month prior to this study abroad program), it was too fast, and I couldn’t catch up."

Q5. What part of you think makes you a representative of your country/culture?

"[Here in Japan] I try to represent the ‘Central’ European countries…I am open-minded, friendly…those kinds of things. But [whatever I represent] I never forget that I am in Japan.”

Q6. Do you have any questions about Japanese culture?

"I have one: why do you keep bottles full of water around the telephone poles on the streets? Also, this is not a question, but sometimes I am confused, when [Japanese] people are talking about another person, whether they are talking about a real human or a Pokemon character…."

http://popeye.mo-blog.jp/waraibuta/2005/12/post_b3a5.html

うち帰ろか？Neighborhood HIRAKATA

If you are somewhere in your early 20's, and you tell a person from Osaka that you are living in Hirakata City, the first reaction that you will most likely get is 「あ、外大生？("Oh, are you a Gaidai student?")」－Hirakata City, or Hirakata-shi （枚方市）, as we would call it, is famous for it's local foreign language university, Kansai Gaidai. This city of less than 410,000 people, located right in between Kyoto and Nara, has been my home for nearly a year.

Having been raised in Kobe for almost my entire life, I consider myself a 神戸っ子 ("Kobe-kko"), or a "Kobe-person". Whenever I am asked where I am from (the tanned skin and my rather exotic choice of outfit seem to confuse many people whether I am from Japan or some other tropical country), I subconsciously try to distinguish myself from people in Osaka, despite my strong Kansai dialect. "My hometown is Kobe," I would say,"Shittou?" (「知っとう？」Kobe dialect for "Do you know?"). Most of the time they will say that they've heard of the city but never been, and I usually end the conversation by saying how beautiful it is there, and that they must pay a visit sometime. For this blog, I was tempted to write about my beloved hometown, but instead chose Hirakata-shi, my second home that is yet to be explored.

So far I have found out that my house in Hirakata-shi is in a highly residential area, and therefore is extremely quiet - both day and night. In the morning, I see some people starting their day by watering their plants in front of their doorsteps, having a walk in the park, or perhaps taking out their garbage bag to the designated bumping spot. Even in the evening, the area feels almost empty, and I am barely reminded of the neighbors' livelihood when I walk past a house during dinner time and smell their dishes.

From where I am living, it is hard to imagine that this relatively small city actually has quite a vibrant nightlife of its own.When I head towards the local Hirakata-shi station, a brief 15 minutes bike-ride from my house, I see many restaurants and 居酒屋 ("izakaya"), Japanese bars that serve anything from alcohol drinks to deserts. At this time of the year, you might see a crowd of サラリーマン("salary-man", white collar male workers) enjoying their drinks at a 立ち飲み屋 ("tachi-nomiya"), where they would literally stand (立ち) and drink (飲む) after a long day of work.

It is also not rare to see a 屋台("yatai"), a van that serves different kinds of food and drinks, parking just around the corner. The stereotype that I once had of おっちゃん("Occhan" middle-aged men) talking to the yatai owner with a cup of sake in his hand was completely destroyed, when I saw young female students in the seats, enjoying their meal.

In a nutshell, Hirakata-shi seems to have a good mixture of peace and excitement. What more can you ask after a pleasant evening at the 市駅 ("shi-eki" a local way of saying 枚方市駅) : a warm, cosy futon that awaits for you, in the peaceful, silent neighborhood.