Stereotypes

I was thinking about the theme for this post and I remembered some photos of a group of Japanese people visiting the Güell Park , one of Gaudi's masterpieces, I took in Barcelona before coming to Japan.

As you can see in the picture they are all wearing casual clothes and the typical caps and hats they usually wear when they are abroad, because they don't use to wear these caps here every day, and some of them wearing a white mask covering their mouth and nose. To me it was like a "Japanese tourist uniform", it has been really easy to guess who are Japanese and who are from somewhere else in Barcelona.

We are talking about Stereotypes.

Stereotypes have change a lot along history. Some decades ago, when somebody was thinking about Japanese people in my country , they thought about Geishas, Samurais, etc. After the II World War they have been considered a hard working people, but if you ask somebody in Spain to describe a Japanese tourist he would probably tell you that they are very polite people, bowing to everybody with their heads, traveling in groups and with the camera hanging from their necks.

They seem to be always in a hurry, running from place to place, with just a few seconds to take a photo and running again to the bus to go to a new monument. It is said they usually visit Spain in less than a week and there are even some jokes about their knowledge of the country after this week. People think they have just a week of holidays and they wont be able to remember if the Holy Family is in Barcelona or in Sevilla or the Prado Museum and the Alhambra are in Valencia, in Madrid or in Granada because they have seen all these cities and their sightseeing monuments in just two days.

Japanese cinema does not help in this way:

"Andalusia" is the title of the movie, I have not seen it but in the trailer I have seen only images of Barcelona (Catulunya) and even traditional arts and the national flag of Catalonia. But... who cares? Spain - Paella - Flamenco - Gaudi - Andalucía ? (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 0)

But I have to say that obvioursly all these stereotypes have a reason to be and part of them are a reflex of the real situation but others are just fruit of the ignorance between far away culture.

Once in Japan, I realized that most of these stereotypes were just that, stereotypes, and the Japanese are very different. It is true that they have less holidays than we use to have, at least during the Summer, when most Europeans have a month. But the number of bank holidays, free days during the year, I think it's even greater here than in Europe. So this stereotype doesn't reflect the true situation. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 1)

On the other hand we never bow anybody except some monarchist to the King , the flag etc., or some religious people to the Cardinals, the Pope or images of Saints and God. So it is a representative feature that justify this stereotype. (Stereotypes 1 - Reality 2)

And talking about culture, I think that all Japanese people who have traveled abroad that I have met during these months here, are educated people that perfectly know where they are going on holidays and, of course, where they have been spending the last ones. As an example I could state that I have found more people knowing everything about Antoni Gaudi and his works here in Japan than in my own city. So this is another wrong stereotype.

(Stereotypes 2 - Reality 2)

So the best way to know something about other people or about another culture is not throw the stereotypes but living among them, the stereotypes which are completely wrong and the ones based in some true are often mixed together and hard to separate.

Football in Japan (サッカー)

Football, even though not being the biggest sport in Japan (This is the land of baseball) it has been the second most popular sport for the last few years, followed shortly after by Sumo and Golf. Nevertheless, according to the Central Research Services last surveys, in 2010 professional football popularity remarkably fell to the point that switched positions with Sumo, followed by an increasing popularity of professional Golf. In the chart below you can see the evolution of the answer to the question "What professional sport do you like?".

CRS survey available here

This question is supposed to be the reference to know which are the most popular sports in Japan, but I think it is a little bit tricky. As you can see in the chart all the options people could choose from are sports practised in Japan professionally, but specially talking about football, this does not reflect the real popularity of the sport. Why? Because even though J-League is popular, every football fan has his J-League team and the stadiums sell their tickets, people who are crazy about football in Japan set their eyes in Europe: specially in England, Spain and Italy. Maybe I am wrong, but in my opinion this survey focuses in sports done by Japanese professional sportsmen.

Among my Japanese friends, the ones who are football fans have their favourite teams in Europe, apart from the one here in Japan. And they try to follow the results and news and watch online or in an sports bar the most important matches, no matter what time they are (usually REALLY late at night). When I did not have the chance to watch the game or read the news I know that if I ask them they will always be even better informed about my favourite team back home than me.

I come from Barcelona (Spain) where the biggest sport is definitely football, and my team is easy to guess: Football Club Barcelona. I have supported FCB all my life, but only since the last 3 years I am proud to say that we possibly have the best team in the world, winning almost all the competitions both national and international with astonishing results, breaking all the historical records year by year and gathering admiration all around the world for the particular style of football FCB has been faithful to. This results, as well as the popularity of Lionel Messi breaking all top scoring records and being awarded with the highest prizes for football players several times in a row, have remarkably risen the popularity of FCB all around the world, including Japan.

But in this post I want to focus in how Japanese live football, and how do they behave as supporters during the matches because I think there are some big differences. In Europe, people really throw themselves into the game supporting their favourite teams and some standard social rules of behavior change when the ball is rolling. When the referee does a mistake or there is a polemic move involving rival players, people yell and even curse loudly the poor men (moms included) and I do not say it is correct but I guess it is part of the nervousness and excitement of the game, and I could even say it is part of its fun. When your team scores a goal, everybody starts shouting "gooooal!" and hugging with unknown people holding spilling beers is not very unusual. What I want to say is that people become fully emotional rather than reflexive, standard social rules step a little bit aside and some other kind of behavior comes out. From a sociological point of view this game seems to bring up "tribal" feelings that connect people in a perhaps more primitive way.

The first time I saw a game in Japan I was curious about how would it be in a society with such a strong social ruling to watch such a passionate spectacle. That day FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, which are the maximum rivals were playing, and so I went to a sports bar in Umeda (Osaka) to watch the game with my friends. The game was at 4 o'clock at night, but the bar was full and we even had to pay a special event price and make a reservation in advance to be able to get in there. Amazing, -I thought- even though we are in the other side of the world there is such passion about football and these two teams to choose watching the game over sleeping. I guess that due to the results of FCB in the last few seasons I refered to above, 80% or 90% of the bar was supporting Barça (FCB's nickname). Good start! The place was full, but it felt a little bit weird to me, different. Soon I noticed that nobody was shouting any of the team's cries or behaving any different, there was excitement about the upcomming kick off but everybody was keeping it down. Finally the game started and the torrent of goals started falling on Real Madrid. Every time Barça scored, me and my mexican friend (who loves the game with the same passion as me) shouted "gooooooooooooooooooal!" and made some noise, but surprisingly... we were the only ones! A fully packed sports bar watching a football game but there was a brief applause followed by some comments between friends. It was definitely different. Anyway, the good final result and seeing how many supporters my team has in Japan made me really happy that night.

Japanese Barça fans I met in the place

Shortly after I had the experience to watch a J-League match in Osaka Stadium, it was the opening game of the season and it was a derby: Cerezo Osaka vs. Gamba Osaka. I was so excited to see my favourite Japanese player Endo Yasuhito, former midfielder in Gamba and Best Asian Player in 2009 by FIFA. I saw this man playing in the last World Cup and he is one of the best free kick shooters I have ever seen. That day he did not let down anybody, he scored a great goal and also showed his accuracy hitting the post from 30m in a fantastic free kick that made the whole stadium skip a heartbeat. But back to the subject of this post, going to the stadium watching the game and seeing who Japanese people support their teams there (not for foreign teams on TV) made me understand a little bit more how passion flows into the sport. But first, please watch this video:



As you can see, this is the beginning of the match, when players come out onto the pitch. There were cheerleaders (something I have seen in other sports but never in football) and a speaker presenting the teams whos voice resounded throughout the stadium due to the quietness of the public. Yes, the public was very quiet and remained like that for the whole game, with the exception of some applause. But there is a remarkable exception: behind the two goals there is the special place for the most fanatic supporters, Japanese hooligans who wear wear their team's T-shirts, banners and flags; uniformed from head to tail without exception. They did not stop cheering up their teams for a single second during the whole match, and the way they were doing it was also different from what I am used to see. There was organization, even rank, they had battle cry leaders wielding loudspeakers and the rest of them were following the songs along with the trumpets and drums. The flags also moved all at the same time producing the sensation of pink and blue waves, depending on the side of the pitch. It was just like I remember it was in the anime "Captain Tsubasa" I used to watch when I was a child. A great spectacle. Japan is different.


In conclusion, Japanese people are really passionate towards football but they show it in a different way compared to Europe. Most football fans devour information, statistics and opinion articles about their teams, even more than in other "football countries". Then they gather with their friends and watch the games in a calm way, without losing their composure at all. But then, on the other hand we have the hooligans, crazy about their teams and strongly organized in supporters clubs who behave like a little army. Like in other interests or hobbies, some people in Japan bring them to the extreme that we could call the people 「サッカーオタク」 (Football Otakus). Two sepparate ways of watching football, clearly separated by the location in the stadium.

In Europe we also have hooligans, of course, but in a different way. Unfortunately, too often the difference is that they become violent and end up fighting or breaking stuff, specially a few years ago before the FIFA and the most important clubs took care of the problem and developed strict regulations. I think the main difference is that football fans in Europe "we all are hooligans" in the nicest sense of the word, we all forget about keeping the composure and become extremely passionate when watching the games.

One same game, two different cultures. One same passion, two different ways of living it.

ホスト

It has been a long time since my last blog post and I have to catch up with the rest of my classmates, so this week 頑張ろうと思っていますね (I am going to do my best). Today in class we have seen a documentary film about an interesting and unique aspect of the japanese urban culture: ホスト(Hosts). The film is called The Great Happiness Space: Tale of an Osaka Love Thief by Jake Clennel.

Image borrowed from the official website

I was impacted by the film, which is really good in terms of providing a cold-blooded and objective inside look at the hosts world. There is some kind of drama in the way the different testimonies are edited, but there is a remarkably lack of moral judgement. Before watching this I only knew this world by seeing the hosts in the street, and wondering: What kind of woman would pay for such a guy to pretend he is her boyfriend? Although I think this documentary does not cover the whole range of customers and focuses in the ones who have addiction problems (maybe because they are the only ones who agree to collaborate with the film and show their faces), the hosts telling their experiences and talking about their lifes and feelings help you to understand how the business works.

But first I am going to explain briefly what are "Hosts". This is one of the most lucrative aspects of the japanese night life and sex related industry, and one of the most difficult to understand for foreigners as well. If you have the chance to visit Shinjuku's Kabukicho district in Tokyo or Dotonburi Bridge (Next to the Glico Man) in Osaka, you will find dozens of extravagantly stylish boys in their early 20s going around in their striking hairdos trying to pick up girls from early evening until late at night. In the eyes of a foreigner, they look really, really weird, and sometimes it is really hard to guess if it is a man or a woman because of the amount of make-up and hairspray they use. Not all japanese women like that kind of guys, but certainly a large amount of them find them attractive and hire their services.

A host is not a supposed to be a sex worker (although most of them admit they have had sex for money sometimes), what a host does is to try to make a woman happy, release her from the stress of her job or daily life's worries, and make her feel like a princess, attended and pleased. As we could see in the film, they basically pick up their costumers in the street, offer them to have a drink and bring them to the host club. There they chat and drink together and the host's job is to make the costumer feel fullfilled and have a great time. Of course, trying to make those women spend more and more money in drinks and other services at the same time.

Before watching The Great Hapiness Space, I thought that most customers would be middle aged single women who cannot find a man or young girls who want to have fun in a special ocasion like somebody's birthday or bachelorett parties. Most of costumers the documentary shows are prostitutes who want to feel relieved of their dehumanizing job, and seek for attention and afection as a woman. The sick an even wicked thing is that they fall in love with some of the hosts and they become addicted to them, to that "fake love" hosts sell, to the point that some of them have fallen into the sex business to be able to pay the extremely expensive services hosts offer. The normal thing is to spend between 6.000 and 20.000 yen per hour (which is expensive enough to not allowing anybody with an average salary to go everyday), but they talk about people who have spent 300.000 or 400.000 yen in a single night.

Talking about feelings, it is as interesting as sad how both night and sexual based industries compliment each other. Prostitute's damaged mental state and feelings can only be relieved by the affection and love lies of the hosts, who at the same time lose the capability of trusting anybody or even identify their own personality after spending most of their working time lying to people, causing a never-ending problem, a vicious circle. Such a great market for phychiatrists, isn't it?

In the documentary film we have seen in class they talk about Osaka's most popular host club, but if you want to know a little bit about the most popular one in Tokyo you can take a look at this short report courtesy of Japan in Motion :

Master Lens: Anne Leibovitz and James Nachtwey

This post is going to talk about two of the most important photographers in the world: Anne Leibovitz and James Nachtwey. They are living legends in their fields, but while both tell stories through visuals and have run extraordinary succesful careers, the targets at which they point their lens and the stories they tell are radically different.


James Nachtwey is considered by most people the best war photographer in the world. While he was a student, during the 60s, we was moved by the pictures in the civil rights movements and conflicts like Vietnam War. "Our political and military leaders were telling us one thing and photographers another." And he believed the photographers, so milions of people did, awakening a global conscience upon how silent the injustices in the world had remained. In his words, "I wanted to be a photographer in order to be a war photographer. But I was driven by an inherent sense that a picture that revealed the true face of war would almost be by definition an anti-war photograph." During all his career he has tried to show conflicts from the victim's point of view, he defends the importance of visual journalism in war saying that "it gives a voice to those who otherwise would not have a voice." His works try to show war from the frontline, from ground zero, through the eyes of the people involved; serving moving high doses of raw reality. He believes in the power of documentary journalism and its role in the resolution of conflicts through the influence on public opinion and its depth in collective consciousness.

Kosovo 1999 - Imprint of a man killed by Serbs ©James Nachtwey

"The image reminded me of a cave painting, and echoed how primitive we still are in so many ways."

He has been documenting war conflicts and social issues in more than 30 countries, travelling all around the world working in South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and The Balkans, the Middle East, South East Asia but also finding the conflict right out of his office's window in New York on 9/11.

In his effort to get the closest shot and the most direct testimony he has had to learn how to deal with his anger when witnessing injustice and tragedy as well as how to deal with fear when he has found himself working in the middle of chaos, in the heat of battle. Even though in times of war humanity stands in the background too often, in the documentary film War Photographer he claims he has always tried to have a personal and respectful relation with the people he has photographed, explaining the reason why he was there and asking for consentment and collaboration to tell the story through pictures. However, he has insistently tried to be invisible, purely objective, extracting himself from the facts he reveals in his works. The absence of personal impressions allows the public to put to draw their own opinions and conclusions from the primary source instead of doing so through the filter of the journalist's experience or point of view, which makes Nachtwey's photographies closer and moving.

Personally, one of the pictures that have impacted me the most is this one, taken in Sudan in 1993:

Sudan, 1993 - Famine victim in a feeding center.

"This man was in an NGO feeding center, being helped as much as he could be helped. He literally had nothing. He was a virtual skeleton, yet he could still summon the courage and the will to move. He had not given up, and if he hadn't give up, how could anyone in the outside world ever dream of losing hope?"

*Quotes borrowed from the 2007 TED Prize accepting speech.
*Images borrowed from James Nachtwey's official website.


Annie Leibovitz is another master photographer. She aims her camera to other kind of people, she got specialised in portraits of famous people, and while she tells radically different stories, but she has made herself one of the best in her field. In her case we can se an evolution of her style, as the years went by she has changed the way she takes pictures. The final product is a very personal style in portraiting people.

Fun fact #999: Leibovitz looks through her
camera with the left eye, so the photographer
John Keatley found interesting to portrait
her in this pose.

From an early age she had close contact with photography as her mother was a prolific documentarist of all the trips the whole family did during her childhood due to her father's duty assignments in the U.S. Air Force. She studied art in San Francisco, and started her photographer career in 1970 when she entered the recently lauched Rolling Stone magazine. The magazine got bigger as San Francisco's Rock and Roll bands "love generation" rose and grew. A few years later became the chief photographer, defining the visual style of the of the magazine.

Mick Jagger in the elevator. Leibovitz's favourite picture from 1975s
Americas Tour with The Rolling Stones

In that moment in her career she had something in common with James Nachtwey's style, the way to aproach and show the subjects she was photographying. As Nachtwey knows the conflicts he gets into and takes the risks, she used to get to know quite well the person she was working with, even spent some time with them and even living like them, as she did in 1975s Rolling Stones Americas Tour. Both intent to make themself invisible in order to capture people's real personality ignoring the fact there was a camera there. In order to become "the photographer of the rock stars", she lived like a rock star. One of the last works of that period of her life and one of the most important and famous in her career was John Lennon and Yoko Ono's textless cover in 1980 (picture on the left), which were the last pictures of Lennon, taken 5 hours before he was killed.

But in the 80s she changed the direction of her career. She quit Rolling Stone job, went to rehab to solve her problems with drugs and did research on the different techniques known and other photographer's works. She started working for Vanity Fair, and her style shifted significantly as she started playing with light, colors, poses and atrezzo. The result is a personal and unmistakable style that has enshrined her as probably the most important celebrities portrait photographer. She has even photographed the Queen of England! (Right picture) Just by being photographed by Annie Leibovitz means your career as an artist is a sure thing. She has an extraordinary ability to "humanize" celebrities, showing their real personalities.

In the last few years she has collaborated with Vogue and has published some other works like the spectacular Disney Parks Promotion "Dream Portraits".

Scarlett Johansson as the Disney Princess Cinderella. Image borrowed from ABC News

Japanese People - Shun! +Yakuza!

This post's primary intention was to show my anthropologist apprentice point of view about Japanese people through portraits. But in my opinion, the title is too ambitious and I think this is too complex to be reflected with only a couple of pictures of the same person.

What my friend Shunsuke and I have done instead basically taking some portrait pictures and I am going to try to explain more or less accurately what was happening at that moment. Readers may think that my descriptions are not very realistic, but overinterpretating a little bit the reality adding some humoristic spice does not harm anybody, right? Here we go!

We were studying in Gusto (funnily written ガスト in katakana, the English pronounciation for an Spanish word) because they open 24h and a very good deal for unlimited soft drinks, coffee, juices, tea, 飲み放題 (All you can drink). This is not a commercial, my intention is not in any case to promote the place, but it is a nice spot considering that Kansai Gaidai's library closes at 19h, the terrible-cheap-coffee vending machines are far away from the CIE/library and Seattle's Best Coffee cafeteria is quite expensive. Shun had an exam on the next day and happily started studying.

Ganbatte, Shun!

When he discovered that trying to learn a whole book by heart in less than 24 hours is like crashing into a solid wall, he started to see things from another point of view.

We cannot say he didn't try hard!

In a few minutes, there was a clear winner in this war, human vs. book, and unfortunately was not Shunsuke.

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” - Albert Einstein

At this point, Shun started to sing in lost ancient languages, dancing weird dances and finally said: "そろそろ、寝ていくね！お休み！"(Well, I go to sleep! Good night!)

zZzzZzzzZzz....

Back to reality, Shun was really tired and soon after taking these portraits went back home. I don't know how was the exam next day because I have not met him yet, but I hope it was good. Some of his classmates told me it wasn't that hard. Taking pictures of a friend may not be a great adventure, the kind of experience that makes you grow an urge to write a post about - I see this guy almost every day - but that precise reason brought us to discuss what could we tell with the portraits. We were there, tired of studying and doing howework, and the idea of taking these sequential pictures to tell the mood we were into, popped up in our minds. Even without text, anybody could guess what was going on in the café.

But that wasn't all, I would like to share an anecdote about something that also happened in ガスト that day, an experience hard to forget for a gaijin (foreigner) like me. I met another kind of Japanese people, as the tittle says. I HAD MY FIRST CONTACT WITH THE YAKUZA! An hour after taking these pictures, when Shun and some others had already went back home, we were only 3 people left in the table. Allan (Australia), Thomas (Netherlands) and me, ergo gaijin, gaijin and gaijin. It was pretty late and the place was almost empty and quiet, but everybody could hear the voices of two guys sitting two tables away from us. They were speaking rude Japanese quite out loud and drinking some beers. One of them was in a shirt and suit trousers and the other was wearing a sport tracksuit, hiding one bandaged arm. Suddenly, I heard they were talking about us and one of them came to our table:

- "Hello, how are you"
- "Fine, thanks!"
- "国は何ですか？" (what is your country?)
Bla, bla, bla..

The guy sat in our table and the other came, but stood stand behind him. At this point, I didn't notice what kind of people were they, I thought they were just random guys that wanted to practise some english with the foreigners as he was mixing some English and Japanese. After burning all his basic greetings, we followed the conversation in Japanese. It was nice a friendly talk, so I started to speak using short forms and informal tone, even though he kept the formal tone. But he asked:

- Is there people interested in tattoos in Spain?
- Yes, actually a lot of people have tattoos, some of my friends do.
- Do you have any?

At this point the standing guy got closer and rolled up one sleeve revealing a big japanese style tattoo that covered his entire arm, I could distinguish some Kanji and sakura flowers, but it was just a glimpse because he quickly hid it again. I thought: OOPS, got it! And inmediately went back to the formal style, just in case. While talking, I also noticed all the scars he had on his face, the hard look of the other guy, I remembered the way they broke the ice with us... they still got all their fingers, but everything matched perfectly with those tattoos - they were yakuza!, 99.9% sure. I was not scared but frankly a little bit shocked, so soon started to say "I'm sorry, I don't understand" to his questions to try finish the conversation.

Honestly, they were really nice guys. They were polite and nice all the time, nothing to be scared of. They just came to ask some friendly questions and then went back to their business when I started to not understand, encouraging us to study hard, with a "日本語頑張ってね". I have been told that yakuza are usually friendly with foreigners and frequently ask about tatoos because they know we do have them quite often, they just want to share their interest in the tattoo culture but in this country they are basically alone with that because tattoos have bad reputation.

I had seen some yakuza since I came to Japan, but this was the first time I had the oportunity to talk to them, and it was great! Nice people, these gangsters!

My Neighborhood (新之栄町)

Hello! Today I'm gonna talk about my neighborhood in Hirakata, it is called "Shin No E Chou" (新之栄町) and we could translate that into something like "the new prosperity village". True or not, the fact is that the neighborhood is prosper... but just half of it.

The neighborhood is limited by Kansai Gaidai University on the East, Yamada Elementary School on the West, Kaida Cho on the north and the "main street" (street name given by all KG students) on the south. My neighborhood is basically residential, with a very few shops and restaurants, and it is divided by the stream/river/canal/waterway (I am not sure how to call this). We could say that the so called prosperity seems to have arrived only to the western side of it.

On one side we can find really nice houses, some of them in that kind of modern-traditional construction style, as long as new "mansions", the japanese name for the apartment buildings.




Here you can see the kind of buildings i amb talking about:















And this is the most frequent kind of buildings on the east side, which unfortunately is also my side:

My house is one of these old, small, cold and not really fancy houses, but it is cheap and gives me the freedom I didn't have in the Seminar House. People park their bicycles in the very street, and even being a humble neighborhood it doesn't seem to be a problem to do so without getting it stolen. I guess this is why some people may have thought: "If I can park a bycicle, why not a wheelchair?" Sounds weird but in my short no-way-out street there are two wheelchairs parked permanently, and I remember have seen some others around.

Every afternoon, around 4 o'clock and until it gets dark all the kids gather in the short street next to mine to play catch, jumping rope or soccer. I can hear them laughing, yelling and singing from my house, but it has never been a problem for me because it makes me remember my childhood, which was very similar - spending the afternoons and all weekends playing with my neighbors in the street. Sometimes we got too noisy and the adults complained, but you know, I don't want to be that guy we always cursed after closing his window.

It is weird to find Kid's street so empty

I honestly think that this is a good place to raise a child, maybe it would be better if there was a park or an open area but the streets are a quiet and safe place to play because cars rarely enter the neighborhood. In the house right next to mine it seems that they are rising an artist, I am posting here one of her first works, stay tuned for future works.



Despite the two very different parts of the neighborhood, one with new fancy buildings and the other one with more humble and old houses, both have one thing in common: the passion for flowers. Every single house has flowerpots if not a tiny cute garden, and growing different kinds of plants seems to be a common hobby throughout the vecinity. Obviously, Tanukis are also present everywhere.


To end with, I will talk about the supermarket. FRESCO, or Saint Fresco I could say. It is very convenient to have a 24h grocer's shop right next to your place, and this is actually one of the things I like the most about Japan. Combinis and this kind of supermarkets never close, so no matter how weird is your lifestyle, if for example you feel you NEED some sushi at 4 o'clock in the morning, there are people there waiting for you to come to say: Irasshaimaseeee...!

Image taken from www.ji-mo.net
Copyright © 2010 JIMO | All Rights Reserved

Tips for newborn aliens =)

Hello everybody, this is my first post in the blog, I hope you enjoy it! From now on I'm going to write about different topics related to my experience in Japan from the anthropological point of view, following the course Visual Anthropology of Japan I just started in this spring semester at Kansai Gaidai. Some of the topics will be following the schedule of the course, but I hope I get a little bit more into this and write some other posts about whatever I find worth to say. I chose this title because of the kanji I use in my name, Joan, ジュアン, 寿庵, the first of which is read "kotobuki" (long life; my favourite kanji by the way  ^_^) alone, and the other "an"; while the EYE reflects the visual focus of this project.

I arrived to Hirakata 6 months ago from Barcelona, but I still remember my first impressions and I think that giving some advise to the new hordes of gaijin could be useful. Welcome to Japan, aliens!

Yes, I said aliens, not only because this how your ID card will define you, but also because this is like another planet. Comming to Japan is maybe one of the closest experiences to be born again, to be like a little kid again. Infinite things in daily life small things work different, you will find yourself pointing at everything and asking about everything, extremely curious about what does that sign say, what does that store sell or what is that green-haired girl doing with that pink miniskirt at 5º in winter. You are going to feel like a 5-year-old boy/girl again. 100% recommended experience.

But not everything are posies of roses, sometimes you might find yourself lost, like Bill Murray in his movie. In this post I am going to talk about food. Because when I got here, although I had tried several times japanese food before and even had some "favourite japanese dishes", I tried to keep on eating more or less like I ate back in my country. At first I did not realize because I was not used to the exchange rates between Euro and Yen, soon I noticed that sticking to a mediterranean diet in Japan is REALLY expensive. Pasta is around 4 times more expensive; bread is like 5 times more expensive; sausages, cured ham, cheese is like 3 times more expensive; wine is whether bad or 10 times more expensive and fruit... well, let's not talk about fruit. I can't imagine myself buying ONE orange or ONE apple in a supermarket in Spain, they would laugh at me in the cash register.

This is what I found when I wanted to buy some olives:

Olives. Olives are the cheapest appetizer in Spain. One of my favourite, I remember that I hated them when I was a kid but I have the theory that the best things in this life work like this: you don't like them at first but then you come to love them forever. I REALLY WANTED SOME OLIVES so in the middle of my olive crisis I walked all Osaka looking for them. Not easy to find, but finally I found them, and they were real spanish olives, imported from Andalucía. I found myself buying an exotic rarety, getting only the tiny tin with 12-15 olives (40 cents in Spain) that was 499 yen, around 5 euros.

Soon after it was New Year's Eve, and I went to a pub to celebrate. There was Cava, sparkling wine from Catalunya in the menu, made in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, 30 minutes driving from my hometown.

That tiny bottle should be around 25% of that price. Even being an imported product, that was not the best Cava in the world by far, so in my opinion its price was a little bit too high too.

What is my advise? ADAPT. Change your diet, habits, food and drink. I ate lots of fruits, now I drink juice. I ate bread almost every day with every meal in Barcelona, now I rarely eat sandwich bread. On the other hand I am eating rice at least once a day, which I barely ate once a week in Sunday dad's paella. I used to eat more beef and less chicken, now just the opposite. I did not like the fish very much, so I never ate fish, but now I eat fish almost every day. Sushi, oposite to my country, is good and cheap!! And I love it now.

So, basically my advise is to adapt as soon as possible to the country's basic diet, because if you try to keep on eating the same you ate back home, as lots of things will be exotic and imported, you will soon go bankrupt just by filling your belly! Meat into fish, bread into rice!

PD: One day is one day, and New Year's Eve party tasted "home" anyway ;)