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 ;)