ペラペラじゃないよ！

こんにちは！This is the blog of a student of Japanese Studies who spent a year living in Kyoto studying at Ritsumeikan University. I've since returned home and will not be using this blog to talk about my travels or studies anymore, but I wanted to leave it up just in case anyone still found the old, existing content useful. I will no longer be taking questions on this blog so please read the faq or visit my personal blog if there's something you're dying to ask.

[magomago-blog]

4 Things I Learned from Living and Studying Abroad

And, finally, to round things off are the things that I learned while I was studying abroad. These are less relating to Japan specifically and more to do with the experience as a whole, but I'm sure anyone who has studied or will study abroad might be interested to read them! 4. You can’t live in an international dorm without differences of opinion. If you’re like I was and live in halls of residence designed for international students, or even if you’re just a part of an international programme, you’ll learn that you can’t bring that many people from different places without at least a few people rubbing each other the wrong way. Even fresher’s year of university doesn’t quite compare to the experience of living with other students of a variety of ages and backgrounds in another country; it just isn’t on the same scale. Sure, you get people from different cities, occasionally different countries, and different classes and of course just different personalities, but when you couple that with cultural problems and the addition of political differences and so on, things can get a whole lot messier. Navigating that can be a minefield at times. Working with Japanese students in particular proved difficult for many of the international students because of the passiveness of the average Japanese person in academic work situations coupled with the fact that university is like a holiday to them (compared to the endless cramming in high school). In other words, a lot of Japanese students did close to nothing in group work situations with international students, who (especially when studying abroad) generally view university as less of a break and more of a time to knuckle down and get stuff done. And, of course, it’s not just clashes with students of your host country that happen. Exchanges between students from more liberal countries versus more conservative countries (or even states or regions of the same country) can be tense when certain topics spring to light. Even seemingly insignificant little things like having a cold can wear away your patience since there are places where taking medicine or going to the doctor for a common cold is encouraged and others where you just grab a pack of tissues and carry on with your day, and being told you should be doing the opposite of what you normally do by your fellow international students can drive you up the walls after a while. Still, you probably can’t live in a dorm of any kind without at least one person getting on your nerves for sillier reasons. 3. Studying abroad does not make someone a better, more independent or more educated person. For a lot of people, studying abroad is seen almost as a badge of honour; when they find out someone has managed to live on their own in a foreign country (especially if the native language is not their first language) they tend to suddenly have a higher opinion of them. They must be super independent and capable and responsible, they must be super cultured and educated and informed. This is not true in the slightest. All the fact that someone has studied abroad can tell you about them is that they had enough money or were in the right circumstances to study abroad. It looks great on a CV and isn’t exactly a walk in the park, sure, but it doesn’t necessarily prove anything about someone’s character. The worst part of this, however, is when the study abroad students themselves think that they’re some kind of higher power because they’ve done what they’ve done, even if they had their hands held every single step of the way. You’re not as independent and responsible and grown-up as you think you are if you keep spending all of the money you got from whining to your parents every weekend on mangas or band merchandise or clothes. Contrary to popular belief, it is entirely possible for someone to be completely dependent on parents or spouses or fellow students even when living oceans away from them. I know, I’ve seen it myself. Living in a different country with a vastly different culture certainly doesn’t make you more cultured or educated, either. I met more misinformed, ignorant and racist people while I was living in an international dorm in Japan than I ever had in the decade I've lived back home, where most people weren’t aspiring to be able to live in and adapt to another culture (with my home also being the statistically whitest county in England, you'd expect the reverse, but nope). You'd think that someone must be a little more culturally sensitive if they're planning on interacting with other cultures and potentially living in another country permanently, but you'd be wrong. All in all, don’t assume that someone is an all-knowing paragon of humanity just because they survived a semester or two in Japan. You may very well meet just as many – or more! – brats and asshats on a year abroad in a different country as you would back home; studying elsewhere is no exception! 2. Homesickness happens and is not a bad thing. Despite the fact that most universities will explain to their students that homesickness and culture shock happen, a lot of people still aren’t prepared for them and there is still a huge stigma attached to them. When you feel down while you’re studying abroad, the people you confide back home in tend not to understand quite what you’re going through and some may even think that it means that you’re obviously not appreciating your time there. “But you’re in Japan!” “I’d kill to be in your shoes!” “You don’t know how lucky you are!” and other such comments usually do nothing to help when you’re homesick, but they’re what you keep getting told, and the implications of them are that you have no excuse to not be having the time of your life. What a lot of people don't realise is that homesickness doesn’t mean that you aren’t enjoying yourself or that you don’t appreciate the opportunity you’ve been given; it’s just a natural part of being chucked into a foreign country and leaving everything you used to know and love behind for a while. Unfortunately, people who’ve never been in such a situation seem to struggle to understand that the occasional off days or missing home or finding it hard to adjust aren’t a sign that you hate life there or that a chance better given to someone else was wasted on you. It affects different people in different ways, but chances are that if you study abroad for an extended period you’ll probably feel homesick at least once during your stay. For many, it has its ups and downs all throughout the entire period you spend abroad. Some people will get seriously depressed and find it hard to cope at all. Others will just spend the odd weekend staying in and wishing they were somewhere else. Others will find it hard to adjust at first and then be fine until the end of the trip. Homesickness varies, but it almost always happens, and it’s important to remember that it’s perfectly natural. You shouldn’t let anyone else tell you otherwise or make you feel as though your feelings are somehow unjustified because of all of the fun that you could or should be having while studying abroad. They are most definitely justified, but they don’t mean that you can’t still make the most of your trip, either. 1. I love living in my home country. I’m actually a fairly well-travelled person and, including Japan, have lived in three different countries. I spent my childhood living in America and, save for this year, have been living in the UK since I was ten or eleven, but I’d never really realised how much I actually like living in my home country until I spent part of my adult life living somewhere else. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and by living away from the UK I was able to sit back and look at all of the things that used to be normal in my life from an outsider’s perspective. Little things that I had never really appreciated before, I now notice and appreciate because I missed them dearly when I was gone. Now that I’ve lived somewhere else as an adult, I’ve realised that I don’t actually want to live anywhere else. I’d always thought about it and considered living abroad or studying or working abroad for a longer period of time, but my year spent in Japan changed my mind completely. That isn’t to say that I don’t like Japan – I do! – I just could never imagine myself living anywhere but the UK now (especially Japan, just because it isn’t to my tastes). The most important thing that I learned from going to Japan was nothing to do with independence or tolerance or adapting to new environments or anything that might be a little more obvious, it’s just that I love where I live and I love where I study. Before I left Kyoto, I couldn't wait to go back home and be able to appreciate it through fresh, new eyes, and I'm happier here now than I've ever been. I also now have a severe case of wanderlust and dream of traveling the world, but I know for certain where I want to be based, and that's here. (Maybe that’ll be a bit of a low note for people who follow my blog because they adore Japan and want to call it home someday, but this is just me, everybody’s different!)

[magomago-blog]

4 Things I Miss About Japan

Fear not, friends! Not everything about living in Japan was all doom and gloom; quite the contrary. It’s an amazing, really unique country filled with wonderful people and places and things, and in spite of the things that annoyed me during my stay, my heart is still full of wonderful memories that I’ll carry forever. So, here are four things that I miss about Japan. 4. Love of practicality and convenience. Even when you consider Japan’s love of pointless bureaucracy, it’s still a nation of people who adore convenience. Japan is, after all, the land where you’ll find a vending machine filled with all kinds of goodies on almost every street. Better yet, those vending machines can contain different things depending on the season – and man, is it nice being able to stop and get a cup of hot chocolate to warm yourself up on a freezing cold day one season, and the next to buy an ice cold drink to cool down on a hot one – and you can even buy alcohol. Convenience stores, or conbini, are, in Japan, actually wonderfully true to their name. Not only can you buy snacks and drinks, magazines, and stock up on everyday toiletries and the like, but you can also get ready meals of pretty wonderful quality (compared to other countries’ convenience stores) and you can even pay bills. Phone bills, health insurance bills and all manner of other things can be paid in at conbini using special slips that you’re sent in the post, and you can also have online deliveries sent to them to pick up whenever is most convenient for you. As if those things weren’t enough, despite Japanese peoples’ general fondness of smart self-presentation, fashion and looking ‘good’ are often thrown out the window in favour of practicality. Never before had I seen so many people wearing Crocs in public, and when I asked my otherwise trendy friends why, it was just because they were comfortable. Don’t be surprised to see people walking around in ankle-length raincoats and ponchos during typhoon season, either. Back home, someone would be laughed all the way back to their front door for wearing some of the things I’d seen people wear in Japan, but no one really seems to think anything of it there because it’s just plain better to keep dry! Considering how rainy the weather here in the UK has been as of late, I wish Brits were a little bit more into practical albeit funny looking rainwear. 3. Food and drinks All-you-can-eat buffets aren’t exactly a foreign concept, but what’s special about some of Japan’s restaurants is that as well as offering all-you-can-eat menus, there are also all-you-can-drink offers. Nomihoudai (飲み放題) are a huge favourite among international students and our Japanese friends, because for a flat fee, you can drink as much booze as you want. Some have even been as cheap as 800円, although the average tends to be 1500~2500円. This usually includes just about anything – spirits, cocktails, beers – and they’re unlimited for a certain amount of time. Even tabehoudai (食べ放題) are special in Japan, in that the food actually tends to be pretty good quality. Buffet restaurants here at home usually aren’t all that great, but you make up for it by eating until you want to puke, but back in Japan there are restaurants like Sweets Paradise and Ninja Kyoto that are themed. SP, for example, is a place where for 1480円ish, you can eat as much as you want of pastas, curries and, more importantly, cakes and desserts. The cakes are great quality - the kinds of cakes that would probably be going for 400円 per slice in a bakery - and there’s tons of variety. NK is much the same, but with more variety in savoury foods and a special crepe station offering various fantastic flavours, and also boasts a small labyrinth and a ninja theme. You can even get other tabehoudai for as little as 700円, and the food is still miles better than your average buffet back home. Meat-lovers like myself will also enjoy yakiniku tabehoudai, where you can eat as much meat that you fry yourself on a personal grill for as little as around 1500円. Most kareoke places will also offer nomihoudai options. They’re very simple ideas, but they’re awesome. Nomihoudai make for great nights out just spent chatting in izakaya and getting wasted for a flat fee, and tabehoudai are just plain great places to eat for people like myself who like to stuff their faces. On top of the nomi- and tabehoudai, food and drinks in general are just very lovely in Japan. The portion sizes can occasionally leave a little to be desired (depending on where you go, they can be pretty small, but there are also plenty of places where you can get whopping great portions), but Japanese food is delicious and Japanese snacks are better still. There is a whole range of food that you can eat quickly or on the go, including aisles of 100円 savoury and sweet snacks and (my favourite) delicious individual pots of ice cream for as little as 60円. The variety of instant and pre-made food is, although I didn’t really take advantage of it during my stay, also excellent. In our local supermarket, there was a giant section of the store devoted to pre-made sushi, karage and other fresh, fried foods and entire meals made up ready to go, and most of these are reasonably priced. Unlike a lot of places elsewhere, taste and attention to detail tend not to be sacrificed in favour of speed or convenience. Even though Japan has one of the lowest rates of heart disease and one of the healthiest diets in the world (although the amount of fried food and carbohydrates consumed kind of begs to differ), most Japanese people love good food, and you can definitely tell when you eat out in Japan. 2. Personal safety and security. This is one that I’m sure a lot of people are already aware of about Japan, but it’s a very safe country. That isn’t to say that it isn’t without its crime (I’ve heard plenty of horror stories, namely about creepers trying to assault foreign women), but generally speaking I felt safe walking around on my own in the evening, which is something that I most certainly don’t feel back in my home country. Although violent crime, theft, burglary etc. can and do happen, chances are they won’t actually happen to you if you come to Japan. Generally, it’s a place where you can leave your door unlocked, your car unlocked or forget your handbag in a bathroom and it’s more likely that it’ll be perfectly fine than it will get stolen. As someone who normally goes to university in a city crawling with crime and has had her house broken into and laptop stolen while she was still in it, this is really, really refreshing and it’s kind of astounding to me that places like that really exist. For the most part, people here are incredibly honest, good citizens. I’ve heard countless stories of friends or acquaintances accidentally leaving expensive items behind – be they cameras, wallets, money, passports or entire bags filled with all of them – or misplacing them, and all of them have been returned. People stop them in the street to return them, or take them to lost-and-found, where they go to great lengths to track you down and get your lost items back to you. Now that I’m at home, if I lost my purse, I would instantly lose hope of ever seeing it again. I almost expect bad things to happen to me if I drop my guard here in the UK (not that it doesn’t have its good Samaritans). In Japan, it’s completely the opposite. If I lost something in Japan, I’d be genuinely surprised if I didn’t get it back. I really miss feeling the level of comfort and security that I did there, and I miss feeling as though I can really trust all of the people around me to help me out rather than take advantage if I’m silly enough to lose something important. 1. Cultural richness. One of the first things that you’ll probably notice about Japan when you visit as a tourist is the sheer volume of visible culture and tradition. There are temples and shrines and beautiful architecture just about everywhere (less so in Tokyo etc. but that isn’t to say you can’t find anything like that!), and festivals (matsuri) of all kinds of sizes happen on the streets of even little villages and towns. Japan is a country that has an incredibly rich history, and as someone who comes from the UK, I had never really experienced anything quite like it before. Here at home, I am well aware that the country I live in is steeped in centuries of interesting history, but British ‘culture’ is something that I find hard to define, seeing as I experience it every day of my life, but even if I could, celebration of our history and traditions and customs – whatever those even are for us, idek – is just not nearly as prevalent here as in Japan. Although it has its negative aspects with regards to nationalism, people in Japan take a great deal of pride in their traditions and in their nation; many visit their temples and shrines and appreciate their beauty, they love their country’s natural scenery from the mist-topped mountains to the cherry blossoms and autumn foliage, they still celebrate and practice seemingly now-insignificant little things that are years and years old. You can’t visit Japan without immersing yourself in its culture, because it’s everywhere. Most of the biggest tourist attractions are culturally and historically significant spots or events. Even Mt. Fuji, which many recognise just for its natural beauty as a great big volcano, is also one of three holy mountains and has been submitted to become a cultural World Heritage Site rather than just a natural one because of its overall significance in Japan. When my Japanese friend came to study in the UK and asked me if there were any matsuri-type things or cultural events that she could visit, I was stumped and didn’t know what to tell her, but I knew all too well that had the question been reversed she could have rattled off a page long list of things I could do and see back in Kyoto. I did a lot of them myself, and they were all spectacular. I still really regret not being able to see some others, like Daimonji. Short of suggesting that she check out the bonfire night celebrations, I didn’t really know what else to say. What I do know is that I sorely miss being able to take shortcuts through temples on the way to university, or visit a shrine that’s hundreds of years old on the weekend that I know that most of the Japanese visitors appreciate just as much as other tourists do, or see people glow with national pride and get excited when spring flowers come into bloom.

[magomago-blog]

4 Things I Don't Miss About Japan

Living in Japan was a great experience, but as people who have followed me since I left to live there will know, I do not like everything about it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still love Japan and that I didn’t enjoy my time there, just that there were certain things that annoyed the crap out of me, or problems that I personally couldn’t make myself ignore. It should go without saying, but everything that follows is just my own personal opinions and experiences. I make some generalisations, but recognise that they are generalisations; I don't mean to invalidate anyone else's alternative experiences of Japan and I also don't mean to frighten anyone away from studying there! These are just things that bug me (they might not bother other former gaijin at all), from my point of view, and while some might be indicative of wider problems that might affect a lot of other people, please don't take them to mean that Japan is awful and you should rethink going, because it's really not! Studying in any country will always have its downsides. Anywho, here we are: four things I still don’t miss about Japan. Be warned, it's long! 4. Different teaching styles. Simply put, the way of teaching things at my university – especially languages – eventually made me hate attending classes. Whether or not this is something that is widespread in Japan, I don’t know, but I know that there are at least some aspects of this that can apply to other places there, even if all of it can’t. At my Japanese university, I noticed a huge emphasis on memorisation as a means of ‘learning’, but what many teachers don’t seem to realise is the fact that memorising things doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be able to use them in conversation (or that while memorisation alone may be a viable learning method for some students, it doesn’t work for everyone, but that’s a problem not limited to Japan). At Ritsumeikan, it was very common for my speaking teachers to just teach by having us memorise phrases or even entire conversations, without explaining the grammatical structures or why the phrases are the way they are. The end result was that I knew that single, set phrase, but I never learned how to piece it together myself if I forgot the full phrase and I didn’t know how to modify it for use in other circumstances, nor would I necessarily be able to recognise it if someone is using a similar phrase or grammatical structure while talking to me. Don’t get me wrong, a few of my other teachers were fantastic and I learned a lot from them! Unfortunately, this sort of trend in teaching seemed to be pretty common beyond them. Friends who have worked as English teaching assistants in schools said that they noticed the same methods in English classes in high schools; students at these schools were not taught to communicate, but to memorise and rattle off set phrases, and while they sounded fluent standing at the front of the class doing their speeches entirely from memory, they literally couldn’t engage in basic conversation. I suspect that this is down to the need for good grades and getting into good schools and universities; the emphasis is less on actual communication skills in a foreign language so much as passing the exams and getting the necessary grades regardless of whether or not you can actually speak the language. Their priorities are simply different, and don’t really work very well for international students learning Japanese. This and the combination of the monotonous way that we were taught didn’t take long to make me struggle to get up for classes in the morning. We did the exact same things almost every day: we read the new grammar point, we read through every single example sentence, we did the exercises, we gaive all of our answers for the individual questions, we moved on and repeated the process. Pretty much every single day. There was little to no variation in anything, and it made for a very dull learning environment which, in turn, made me less able to concentrate and less willing to put the work in. Plus, back in Japan (or at least at Rits), attendance at university was more important than whether or not you are actually paying attention in class; as long as you showed up, they didn’t seem to really care too much about how well you were doing. On the other hand, if you missed too many classes, even if you were still excelling in the tests, you could automatically fail. 3. The culture of silence and shame. Elsewhere in the world, we’re actively taught as we grow up to question things and to speak out if we see something wrong. People might try to silence us, but that encouragement is still there: if something is wrong, if something could be bettered, say so. If you’re unhappy, say so. In Japan, that doesn’t exist to even remotely the same degree, and for people raised in a culture where you grow up believing that your opinion is supposed to matter in the bigger picture (though that isn’t to say it always does), that can be difficult to adjust to. A lot of Japanese people don’t talk about things. Whether it’s the media, politicians, friends or colleagues, people don’t discuss important or problematic topics. They might be eager to tell you about the details of their job, or how much weight they gained over their holiday, but if you ask someone what they think of laws, or human rights, or the way their company or school is run, there’s a chance that they’ll neglect to give you a straight answer or solid opinion. Japan as a country has its fair share of serious issues, many of which are in dire need of attention, but this culture of silence means that those issues are probably going to take years to solve. And, because so many people remain silent, the result is that a lot of other people – the people who are either unaware of or unaffected by an issue – end up thinking that it just doesn’t exist. The fact that the media there seems incredibly censored and is awful at covering anything important and/or controversial (and most things going on outside of Japan, for that matter) doesn’t exactly help the situation. For example, there are plenty of Japanese people who think that homosexuality simply doesn’t even exist in Japan (how about that, yaoi fans), or that domestic violence doesn’t exist in Japan. The common thought is that these things are ‘Western’ things. Obviously, that’s a load of bullcrap, but no one ever talks about them and, instead, people seem to just push them under the rug and pretend that they aren’t there. If such topics do come up, people won’t ask questions. Most everyone knows about, say, Japan’s suicide rate and will explain to you what it is, but few people think to question why it might be as high as it is, or what a potential solution might be. The people that I’ve spoken to, at least, just write it off as ‘normal’, and that’s that. For many foreigners, it’s pretty shocking to hear that no one thinks twice about the fact that almost a quarter of the adult population of that country has considered killing themselves. The same can be said about the issues surrounding ethnically Korean citizens of Japan. There’s a problem, a lot of people know there’s a problem, but you’ll be lucky to hear anyone ever talk about it. To talk about serious issues like the discrimination, suicide rates, karoushi (death by overwork), rights, violence, laws or even just the way things are run is to rock the boat, and rocking the boat is not something that’s widely accepted in Japan. Standing out as different or making a fuss seems to be one of the last things that people want, since many things here also operate around a culture of shame to top off the silence. When you do something ‘wrong’, it’s often drawn to the attention of those close to you, or the nearby public, and that’s a humiliating experience that keeps people in their places, so to speak. The idea that doing something ‘wrong’ will also bring shame to your family also ups this level of humiliation and creates a great deal of pressure to not step outside the box, because you won't be the only one who experiences consequences for it. Even in my classes, if someone was absent, many of the teachers would often demand that you explain the reasons for your absence in front of the entire class. As someone who is reasonably passionate about human rights (and animal rights, which, although people take good care of their personal pets, are virtually non-existent here), I found this very difficult to live with, because I can see so many problems, and virtually no one taking them into consideration. A lot of Japan’s attitudes seem to be decades behind most other developed countries, and this is likely because Japanese society is so slow to stand up, speak out and change things, and this is likely because the country has a history of people sticking their necks out only to get their heads chopped off, so to speak. It takes time to pull a nation out of that kind of mentality. 2. It’s irritatingly low-tech. Cracked recently did an article on ‘things that no one tells you about living in Japan’, and this happened to be one of them. A lot of people who have never visited Japan imagine it as a bustling metropolis of new inventions and high-tech gadgets and all manner of interesting electronics and machines that you’ve never seen before in your life. To a certain extent, this is true. Japan is super ahead of the game when it comes to gadgets – we have them to thank for the first portable music players and such, after all – but when it comes to everyday modern life? Not so much. As said Cracked article explains, daily life in Japan isn’t filled to the brim with awesome technology. In reality, you’ll be lucky to visit a store that lets you pay by card. When my friends and I booked flights to Thailand, the lady we were talking to almost forced us to pay her with 55,000円 worth of cash. For those who don’t know, that’s about $650 or £400, sums so large that most cash machines don’t even let you take them out in one go. The amount of money aside, in no circumstances had I ever heard of someone insisting that someone pay for a long, return flight in cash. (Luckily for us, we managed to convince her to let us pay by card in the end, after much hesitation on her part.) People just don’t carry around that kind of money here in the UK, and further relating to cash machines, in Japan ATMs have closing times. Where I lived in Kyoto, if you needed cash after 7pm, you were shit out of luck and had to wait until the cash machines opened again in the morning. If you needed cash during a national holiday, whoops, too bad, you can’t because apparently machines need days off for New Year’s too. Goes without saying that fans of store self-checkouts like myself will also be disappointed by the fact that no one has even so much as heard of these in most parts of Japan. 1. Constant reminders that you’re an ‘outsider’. Racism in Japan is something that a lot of Japan-fans are very quick to turn a blind eye to or flat-out deny, but although Japanese people may not shout racial slurs at you in the streets or make you feel unsafe for being a certain skin tone or of a certain background, racism, or rather discrimination and prejudices, do exist in some forms. Depending on where you live or the kind of person you are, these can be glaringly obvious and frustrating, or the occasional experience that makes a funny anecdote. Where I lived in Kyoto, I couldn’t go out to the supermarket five minutes away without being gawked at by at least one random person. I had people go silent and stare at me, stop their bikes and stare at me, stare at me while whispering or even speaking at full volume about me, take photos of me, literally chase me down to ask me about having a photo taken, stare at me with their mouths hanging open and more countless times, and while foreigners aren’t exactly super common in my area, they were hardly non-existent (I mean, I lived in walking distance from Ryoanji and Kinkakuji, both of which are usually crawling with tourists). This is not quite as big of a problem in a big city like Tokyo or Osaka, but it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist at all there, either. Although it depends entirely on the person (I, personally, found it harder to cope with the longer I lived there), it has the potential to make you feel alienated, uncomfortable and out-of-place in what is supposed to be (for some of us) your home, all because you are visibly not Japanese (and, of course, if you are Korean or Chinese and living in Japan, the discrimination you face might be a little more striking). I met and spoke to many lovely Japanese strangers who paid no attention to my ethnicity or home country or who were only intrigued by it, certainly, but they simply don’t stick in my mind quite as much as the strangers who have made me feel like an animal in a zoo or like my privacy or right to simply exist has been violated. Many of the times I went out to do day-to-day things, I longed to be back at home where I could go outdoors without feeling eyes shamelessly boring into the back of my skull, or even straight into my face, as was often also the case. It’s a feeling that’s usually difficult to understand if you’ve never really lived there in the long-term. When you’re only there for a week or two, sure, it’s easy to laugh off or even not notice, but when you’ve built a life for yourself there, you work there, you go to school there and so on and have been doing so for months or even years, being stared at every day or treated like you’re a tourist fresh off an aeroplane can sometimes be difficult to ignore. Even people who adore living in Japan and tend not to care about these kinds of things still often find that it gets to them every now and again. This isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of wonderfully kind, polite, helpful Japanese people who don’t care where you’re from (there are, and I’ve had plenty of good experiences and am sure that they outnumber the people who made me feel awful, too), but like I said, you’re more likely to remember the guy who pointed at you out from across the street and screamed ‘gaijin!’ more than the people who treated you like you’re just another person. Plus, it makes me intensely uncomfortable to think how many random people there are in Japan walking around with photos of me that I didn’t consent to on their cameras and phones.

[magomago-blog]

Hisashiburi!

It's been quite a while now since I arrived home from Japan - about five months in fact, yikes - and I've neglected to post due to a variety of reasons (personal, short attention span, being busy to name a few). In the spirit of rounding off my experiences properly, I'm finally going to post what I mentioned ages back: posts about my most and least missed things about Japan, and one about things I learned from my experience studying abroad. After that, I don't really intend to use this blog all that much any more as I don't have much to blog about with regards to Japan, but anyone who wants to is welcome to follow me on my personal blog. I'll still leave this one up so that people can use the existing content as a resource if they'd like, but I won't really be posting or answering questions here any more. That said, keep an eye out for my next few posts! ♥

[mendelsohnben]

[magomago-blog]

Ending the ‘comfort women’ euphemism

What are the right words to describe Asian women who were forced into sex slavery for Japanese troops during World War II? Should they be called former “comfort women” as they have been so far, or be referred to as just “sex slaves?”

The terminology has...

[sumusumumuriku]

(by mulberry_kei)

[toshibu]

If you have an hour and a half to spare, take time to watch this film about foreigners living in Japan. It’s quite interesting. It really hit home on a few things.

[magomago-blog]

Very accurate, in both the positive and negative discussions.

[magomago-blog]

Being Gay in Japan This has been shared by a few people I know, so I thought I'd share it with you guys, too. The existence of things like yaoi and shounen-ai makes a lot of people who're interested in Japan but have never visited think that it must be super positive about homosexuality, but actually, it's quite the contrary.

[magomago-blog]

Hi! :D I've been following your blog for a while so I was thinking you could help me... I'm 21 and I'm going to apply for a scholarship to study in Nagoya University, so I've been reading some articles about life in Japan, which have made me realize studying abroad is not as easy and pretty as I though it was. So please, based on your experiences, how difficult do you think life is for a foreign woman living alone in Japan? I'll be VERY grateful for your help <3

Hi, I sent the last question :3 I forgot to add something-- my japanese is at a basic level D: Even though the postgraduate course is completely in english, the language barrier would make daily life more difficult isn't it?

Generally speaking, life can be pretty difficult but whether or not it has an effect on how much you enjoy life here depends entirely on the person! Experiences vary greatly; there are some people who came here with basic language skills last semester who had fun at times but mostly couldn't wait to go home, and there were others who absolutely loved everything about Japan and living in Japan and didn't want to leave even though they could barely understand a word of Japanese. Even with people who know their way around the language and culture, there are those who feel totally at ease here and others, like me, who don't and never will feel comfortable or at home. Those of us who don't feel at home tend to be a minority, though.I guess it's a difficult question to answer, since I don't personally know you, and even if I did, you can't always tell how well someone is going to cope with the change of cultures and the language barrier. Someone might be an incredibly resilient, adaptable person who adores Japan and is near fluent in the language, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll breeze through their time here and love every second of it.Personally, I find the language barrier one of the easiest things to deal with - it's the little differences like costs of items, lack of availability of certain things, being treated differently because you're non-Japanese, different teaching styles at uni etc. that can be the hardest to cope with. Language can be an issue, but there are ways around it, like making friends who know a little more Japanese, or getting creative with other means of communication like gesturing. Most people who are at a basic level can still get around fine, because they know most of the really important stuff (like how to order food or ask for directions), and even if you can't speak well, after a while living here your listening and understanding skills will improve a lot.Anywho, it's just important to remember that studying abroad anywhere is almost never easy. Even in places where the language and culture are basically the same, people still get culture shock and they still get homesick. You'll be living thousands of miles from your home and friends and family, so of course it has it's moments when it's hard! You're entitled to find it difficult.But, just because it's not easy doesn't mean that it won't be enjoyable or rewarding. Even though I have days where I feel awful and want to go home, I've also had plenty of days where I've experienced things that I wouldn't trade for anything, and I've done a lot of things that I've dreamed of doing since I started studying Japanese. Has it been difficult? Hell yes. I've had some really shitty days and hit some all time emotional lows while being here. But, when you put everything in perspective, when I go home it'll all have been totally worth it.I hope that's useful, I'm sorry I can't be of more help. ^^;

[japanlove]

Sagano Bamboo Grove by weslie.leung on Flickr.

[kumako365jp]

heeelllpp me out of this fruits-unfriendly country! D:

now you understand why I added some ads to my blog:(

write to our government and tell them this is not fair in global point of view! x(

the pineapple is domestic(Okinawa) and the kiwi is from NewZealand.

Oh, btw, the Danish assorted cookies in my last post was 100yen.

Something is wrong here.

[magomago-blog]

The price of fresh fruit is something that I've really been struggling to cope with here, as someone who loves fruit. Even fruits that aren't imported are somehow more expensive than imported fruits in the UK, and it's ridiculous. A single apple costs the same as a bag of six at home. Watermelons, in my local supermarket anyway, are like 1800円 each. A lot of vegetables aren't safe from it, either. Pretty much all of the Japanese people I know who've been abroad were shocked to discover how cheap these things are virtually everywhere else and wish Japan was the same. I have no idea why fruit is so expensive, but it's extortionate and I hope it's something that changes in the future. People here are really missing out because of it for no discernible reason, other than the agricultural industry deciding to overcharge for their produce.

[japanlove]

“taste happiness” by Klara Kim on Flickr.

[magomago-blog]

[darkhriss]

I’ve lived in Japan for many months and I have to say that this is true, and yes, it affects me very much sometimes. I’ve just returned from a hellish day at school where I’ve been treated like a little monkey by a bunch of third graders, their teacher and my OWN teacher, which didn’t meant any harm, but managed to make  us feel like some inferior species. But what can I do, other than swallow and try so smile again tomorrow? Of course everyone “dismisses” these problems, because you can’t really do anything about them. You either swallow everything and try to enjoy your life, or you just get sucked up into all this crap and jump in front of a train. Well, call me in denial, but I’d want to be part of the first group, even if it’s hard sometimes. 

I don’t feel very comfortable to begin with in my country either, and I’m sure I would feel the same in any place on this planet. Why? Because the sensible, smart and understanding people are less than 20% in every culture and society. And you would kill yourself after a day if you’d try to adjust to every idiot in the universe. Just…follow your own way. 

Don’t get me wrong, but I find articles like these a waste of time. If you admit that there’s no solution, why are you writing that in the first place? To make all the foreigners in Japan acknowledge the problem? And do what about it?   What’s the meaning of words like:

“Alas, my actions to stem or deter this just make me look alarmist, reactionary and paranoid in the eyes of the critics (especially the NJ ones, who seem to think I’m somehow “spoiling” Japan for them), either because they haven’t experienced these microaggressions for themselves, or because they live in denial.”

Ok, I don’t call you paranoid and I don’t live in denial because I admit all these problems. And what next? The japanese are magically going to change because I get mad every time they discriminate against me?  

I’m telling you, people aren’t going to change even if you write on their foreheads “foreigners are human beings too”. You can’t change a whole nation, you can only change the way you see and feel about life, if you want to remain sane and enjoy the world a bit, that is.

[magomago-blog]

Considering that once upon a time, minority groups were treated much worse in other countries, but that changed, I'd say that while I agree that getting angry with a Japanese person for treating you like you aren't human won't necessarily solve anything, it doesn't mean that you can't 'change a whole a nation'. It just takes time. Even if the article says that there's nothing to be done about it, it's not a solution-less problem. Japan is still a super homogeneous nation and if and when it becomes more of a multicultural society, it will change. It'll have to, because Japan needs foreign residents, it needs tourism, and it'll always get less of those as long as it keeps the attitudes it has. It's already been trying for years to encourage more foreign visitors and residents, especially since Japanese people leaving the country is becoming more and more common, but the combination of discrimination, economic issues and the recent natural disasters have proven incredibly off-putting (the earthquakes and tsunami even caused many expats to leave entirely). Japan might be largely ignorant of the way it treats its foreigners, but the rest of the world isn't and that can and will have negative ramifications on Japan itself. Aspects of it already are evolving, like the abandoning of gaijin cards later this year. Ultimately, it's just a country that remains decades behind the rest of the world with regards to social activism, rights etc., whether it's immigration, race, gender, LGBTQ and so on. Sure, I can't change it personally with my anger or my trying to educate the people that treat me differently because I'm not Japanese, but that doesn't mean that it won't change in the future or that it isn't worth talking about. The more foreigners who come to Japan, the more Japan's treatment of immigrants (which as I understand, other governments aren't blind to) is made a topic of discussion, the more Japan becomes a less isolated nation - all of that means that expats will be less likely to be treated like aliens in their own homes. I can't change it, the author of the article can't change it, but it's not altogether unchangeable. That said, I also agree that it's not something that people should dwell on, and it's definitely something that you should try and get past in order to better enjoy your time here (focusing on it will likely ruin your day every time you leave your house, and that's a terrible way to spend your life here), but it isn't an entirely hopeless situation. It's just something that foreigners in Japan have to grin and bare for the time being, while Japan continues to try and catch up to (most of) the rest of the world. ETA: I should also clarify that when I said that people too often 'dismiss' racism in Japan, I mean that they dismiss it in a way that doesn't take it seriously, rather than dismissing it because they can't do anything about it. Whenever the topic comes up online, it's usually followed by a slew of people who've often never even been to Japan saying 'it can't be that bad', 'they're just curious', 'they just think we're celebrities', 'it's harmless', 'they just think we're pretty!', 'it's not racism tho' etc. and completely ignoring the fact that it is a legitimate, potentially frustrating or upsetting problem for foreigners who live here. Accepting that it's bad but letting it slide because you can't do much about it, I have no problem with and is probably the healthiest way to cope with it when you're actually experiencing it. 'Dismiss' it in that respect by all means! I'd much rather it ran off me like water off a duck's back as opposed to taking it to heart as often as I do. But turning a completely blind eye and even going as far as to justify and defend Japan's racism is too far and it's that and the blatant invalidation of many (but probably not all, as there are some lucky folks who've never felt negatively affected by it) non-Japanese peoples' experiences of it that bothers me. Dismissing it as a coping mechanism is great, but dismissing it as nonsense and refusing to acknowledge that there's even an issue isn't.

[magomago-blog]

Have you ever noticed how many interpersonal interactions in Japan are like "speed dates" of set questions? For example, the taxi drivers who have the odd fascination about where you're from, whether you're married, how much you like Japan, and how hard you think the Japanese language is? The barkeeps and clientele who try to slot you into their hackneyed preconceptions of some country and nationality, what you can and cannot eat, and (as things get drunker) how much you enjoy having physical liaisons with Japanese? The neighbors who have a white-hot curiosity about how differently you raise your kids, what you fight with your spouse about, and how much you like Japan — regardless of how many years you've been interacting? In the beginning, these were dismissible as just acts of awkward friendliness by people who didn't know how else to approach you. It at least made you really good in certain areas of Japanese conversation. But after years of repeat games, boredom sets in, and you begin to realize two things: 1) that you can sleepwalk through most conversations, and 2) that, if you stay awake, you see there is a larger issue at play here: social control — something increasingly recognized by social psychologists as "microaggressions." ... They include, in Japan's case, verbal cues (such as "You speak such good Japanese!" — after saying only a sentence or two — or "How long will you be in Japan?" regardless of whether a non-Japanese (NJ) might have lived the preponderance of their life here), nonverbal cues (people espying NJ and clutching their purse more tightly, or leaving the only empty train seat next to them), or environmental cues (media caricatures of NJ with exaggerated noses or excessive skin coloration, McDonald's "Mr. James" mascot (JBC, Sept. 1, 2009)). Usually these are unconscious acts grounded in established discourses of interactions. Nobody "means" to make you feel alienated, different, out of place, or stereotyped. But microaggressions are also subtle societal self-enforcement mechanisms to put people "in their place." For NJ, that "place" is usually the submissive status of "visitor" or "guest," with the Japanese questioner assuming the dominant position of "host" or "cultural representative of all Japan." Read more.

This article has been making the rounds around international students I know, and it's pretty accurate as far as explaining the little things that make me tick as a foreigner in Japan goes. People too often dismiss Japan's racism because the things that many Japanese people say or do aren't necessarily done with bad intentions, but intent isn't magical and doesn't change the way it makes a lot of foreigners here feel. Sure, they might just all be 'curious', but when you're made to feel out-of-place, day in and day out, however nice the people around you might be, it has the potential to eat away at you. It's also something that a lot of people who've visited but never really lived in Japan often seem unable to fully understand. (Of course, although I'm posting this because of it's relevance to my study abroad, it's also important to remember that these kinds of microaggressions are not something that can only be experienced in Japan - they happen every day to minority groups just about everywhere, to the same effect.) On a lighter note, I've never understood why Japanese people are always so curious as to whether or not foreigners have romantic partners. （・＿・；）

[magomago-blog]

Is it true that it’s more difficult for foreign women to live and succeed etc. in Japan than it is for foreign men?

Asked by tyrionisbadass. This isn’t a question that I’m entirely equipped to answer since I’ve only experienced being a woman in Japan from an international university student’s perspective, but I can offer my own opinions, fact-based assumptions etc.. Personally, the short answer would simply be yes. Japan is a sexist country and is many years behind other similar countries when it comes to women’s rights, ranking at 98 of 135 countries in the 2011 Global Gender Gap Report (compare to the UK at 16, USA at 17 and the fact that there are many countries that aren’t even widely considered ‘developed’ that rank much higher than Japan). Gender roles are more deeply ingrained in Japanese society than, for example, American or British. Rape culture, while not always obvious, is much more of a problem and Japan’s laws on rape are, quite frankly, disturbing. Body image issues and pressure for women to be beautiful and slim and young are debatably more of a problem in Japan than some Western countries (fat women are, at least, more often of a subject of shameless public ridicule and abuse here than my own home). I may have never worked in Japan, but the fact that it very much favours men is, generally speaking, common knowledge. Women aren’t often seen in positions of power (a mere 9% of senior officials, managers etc. in Japan are female) and when they are, they’re usually not seen by their male colleagues as equals. Foreign women might be seen as more of a curiosity, but they’re still unlikely to be looked at on equal grounds like foreign men would be. There are also no laws prohibiting gender-based discrimination, which pretty much speaks for itself as far as making life difficult for career women goes and, of course, there’s still a huge wage gap. So, when it comes to work at least, I’d say it is more difficult, and that Japan is on the whole a good couple of decades behind most of Europe and even the USA with regards to gender issues. I wish I could offer my own personal experiences, but beyond it being much more likely for foreign women to have their personal space invaded, to be bothered for photographs, generally creeped on etc. than a foreign man, I can’t really say much or offer my own stories. Plus, if you’re interested, here is a small post on someone else’s experiences as a foreign woman in Japan vs. being a foreign male. They link some interesting reads, too.

[typethatwelike]

[aso]

Laser cut seaweed for sushi

designboom.com

[kumako365jp]

start of the GW

If you could have guessed GW stands for “Golden Week”, and know what “Golden Week” in Japan means, you are a super expert about Japanese culture:)

So, it’s the beginning of GW tomorrow, which is almost a week holiday with four national holidays and regular weekend holidays. It depends on the calendar every year, but usually it makes 7-10day holidays in a row, which is considered to be a LONG vacation in Japan.

http://portalseven.com/calendar/Holidays_Japan.jsp

Many people visit foreign countries during the Golden Week.

Please be nice to them if you see any in your city;)

[magomago-blog]

Or, if you're like me and you study at Ritsumeikan, it means you get only two days off, which you later have to make up on a weekend at the same time next month. （￣△￣#）A fore-warning to anyone else considering their Study in Kyoto Programme: you get no days off for several solid months at a time.