December 2009
2 posts
changing impressions of Japan
6 months total living somewhere is not by any means enough time to plumb the full depths of a complex society like that of Japan. Though the linguistic boundaries have begun to fade, that fact will never obscure the glaring differences between Japanese culture and my own.
(Above, a man wearing a protective face mask waits through the Osaka subway stop that serves part of the city’s...
public acceptability in Japan
What’s considered publicly acceptable naturally varies from culture to culture and place to place. And just as Japan’s density - the topic of my last post - contributes to the feeling of a public space, so do what have over a long time become the embedded codes of public conduct. Granted, people behave differently here compared to people in the United States, but one shouldn’t...