"What a So Tasty!"

first impressions of Japan

If I were to post photos of the things that really impressed me upon first arriving in Japan, you’d probably see a lot of novelty quasi-English t-shirts, or shots of me throwing up deuces next to a beer vending machine. And if you could visually capture such abstract things as my profound exhuberance at being on an island on the other side of the planet - an incredibly beautiful one at that - surrounded by people who seem unceasingly pleased with everyone and everything, including the presence of oblivious gaijin like myself… then perhaps that photo might be as interesting as Japan itself.

But that first impression was a year ago, and thousands of photos taken then archived on my drive suggest that what makes Japan so fantastic is indeed that everything is cute. That’s their secret.

I’d like to think my appreciation of Japanese culture has matured a little, but I really don’t know much more now. However I’ve decided to take a bit different an approach to enjoying and attempting to understand Japanese culture this time around. Living in Kansai, I can easily spend a day at an ancient temple or climbing an awesome mountain, or just riding a bike around one of Kyoto or Osaka’s historic districts… all the while, of course, taking pictures and hoping I don’t look too touristy.

While the bustling cosmopolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka are a lot of fun, there’s a lot to enjoy in “old” Japan. A lot of it has been co-opted and commodified though, equating a visit to a highly-trafficked temple like Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto to any day out shopping. Cultural relics like Kiyomizu-dera and Todai-ji are more tourist traps than sites of religious function, among the Japanese as well as gaijin. But the Japanese proudly cling to their cultural heritage, attempting to maintain old ways while rushing towards globalization.

Such is why festivals like “Eisa”, held annually in the taisho ward of Osaka, draw large crowds. Here, Okinawan Eisa festival participants demonstrate a traditional dance:

…regrettably I can’t say what is the purpose of the dance or anything about its meaning, but I have the feeling that a lot of others at the festival could not either. When such a ritual is demonstrated outside of its traditional context as so, understanding its original intent feels more academic than personally meaningful. Increasingly we - both Americans and Japanese - look at our traditions through a magnifying glass instead of finding them relevant to our lived experiences in the modern world.

A boy carries an Okinawan flag during a dance at the Eisa Matsuri.

A priestess dances for Amaterasu Omikami, the primary god of Shinto, at the yearly Shokusai Matsuri outside a Shinto shrine in Yatawa, Japan. Hundreds of spectators huddle for a view in the background.

This scene outside Kyobashi train station in Osaka demonstrates a few things that struck me moreso the second time visiting Japan than the first. Somehow I never noticed how dense things were last time, though granted now I’ve spent more time in a big city to notice, for instance, how integral bicycles are in so many people’s lives. These bikes are parked by daily commuters riding from Kyobashi station. More relevant to what I was saying, though, is the background. I’ve grasped more acutely how commercialized is Japanese society, which somehow feels even more commercial than my experiences living in the US. The billboards in this photo, topped by the Statue of Liberty, could almost be purposeful symbols of American economic colonialism in Japan. The bicycles, maybe, illustrate the throngs of people going to work in pursuit of the materialistic dreams accompanying the American influence.