I came to Japan just over a year ago feeling relatively certain that I knew what Japan was all about. I'd seen images of the country in films and photographs, I'd read about their technological advances in magazines and my favourite restaurant in Melbourne was a little Japanese place down the road. It'll blow your mind, but I have to tell you something... The "real" Japan ain't nothing like the Western world thinks it is.
Myth # 1 - A Proliferation of Technology
Globally, Japan seems to hold a bit of a reputation as the world leader in quirky electronics and innovative technologies. Stories of crazy robots and fancy phones are on the news all the time, painting Japan as a powerhouse of the industry. So when I came to Japan, I was expecting a certain level of 'techiness' - that I just didn't end up seeing! I thought my house would be filled with innovative technologies that would make my life easier, that my school would use laptops/projectors/flatscreen TVs as part of the daily classroom culture, that all toilets would be those funky talking contraptions and that tech would be super cheap to buy in stores. But, alas, that was not the case. The mundane machines in my house merely confused me (fancy operating a washing machine or microwave that is only labelled in kanji?), my school owns that kind of equipment but NEVER uses it in the classroom, the majority of the toilets here are of the squat variety and electronics don't really seem any cheaper here than elsewhere in the world. To say I was disappointed was an understatement, but I am looking forward to doing some further research into this area when I visit Tokyo next month.
Myth # 2 - Skylines and Drift Racing
Let me let you in on a little secret... the cars in Japan are crap. Roads in Japan are TINY - I'm talking hardly big enough for one car to pass through, let alone two and people often have to stop to give way to oncoming traffic because there is nowhere else to go - and as a result, the cars they drive are TINY too. These small cars are known as 'kei-cars' (pronounced kay-cars) and they feature yellow number plates to distinguish them as having an engine no bigger than your average lawnmower. Many people drive these small, boxy cars because they are cheaper to license than your average regular-sized engine car, they fit on the tiny roads and because the speed limits on just about every road here caps out at 60km/ph anyway. Not once have I seen a Nissan Skyline or a Mitsubishi Lancer or any of the cars that are so famously Japanese back home. In fact, so unusual are the Japanese makes and models we're used to seeing on the roads in Australia that you can imagine my surprise at seeing a Toyota Landcruiser or Hilux Surf roll by occasionally. And as for drift racing...? Sorry guys, but I ain't seen anything even remotely like it yet.
Myth # 3 - Sushi Roll Heaven
In Australia I loved Japanese food and in the lead up to this whole moving-overseas-adventure I ate more of it than you could possibly believe. And then I moved to Japan. And I discovered that the "Japanese food" we get in Australia isn't really Japanese food at all. In Melbourne I was chowing down on melt-in-your-mouth salmon sashimi - in Japan, I can barely find it, let alone order it at a restaurant. Sashimi is just not like that here. More popular are several varieties of whitefish sashimi or the ubiquitous tuna sashimi. At home too I'd often pop into Oki2Go and grab a takeaway six-pack of California rolls for lunch - in Japan, sushi rolls don't exist and if you can manage to find them, they are filled with weird ingredients like raw squid or wasabi tuna. Sushi here is of the 'nigiri' variety - that is, a small rectangle of pressed rice with (usually) a piece of raw fish draped across the top. Rolled sushi is not very common here at all. Unfortunately, in Oz I might've described Japanese food as delicate and tasty. In Japan I'd be more likely to go with raw and chewy. And that's not even to mention the drama that becomes grocery shopping. Though this is a subject I shall detail in a later post, imagine for a moment if you will, going to a supermarket and not being able to read any of the labels on the food, not being able to find even the most basic of ingredients and having your senses assaulted by all numbers of eyes staring back at you from within packaging... Call me crazy, but I like Australian-Japanese food better than (almost) anything available to me in this country. Sigh.
Myth # 4 - Wacky Ads and Crazy Gameshows
When I came to Japan I was expecting to turn on the television and see all of those advertisements that are apparently made by famous Western celebrities for the Japanese market. So far I have only once or twice seen Tommy Lee Jones in a canned coffee commercial and Australian model Miranda Kerr in an iced tea advert. Despite the rumours, there's none of the cheesy Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise ads that I thought were splashed around TV here. No Scarlett Johanssen or Julia Roberts spruiking products on Japanese TV. No dramatic billboards or celeb names up in neon lights. In fact, when it comes to showing Hollywood films in this country, Japan is maddeningly behind the times (often screening films a full 6 months or more after their release dates in the Western world).
The other thing I was hoping to see on TV when I got here was endless varieties of those crazy Japanese gameshows that you hear about. You know the ones where people have to wear skin-tight lycra bodysuits and shoot themselves out of slingshots into a pool of jelly..? Well there's none of that. They just don't make them anymore apparently. Instead if you turn on the television you'll see Japanese pop stars trying on quirky clothes to elicit a chorus of "ooooooh, sugoi" (oh, wow) from the judging panel. Or interview talk shows featuring a food section in which panel members repeatedly exclaim "mmm, oishii" (mmm, delicious) over and over again. Needless to say, I don't really watch much TV these days.
Myth # 5 - Awareness of the Outside World
Constantly I am surprised to note that many of my students, friends or colleagues from Japan have no idea about things going on in the outside world. The best example of this is probably the fact that my students still reference Michael Jackson as a current pop icon from the West. Lady Gaga is the second most popular cultural icon but beyond that Western pop culture isn't really recognised here. Pirates of the Caribbean is still a talked about film, none of my students own CDs or use the internet and my teachers are often surprised when I am able to download a worksheet from an educational website and present it to them 5-minutes later for approval. Maybe it's my lack of communication skills that makes it seem this way, but I swear the majority of people here are largely sheltered from the all-pervasive, highly-popular cultures and past-times of the rest of the world.
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