Changing impressions of Japan

These past four months here in Japan have helped me come to have a better understanding of my Japanese heritage.  When I first got here and met Japanese students, I would tell them my last name.  They would give me a weird look and then I would follow up and say I'm a quarter Japanese in Japanese.  They would then ask me all these different questions about where my Japanese family came from and all that.  And in these four months, I was fortunatley able to travel down to where my family actually came from, which is Hiroshima. 

Going to Hiroshima, was more of a pilgramge to me, and I felt very humbled when I saw the Genbaku Dome.  It puts my whole time and experiences in Japan into perspective.  Seeing Hiroshima for me sums up my impressions of Japan.  Japan continues to take steps into the future, but hangs onto it's past by leaving reminders like the Genbaku Dome or it's castles.

Fortunatley for me, I get to spend some more time in Japan next semester.  And hopefully I will further my knoweldge of Japanese traditions.

Nara, the attack of the deers

This past weekend, I finally made it to Nara with some friends.  And the biggest draw to Nara are all the friendly deer and the giant daibutsu.  The deer at Nara are some of the more friendliest animals, but have a more evil side.  In other parts of Japan, monkeys are the culprits and do other menacing things.  If someone has food, more than likely the deer would surround you and try to eat the food.  That is what happened to two of my friends that I went with.

This is what happened to my friend Joe.  He had a sweet potato and the deer just swarmed him because they could smell the food.  Little by little, Joe parceled out the potato to the deer who nudged him certain areas to try and get an advantage over the other deer.  He was also stalked for a little bit by one deer.

My friend Mizue on the other hand, fortunatley, just had one deer follow her because of her potato.

We all had a good laugh after these events passed.

Mosh pits in Japan

Mosh pits is not normally assoicated with Japan.  Mosh pitting is associated more with American and European rock concerts.  But during the Kansai Gaidai festival, I saw and experienced what you may call the Japanese.  These little mosh pits were very spontaneous and lasted for maybe a minute or so.  The crowd started picking people up and throwing them in the air and catching them.

Another thing the crowd did was lock arms and jump up and down in place.  Now, in most rock concerts the jumping up and down while throwing up the devil horns is normal.  But the locking arms is probably only found in Japan and not at any heavy metal and rock concert in America or Europe.  In America you would see mosh pits like in the pictures below.

These pictures were taken at Ozzfest 2007.  The big crowd shot, if you look carefully, there is a huge circle pit.  While the picture below was of a mosh pit I was about to join.  At the festival, I had an urge to start a miny and somewhat less subdued mosh pit.  But even at that, I felt that I may have hurt someone if I really got into it.  I would be very interested in finding a local heavy metal concert to really see what mosh pits are like here in Japan instead of hypothesizing about what they actually may be like.

Heavy Metal in Japan

When you think of Heavy Metal, you think Black Sabbath, Ozzy Ozbourne, Led Zepplin, Metallica and others.  Heavy Metal is usually found in North America and Europe.  Japan on the other hand, Heavy Metal is a very rare breed.  Sure, there is rock bands here in Japan like Sophia or Last Alliance.

Sophia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei7ibeGn9Xw

Last Alliance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ing7DuOu1UQ&feature=related

 But the Heavy Metal scene is still very, very underground in Japan.  There is one Heavy Metal band that I know of that stems from Japan and that is Metal Safari.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg1M3QSqeCQ&feature=related

A friend of mine introduced me to them.  But when I bring them up with Japanese friends, they've never heard of the band.  And when I bring up Heavy Metal bands from America or Europe, most of the time my Japanese friends have never heard of them or even like the music.  Some friends though have heard of some of the bands and do like some Heavy Metal music.  But these friends are very few and far between.  This past weekend at the Kansai Gaidai school festival, I got to see some rock bands perform in Building 2.  One of my friends, Ryuhei, was a guitarist in one of the bands and I was able to see him peform a few times.  The picture immediatley below is my friend Ryuhei getting ready for the performance.

The picture below is the other members of the band during the performance.

The crowd was made up of other Japanese Kansai students and they really got into the songs.  But if I had asked any of them after the concert to name any of the bands and or artists that they had performed, they have named one maybe two at the most.  From what I could tell the Heavy Metal culture has only recently come to Japan in, maybe within the last 20 years or so.  Maybe if I dig around some more, I could find a lot more about the small community of Heavy Metal enthusiasts here in Japan.

Annie Leibovits is a world renown American photographer.  Her photographes are mostly of celebrities like John Lennon and Brad Pitt.  When Annie was first starting with Rolling Stone, her photographs were very genuine because she spent days and weeks on end with the people she was photographing.  The celebrities even said after that  they felt that Annie was a part of the group and did not think twice when she was taking their pictures.  And that is why her earlier photographs look and feel more natural than her newer photograps.


 
http://citypaper.net/blogs/criticalmass/2008/12/05/annie-leibovitz-on-shooting-the-rolling-stones-concert-at-the-spectrum-1975/

During the 1980's, Annie shifted course and started focusing on more of the staged shots of celebrities.  To me, these photos were the ones that really brought out the personality of both Annie and of the celebrity themselves.  Annie really knows how to capture the essence of the person she is photographing.

http://www.theage.com.au/ftimages/2008/06/20/1213770891708.html

James Natchway's photographs are the complete opposite of Annie's photographs.  Natchway's photographs are of war, poverty and the bad sides of the world.  And that is the biggest difference between the two photographers.  In Annie, you tend to see the good side and with Natchway you see the bad.  Natchway is like Annie in that he becomes a part of the group he is trying to photograph.  He's not trying to rush things and be noticed by the people he's photographing.  Natchway is trying to give his subjects the respect they deserve.  And so the feelings that Natchway captures in his photographs are very genuine and very in the moment and real.

http://pequesherezade.blogspot.com/2009/12/la-injusticia-de-vivir-en-este-mundo.html

http://www3.atword.jp/lamp/page/2/?img=link

  The one common thing that both Annie and Natchway share though, is they have both dedicated their lives to thier work.  They really care about what they are trying to do and they let thier photographs do all the talking.

My Engergitic Okaasan

My Okaasan is a spritly 70 year old who always seems to be doing something.  It seems to me that my Okaasan cannot really sit still in some form or another.  She's always talking and asking me questions.  Or if we are out doing something, she would be taking pictures of something she found really interesting.  The picture below is one that my Okaasan took of herself as she, my Otoosan and myself went on a trip to ancient ninja house that was about two hours away from our house. 

Everything my Okaasan does, it seems like she always has a smile on her face.  These next pictures are ones I took of my Okaasan as we were talking after dinner.  I asked her if I could take a few pictures of her and she agreed whole heartedly after I tried to explain why I was taking them in Japanese.  Usually after dinner, I would practice my Japanese with both my Okaasan and Otoosan, who are both very patient and willing to help me try to learn Japanese.  This night though, the television was on and the program we were watching was about a family who was really obsessed about the Hansin Tigers.  My Okaasan was a little shocked to see all the Tigers merchendise the family had.  The two of us were calling the family huge Hansin Tigers otaku, since that was the best way I could describe them in Japanese to my Okaasan.  In the end, my Okaasan was happy with the amount of Japanese I spoke to her that night.



Neighborhood Hirakata

Currently I reside in Higashiyama with my homestay family.  Right across from our house is a park that is used very regulary, especially on the weekends.  I would just have to walk to the nearby corner, twenty feet away and await for the signal to turn green for me.  Once I cross the street, I am right in the park.  Typically, when I'm coming home from class I see junior high and high school kids practicing either baseball or soccer.  Below is a picture of one of the fields that gets used for practices as well as games.

  Then there are the families that take thier little children or pets and let them roam around the park to let out some energy.  On the weekends though, the park gets especially busy.  My window would be open and I could always hear the boys yell and do their chants as they run thier laps around the park.  This occasionally gets pretty annoying when I have to study.  A five minute walk from my house is an onsen.  Every night people flock to the onsen to relax, more so on the weekends.  Then there are the rice fields.  There are several big plots of rice fields that are intertwined in Higashiyama.  Below is a picture of the big rice field that is about three minutes away from my house by bicycle.  Almost every morning I see one or two people tending the fields.  Seeing these rice fields everyday reminds me of when I was younger when I lived in Aomori prefecture because I lived next to rice farms.