Came across this article on Japan whilst looking for something the other day. Aside from being an interesting read for anyone who’s lived here for a while or is thinking of living here, the author makes a very interesting point that I can relate to, even though I’ve only been for a very short time compared to his 20 odd years.

And yet beneath all the motion and excitement, something had caught inside me in Japan, and it was perhaps (I see now) all that I couldn’t explain, everything that I couldn’t put into tidy boxes and pinwheeling sentences. I had walked around a temple near the airport at Narita, during a morning layover, waiting for my flight back to New York, and something in the mild October sunshine, the gathered quiet, the shelteredness of the scene, took me back, unanswerably, to boyhood and England: Japan made me feel more at home than I’d been in a life of traveling the globe.

This sense of home he talks about is something I’ve felt on multiple occasions in the last year, and everytime I’ve struggled to fully understand it. I think the main thing I struggle with is that while Tokyo, and Japan, has this ability to make you feel at home, more than even home can, it’s also undeniably alien and very much an environment in which a foreigner stands out, regardless of linguistic skills or social integration.

Yet despite this, Tokyo can very much make you feel at home, make you feel like belong in a sense, or if not belong that you’re in a place where it’s ok to just be. This contradiction between being regularly estranged and feeling embraced at times is funnily enough another contradiction to add to a long list I’ve discovered since being here. Maybe it’s just because of the way the Japanese are, how the society functions and operates that lets you be able to feel that just being is ok, that you are, as strange as it may seem in such a, at times, foreign land, at home.

It’s definitely one of the things I’m going to miss the most once I’m gone, especially when I walk around Tokyo and just take it in: sights, sounds and smells. It’s also a reason I would recommend anyone try it out here once if they feel they got it in them and want to experience something different. It’s a mindset too, you have to be in the right headspace I guess, it’s not as simple as just turning up and waiting for it to happen. But for anyone who has any experience of living in a different culture, or wants to really try it out, then I think Japan in a weird way definitely holds something nowhere else really does.

Popularity: 4%

written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, Random, society, travelling, writing

One of the reasons I came to Japan was monkeys. Which may sound strange, but the fact is Japan is home to the world’s northermost monkeys, the famed Japanese macaque, first given fame by a cover on Time magazine of all places. Having seen the monkeys on TV a fair few times, I knew that if I was coming here for any length of time a trip to see the monkeys was a definite.

The snow monkeys live primarily in Honshu, though a friend of mine mentioned seeing them in Hokkaido as well even though various things I read seem to indicate that’s not the case (anyone with a clarification on that?). The most famous area to see them, or more accurately visit them, is near Nagano in a place called Jigokudani Koen, which roughly translates as Hell’s Valley apparently, due to the area’s harsh environment, regular coat of snow and hot spring geysers. What’s great about the monkeys in Nagano is that you really are visiting them, in the truest sense of the word. This is no real park, no fencing, no containment. It’s where they live, roaming pretty much free and doing what they please while humans hang around. Considering the state of some of the monkey parks I’ve seen elsewhere in the country, it’s an incredible experience to be able to see them in their natural habitat like that. What’s more, as they’ve become used to seeing humans hang around they’ve become pretty much oblivious to the visitors, which only makes the whole thing even more surreal at times.

The other thing the Japanese macaques are famous for, especially in Jigokudani, is their appropriation of one of the valley’s natural hot springs for their own benefit. Seeing as they live high up in the mountains, with freezing cold temperatures in the winter, you can easily see how a hot spring would suddenly become an enticing idea. And it’s around this hot spring that you primarily visit them. The picture of a monkey with its head poking out of the steaming water and snow on its head is a classic, and something of a signature pose for the monkeys.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 4%

written by Laurent \\ tags: chilling, holidays, Japan, monkeys, onsen

Animosity between neighbouring countries isn’t really anything new. Growing up and living in Europe I’ve become accustomed to plenty of it, from funny stereotypes to nonsense bordering on xenophobia. One thing I’ve realised since working at a newspaper here though is how deep the animosity between Japan and China sometimes runs, and how far and low some people will seemingly act on it.

Like all good rivalries, it runs deep and both ways, but my knowledge of the issue isn’t that thorough if I’m honest. I know the Chinese hold a grudge, well one of the most recent ones anyways, against the Japanese for Japan’s WWII aggressions and past attempts at imperial expansion in Asia (google the rape of Nanking as a good starting point). As for the Japanese, I’m not actually quite sure where their grudge comes from, anyone with any enlightening knowledge please drop a comment. One thing I do know is that I’ve met my share of Japanese who have been vocal about their distrust of the Chinese and seeming belief that China and its people are up to no good (broadely speaking of course).

What’s been really enlightening and entertaining though is the Japanese media’s practice of jibing at the Chinese for anything they possibly can. The most obvious examples I see everyday are those at the newspaper I work at, which is the country’s second biggest, and also on TV. At the newspaper the Chinese jibes are literally everywhere it seems. I’ll be editing a story, and all of a sudden there will be a totally unrelated sentence making a remark, generally negative, about China. If it wasn’t so funny in the way it’s done, it would be scary.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 5%

written by Laurent \\ tags: Japan, newspaper, Random, society, writing

It was trade show time again 2 weeks ago as the Tokyo Amusement Expo 2008 (aka Tokyo Arcade Game Show) rolled into town at the Makuhari Messe. Compared to the Tokyo Game Show, which is the year’s video game event by excellence, TAE is a much smaller affair spread over two days and taking in just one of Makuhari’s exhibition halls. When TGS rolls into town, pretty much the whole of Makuhari is taken over, and the majority of Tokyo’s geek community descends on the Chiba town. TAE was quieter and smaller, which didn’t necessarily make it less fun.

For one you get more space to stroll around, taking in all the glory of trade shows: the scantily-clothed ladies, the suits eyeballing people from the sides, the stall staff looking bored or scared, the geeks willing to queue 2h for a five minute blast on a yet to be released game and the hordes of pervy old men with big cameras chasing the aforementioned scantily-clad ladies. The arcade show had the added bonus of also being swarmed by hundreds of kids, dragging their parents to various stands displaying the latest wares aimed at the younger market, from card games to UFO catchers to… well, really weird shit.

Continue reading »

Popularity: 6%

written by Laurent \\ tags: akihabara, computers, Japan, society, video games