Some impressions on a first visit to Japanby Elly in March 2009
Since I visited Korea in July of last year, it is inevitable that I see many similarities between the two countries: the concrete buildings in the city centers with small colorful alleys behind them, where electricity poles and laundry are kept, and the 24-hour convenience stores with very similar smells. I really loved it here, so much harmony! A real difference in the Japanese cityscape is the absence of churches and visible huge crosses. In common with the US are Costco and IKEA stores (and McDonalds). Different from the US and Europe is that I saw perhaps 10 dogs and one cat in one week. Dogs are a status symbol since many people live in apartments where they can’t keep them.
The relationship between Korea and Japanreminds me of that between Norway and Sweden: the Koreans seem more worried/critical about the Japanese than the other way around (but that is just my impression). The Japanese acknowledge Korean influence a lot more than I had thought they would. I visited a wonderful ceramics museum and Japanese nationalism isn’t at all present even though many of the objects are Chinese or Korean. I saw little reference to WW II apart from a monument in Kyoto to Japanese soldiers killed in Burma/Myanmar.
The subways, monorail, and trains have been very easy to use. Stations are marked in English orthography and it is easy to pronounce the roman rendering of Japanese. I think I will try to avoid travelling during rush hour, however, since passengers are pushed in and I don’t like that. Many people use masks to protect themselves or others from germs. It is the worst season for allergies right now and masks are worn for that too. There are loads of bikes, used for all sorts of things: transporting kids, cleaning, trash removal, and to store items by what look like homeless. Cell phones are not as prevalent (as one might expect), and people use them for texting and games; they don’t talk loudly on trains and in public. There are many signs apparently about not using the phone.
The unemployment is low and one can see why: so much make work. There are people in uniforms everywhere (directing traffic,helping out at subway stations, loading luggage on busses) but it makes it very nice for asking (one word) questions. Keeping unemployment down is apparently also the reason all the rivers are dammed and that there are bridges to nowhere. It is, however, extremely clean. People are helpful although very few speak English. Teenagers are very interesting to watch with great hairdos and most everyone is thin, such a difference with the US.Walking around Osaka and on public transport, I was most of the time the only none Asian face and got used to that. In Kyoto, it was actually strange to see non-Asian faces again and hear English.
There are a great number of tea places where green tea is served with sweets (`tea houses’ may be a technical term for a different type of tea place). Sweet shops are gorgeous! Fortunately, Starbucks has made few converts here!The food is beautifully presented, e.g. in wooden lunch boxes divided into four compartments with a different color dish in each contrasting beautifully against the black and food to match those colors, deep fried, raw fish, vegetables, etc. Food isn’t spicy or hot, and quite healthy with lots of leek everywhere (saw it sticking out from bags and bicycles etc) and cabbage. One night, I had the famous beef and it was delicious served with dark green salad to complement the color. Another night, I was invited for dinner for a traditional `nabe’meal at someone’s apartment, and the food, conversation, and company made this trip really memorable. The meal involved cooking various vegetables, meat, soy, and fish in a pot on the table, with raw fish and vegetables on the side. Sake is what one drinks with the meal and we had home-made plum wine after. More food experiences below.
The conference I participated in (on methodologies of morpho-syntactic change) was small so everyone talked to each other and it was very productive and stimulating. The organizer was such an enthusiastic and energetic scholar with many refreshing ideas on relations in Austronesian languages. There were a few people I had met before and some I had never (or very little), and meeting them turned out to be very special: bubbling, enthusiastic, and very committed to linguistics.
The conference was held in the Museum of Ethnology in the EXPO 1970 park.The park had wonderful gardens, a formal Japanese one and then plum orchards which I explored on a Saturday morning when literally hundreds of Japanese came out to see the blossoms and take pictures and drink a delicious tea. The Museum was about a half hour walk away from the JICA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, where the conference participants stayed. The community (Onohara Higashi) around it had shops and restaurants. I did get to go to Osaka’s center to visit the very impressive castle (Osaka-Jo) and the ceramics museum I mentioned. I also visited an open air museum with old farm houses in the HattoriPark. The interiors are just so beautiful with straight lines and simplicity.
The weather has been cold and rainy, to be expected in the early spring, but also with patches of blue skies. Unlike Korea, there is no TV program geared towards foreigners living in Japan, so all there is is CNN, which repeats a lot and has little about Japan. The result is I don’t get a feeling for Japanese political issues at all.
My last full day, I visitedKyoto with a friend (a former student) and that was another highlight. We hadn’t seen each other for many years, and she hadn’t changed at all. She answered many questions and translated the Japanese. We had great fun throwing coins and ringing bells and making wishes at the shrines. I was so intent on making the bell ring that I typically forgot my wish… You can only buy slips of paper with your fortune. When you get a prediction you don’t like, you hang it on a wire. I did! We also had a great traditional meal, based on cooking soy and then putting things on it. The places we visited: the RoyalPalace (on the outside), Ginkakuji (in the East of Kyoto) and Kitano Tenmangu, a shrine dedicated to the God of Education, Kinkakuji, and Ryoanji (all of these in the West). We also bought sweets and tea, a very serious business with tasting and sipping respectively.
Some of the questions I had why there were so many cow statues around Kitano Tenmangu, why workmen wore very wide trousers, and what I should do with a small gourd I had bought at a shrine. The cow at Kitano Tenmangu gets stroked for luck (in exams) and she gets to have aprons put around her neck. The reason is that the God of education was born in the year of the cow. The trousers seem to be inherited from the Dutch!! The gourd is good for relationships, is a symbol of success “because if you put a seed in a gourd, the seed keep alive for a long time”, and protects from drowning, “since it doesn't sink but floats”.
Monday morning I went to the airport relatively early, but did manage to eat a noodle lunch (which I hadn’t yet). They come in a bowl with lots of liquid and you fish the noodles out of the bowl with chopsticks and eat them, making loud noises. I was reasonably good at this (making noises). The noodles were thick so ok to pick up with chopsticks.
It has been a very good experience and there are over 200 pictures if anyone is interested. elly