Some Thoughts on Japanese Culture

This week of school was slow and steady. Not too much homework, hitting the gym, and studying kanji. Although, I need to start studying a lot more haha. The highlights of this week include sending postcards for the first time and trying oden for the first time! I also saw an older Subaru WRX Wagon (not quite the same year as mine) which I was told are quite rare in Japan. I also enjoyed seeing some of my favorite JPOP artists featured on a TV channel being show at Golds gym. The one pictured here is Yorushika (ヨルシカ), this song specifically being known as one of the openings to a recent anime, Frieren. In Kyotonabe, there was a heavy metal club playing some music in the outdoor ampitheater, which was pretty crazy to watch. I got swarmed by some freshmen towards the end who were very excited to talk to an American, as at the southern campus there are hardly any exchange students.

I tried oden おでん for the first time on Friday night. It is a type of nabemono 鍋物 which means "one-pot dish". Typically, you would have your own pot at the table and cook the various ingredients yourself in the pot, but the place I went to was quite fancy so you picked which items you wanted from the menu, and the restaurant prepared them in the back and would then bring them out on a small plate. I also tried a lemon sour at this place, which was much different than the canned ones because it was well blended and had pulp inside! As for the oden ingredients, I tried boiled egg, daikon, tofu, and kelp.

The rest of this blog will be exploring my thoughts and finding about some interesting parts of Japanese culture that are not obvious from an outside perspective. First, I want to discuss the standard Japan has for its women. Despite this country seeming so modern technologically and industrially, the way its society handles dating culture seems to be almost stuck in the 1980s, or before! I should disclose that none of this has been researched, it all comes from my personal experiences, and try as I might to be neutral its going to be my my lens.

Japan has these crazy beauty standards that it holds women to. They have to dress in fashionable clothes, carry themselves a certain way, and often use a crazy amount of makeup. They are expected to be under a certain weight, which has caused a spike in eating disorders recently. The clothing expectations specifically ties into the consumerist culture that Japan has been submersed in for years now. Even crazier, many Japanese girls follow the fashion trends set by KPOP idols! I met a Japanese girl who got a hair cut last week because "its the new hairstyle that all of the KPOP girls wear". I was pretty baffled, to say the least. I shared these findings with some Japanese men and they agreed with me, stating that the girls here almost seem "cookie cutter" or "copy and paste" because they all dress and act so similar. Furthermore, Japanese girls seldom have niche hobbies or interests because they are deemed "not women-like" or "not girly" so having one of these "weird" hobbies is a sure-fire way to be bullied in school and treated like an outcast. So even if a girl does have some interest that is out of the norm, she may be very hesitant to talk about it with anyone, even those that she may call friends out of fear. Girls aren't alone with these issues, men face the same, just not the same physical expectations at least. It is very hard to have a personal identity in Japan, at least one that you can openly show, unlike America. People here are expected to embrace the "sameness", which some of the Japanese guys said they hate, especially after visiting or studying abroad in America. They miss the environment where they can openly own who they are and what they like.

Moving on to dating and relationship culture, I have even more shocking findings. I have been told that many young couples simply date to "be dating", even if the relationship is constantly on the rocks. Its pretty much a social expectation to be in a relationship more or less, so many students would rather keep their less than ideal relationship than be single so they look better in the eyes of their friends. Knowing this explains to me why some Japanese couples are rarely physically intimate in any way with each other, because how could you want any of that when you barely like one another? This unfortunately carries on into marriages, where many Japanese couples live unhappily for the rest of their years. I would have to research this more, but I know for sure at least that getting a divorce is somewhat costly and a very involved process, but I would also assume pretty disgraceful in Japanese society. Coming to know all of this helped me to understand the cheating culture in Japan, which I had known existed but not to the extend I know now. In Japan, there are a wide array of outlets for both men and women to engage in cheating adjacent activities, which I would view as definitely cheating, but in the eyes of many Japanese people is simply grey area. Take host clubs and hostess clubs for example. For the man, you arrive to a hostess club, which is a bar where various cute and usually younger women work. These women persuade and borderline seduce you into drinking with them, where you have to pay for both your drinks and their drinks. They treat you like more than a customer, and try to get you to stay as long as they can, because each drink you buy goes directly into their paycheck. Some of these clubs will even have the employees text customers outside of working hours trying to get them to come back. Additionally, in Japan you can straight up pay for a girl to go on a date with you, or more commonly known as a "rent a girlfriend". I don't feel the need to get into details on my blog, but if you've made it this far, you can probably assume how rampant and accessible sex services are in Japan as well.

Finally, I want to talk about religion in Japan, because it is quite interesting how Japanese people think about themselves and their relation to religion. I have read a few articles on how Japan is somehow the most atheist and religious country at the same time! Because the Shinto religion and practices are so closely tied with nature here, many Japanese people simply find it natural to believe in the spirits and gods that reside in shrines. The structure and expectations of Shintoism is much more freeform and orientated towards the individual compared to many Western religions. On the other side of things, I talked to a girl who was raised Christian; quite uncommon in Japan. She told me how she was constantly treated differently in school by her classmates, which is really unfortunate. It seems as though many Japanese people associate the world "religion" with extremism and terrorism, especially after the infamous gas attacks on the Tokyo subways that were carried out by a religious cult. No wonder only a few Japanese actually would identify with being religious when there is so much negative connotation connected to it. I did come to the conclusion, that there is a real lack of genuine connection in Japanese society, especially for older people. Many are living alone, or in partnerships that they hate, so depression rates are high here, and I was told Tokyo has one of the worst in the world. I can understand how some Japanese find Christianity appealing due to the community it creates. It allows for people to come together and connect, a rare chance in a busy and rather cold world, despite all of the fun and excitement that exists on the surface of Japan.

I hope you enjoyed reading, I'm trying to figure out how to fix my mailing form, and at the same time allow you you all to comment on these plog posts, I think that might be cool. Its hard to find the time with school to work on my broken website. Even setting aside time to make these posts are a challenge, but I will do my best! Until next time, がんばります！