Seated on the thirteen-hour flight from Tokyo to Boston, on Friday, July 19th, I am looking back on the past month in amazement. We accomplished so much in just 28 days, and I feel so much wiser and more experienced from it all.
Week four was spent recovering from our hectic excursion week and wrapping up our research projects. It was really only a four-day week, but it felt so much longer. Monday we spent most of our time in NYC, conducting interviews, and having our final formal class discussion on the appropriation of Chicano culture in Japan. This week was also a week for me to make sure that I packed everything in to my schedule that I wanted to do before I left (for example: eating at Sakura, the restaurant on the ninth floor of D building, and visiting the Meiji Shrine).
Monday night, Mayah and I travelled to Shibuya to see the world premiere of the film Queer Japan. The film was a fantastic compilation of different Japanese people of all different gender identities and sexual orientations, and really gave incredible insight to the triumphs and struggles of the queer community in Japan. Same sex marriage is not yet legal in Japan, and openly LGBTQ+ people face enormous social stigma. Japan has deep seeded desire for harmony, perpetuating this image of a homogenous society where there is little deviation from the social norm. Queer Japan breaks down this misconception, and does so in such a way that it celebrates and praises the abnormal. It also interestingly highlighted different conflicts within the LGBTQ community. There was one instance where a lesbian, women only bar began closing its doors to transgender males. After protesting this, the club ended up creating an event specifically for transgender males to socialize and dance with other people of the same community. As a whole, the film reminded me to keep an open mind when examining the gender binary in my research project. For the purpose of narrowing down the scope of my research project, I focus on a strict traditional gender binary, but this film made me realize that this is a rather narrow minded approach and not inclusive of all of Japan. Therefore, I will be very sure to emphasize in my paper that the strict gender binary I am looking into is by no means indicative of all Japanese speakers. If I had more time and resources in Japan, I would be very interested in examining how speech varies across the gender and sexuality spectrum.
Monday night, I tried KFC for the first time in my life. It certainly lived up to its hype, and I was glad that the first time I tried it was in Japan. For some reason, the Japanese appear to have a strange fascination with KFC, and it’s a Christmas tradition for some to order buckets of fried chicken. This was interesting to me, because it is the Japanese stereotyping Americans and our habits, and then emulating them. I realize that non-Japanese will do the same thing with Japanese stereotypes. We saw this when we watched the BBC documentary about sex in Japan, where the writer of the movie took one small subculture (Japanese men with virtual girlfriends) and tried to extend it to all of Japan. In a way, this parallels the Japanese conception of KFC in America.
Tuesday, we spent a rainy morning in the digital art museum. While it was very beautiful and entertaining, my favorite museum that I have visited on this trip was the Tokyo Modern Art Museum. While the MoMA only had art from the late 1700's to the present, I felt that it said a lot more about Japan than the digital art museum did, and for that I liked it much more. The intentions of the artists were clear, as art from the Meiji era depicted the struggle for a modern Japanese identity, and art during WWII was most clearly anti-war, and then later art that was anti US occupation. The intentions of TeamLab's art was rather to demonstrate technological feats, and for that reason they were less powerful to me. Tuesday evening I spent holed up in a cafe in Harajuku, writing and editing, and finished the day with what would be my final 7-11 meal in Japan.
Wednesday, after my individual research meeting, I did some final shopping in Harajuku, picking up trinkets for my friends and family. I had a meal of conveyor belt sushi that was by far the best I had had in Japan, and then returned to the same cafe from Tuesday to work on my presentation. Hours later, I walked back through a sunny Meiji Shrine, and then I made my way over to Shinjuku to a Michelin star ramen restaurant. It was delicious, but I felt very rushed because the line behind me was so long, and that sense of urgency detracted from my enjoyment of the experience. The whole meal felt like a race, and I burned my tongue twice. After dinner, we walked through a sunny Shinjuku and sat in a small French toast place, talking about our time in Japan and our excitement and sadness towards the end of the program.
Thursday brought our final presentations! I was incredibly nervous going into it, but I felt that it went very well and that I had produced something that I could be proud of. Everyone did such a good job and I was so impressed by the time and effort everyone had devoted to their projects. It was also so interesting to see what everyone else had learned, because for most of my project I had been so focused on conducting my own research that I had not payed much attention to the conclusions of anyone else's research.
Our Thursday night dinner was a bittersweet affair, with delicious foods, gift exchanges, birthday songs, and sad goodbyes. Thursday night brought some epic group karaoke, a successful celebration of a lot of hard work and learning. I know I have made some real connections on this program, and am so grateful for the opportunity to have learned so much about Japan and myself. Going into the program, I was initially a bit worried that I would stick out sorely because I was so ignorant about Japan. I did not even know who the prime minister was until the second or so week of spring quarter. I feel like I can admit this now, because I can speak about Abe's administration and the LDP at length, but before this I had no experience with Japan whatsoever. I definitely stepped way outside of my comfort zone in choosing this program, and am so happy with myself to have made that decision. In the future, I would love to return to Japan, and hopefully introduce it to more of my friends and family.
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