Everyone's got a blog. Everyone's got a blog. Everyone's got a blog.
I've got a blog too.
I haven't actually browsed but a couple of those blogs above, but they're all from aomori jets, and all linked off of the front page of jamie's avoidinglife. In fact that's just a small sampling of the blogs listed there. I read a couple of entries on a couple of blogs selected at semi-random from jamie's blogroll, and I learned about video games, and bugs and flowers and how much some people drank. I suppose in a sense I learned a little about japan, but not really.
You won't really learn about japan here either. I've tried to make a couple of enlightening entries; tried to give a slightly better impression of what I think it's "really like" here, but I don't think it matters. Nothing can counter the mass of media on the internet and elsewhere that tries to paint japan as "5 minutes into the future", or a "land of contradictions", or worse yet, an earthly paradise.
My feelings about japan aren't secret. I love the place, and can envision sticking around a long time. What you get here is the result of my working out the language and culture for myself, and the occasional jab at Bush.
Still it always makes me feel really strange to read other people's experiences with japan. It seems like everyone is always coming and going to and from tea ceremonies and sports clubs, or drinking, or gaming, or pining for their long distance lover. Or they're showing silly english photos (guilty as charged), or commenting on the general weirdness of the place.
Is everyone a tourist? Even people that have lived here for a couple years still hold the place at arms length. It seems like most any interest people around here have in japan is either self-concious interest (I like the idea of liking tea ceremony), or entirely uncritical (I like japanese hip-hop), or just silly (anime/ jgirls/ conbini food/ hello kitty is teh awesome).
Then again, maybe I'm just the only one self-involved enough to think himself seperate from that. but I really do want to understand more.
(by the way, I'm not referring to particular blogs or people)
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3 comments:
Yo. I don't know if Ive ever met you, but my blog is one of the links in this post and I found your page because I noticed a sudden spike in visitors at my page.
anyway, in response to your comment - don't jump to conclusions about why people are here or why they like japan. If someone has committed to living here for two or three years, my assumption is that they have more than just a superficial appreciation. Even still, most of us still define ourselves as foreigners and define our individuality by the differences between japanese people and us. That just happens in expatriot communities.
I just took the first blogs in alphabetical order at jamie's, no offense intended.
however, it's not just about superficial appreciation, it's about exoticizing the experience, and the whole country. It's about making out every part of this culture as "japanese" in quotation marks and seperate from some kind of real life. The entire dialogue/ monologue on the sort of blogs I was talking about (when they concern anything japanese) is one of difference and sameness. That is to say, the viewpoint of a tourist.
It's not a phenomenon specific to jets, either. I pared down my original entry because I'm a terrible writer, but japan is being so strongly exoticized the world over right now... I think that informs, in part, our experiences here as jets. If you looked at expat blogs from china, or korea or any other country, they would look a lot different. ramble.
Anyway, thanks for commenting. It's good to have comments that aren't ads for huge car insurance discounts or something. I'm always open to making my monologues a discussion.
(fair warning though; I am a sourpuss, and as you may have surmised, not wild about jets)
heh, no worries, no offense taken.
I think JET is a good opportunity to disillusion all those japanophiles and people who only know japan from movies and TV (I was one of the latter).
And I do find Japan exotic, and I like to show what I find exotic in Japan in my blog from time to time. And I have also felt an animosity at times at the JET community, but now I think that anger was just silly.
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