Japanese Society in Broad

The culture trips we've been taking have had a definite impact on my views about Japanese life, and I came here believing I knew a great deal about it. Little things continue to surprise me, however.

A major one is the almost seamless combination of the extremely new and the extremely old. No matter how many times I see it, it still boggles my mind a little to see skyscrapers with giant televisions on the side of them, and if I turn my head a mere thirty degrees or so, an ages-old Shinto shrine.

The tour of Tokyo was ripe with such experiences. Catching a distant glimpse of the Imperial palace, intact and heavily guarded as ever, sitting in the middle of some of the most technologically advanced buildings of our time is both a bizarre and thought-provoking feeling. Going from the Palace to the Sony Building was a bit of an overload mentally, antiquity on display followed by cutting-edge technology on display.

Something I've thought a lot about culture-wise is consumerism. Just about everything in Japan appears to cost a good deal more than it does in the states, and consumerism appears to thrive despite this. In fact, consumerism seems to almost thrive because of this. Expensive handbags and cell phones seem to serve as status symbols, and this confounds me a little bit.

From what I can tell, the Japanese as a people tend to keep to themselves in public situations (or at least on the subway, where most of my observations take place), and not pay attention to others for very long, let alone the big-ticket items that said others are carrying around with them. Why, then, the need to show off, so to speak? If no one's paying attention, why strive to project a certain, more affluent image? In certain places, of course, people are going to pay close attention to you (Harajuku comes to mind), but in the majority of places I've been, polite ignorance seems to prevail.

This is all just nave observation from a complete novice to the ways of the natives, however, and in saying all this I have a distinct fear of appearing to misjudge an entire culture. It's just an aspect I find a bit confusing, and more so, fascinating.

It reminds me considerably of the notion of face value versus true self. People project one image, and that image is widely and readily accepted, while underneath something completely different may well be going on. Thinking about this makes my above observations all the more confusing.

Whenever I think I have something figured out about Japanese culture, I always remember that there's a good chance I know nothing at all about what I'm looking at, solely because of face value as opposed to true self. I haven't gotten very close to many Japanese citizens thus far, so all I'm really seeing is the surface of any and everyone I meet. Aside from what little cultural information I'm given at school, everything is guesswork and speculation, which, most likely, is precisely the desired reaction. No one gets to know anything about a person from what they project on the surface, and therefore everyone stays at a distance in most public situations.

There's a lot more to the Japanese than I'll ever probably surmise from what I see in day-to-day life, and that's something that will keep me fascinated every day I'm here.