Japanese culture, Shopping

One of the things that surprised me the most when I first came to Japan was the amount of shopping streets and malls that seemed to be everywhere. Just in Osaka there are two main shopping areas, Namba and Umeda, and an arcade, full of shops and with severall malls, that is more than 600 m in lenght connects them. In there, every three shops you can see clerks in the doors, yelling special announcements about sales in their shops or just welcoming customers to get inside, making the shopping experience quite noisy sometimes. But the most amazing thing, is that they are never empty.

Popular culture in Japan is very big, there are trends associated with it, and if something starts to get attention it might go from nothing to national-wide famous in a week. People pay real attention to your looks and the fan-related accessories that you wear. That can be because anything you might like or be following provably has a lot of related merchandising, but it can also relate to the fact that shopping seems to be one of the national sports. When I first met a lot of Japanese people, asking about their interests and what do they do when they meet with friends, or to have fun, about 80% of the female ones included shopping in their lists. The same situation happened when they asked me to meet them somewhere, almost always was “to go shopping”.

                                                                                                                                                    

The other point that I realized while living here is that Japanese love brands. Japan is known worldwide as a very fashionable country since the 70s when the Japanese designers started to get attention from the high-fashion catwalk, and it has been growing since then. With lots of different clothing styles and changing trends, there is also urban tribes with very specific clothing (and sometimes behavior) rules, which just adds to the main shopping trend. Last November, a new three flour H&M store opened just in front of their only other store in Osaka, in ebisubashi, and the marketing for it was launched more than a month before, along with their new collaboration with the brand Versace. They had an opening party, with special VIP guests, between them the most famous      

 Japanese bloggers, that gathered around 300 people in the door just to get a chance to see the new clothing pieces on the famous guests before everyone else. The opening to the public was made two days later, and the lines for it started the previous night with approximately a 100 people according to the news, with more than 600 people when the opening started. Within two hours the top rated items were sold out. Just another example of how consumerism is present in Japan, even without getting into the technological related market.

A Cartoon by Hiroshi Takatsuki (High Moon) , about consumerism:

Also check out this interesting blogs related to consuming patterns in Japan;
http://ethicalnippon.nbunce.com/2010/04/hyper-consumerism/
http://www.claireburdett.com/2010/05/going-japanese-trends-in-consumerism/

What do Japanese People do?

They eat a lot of ready-made meals. 

Japan is known for having a very healthy cuisine, they eat a lot of vary foods, and they mix them a lot in every meal, so that provides them with a very healthy diet... in general. When I first came to Japan I experienced this side of the eating patterns, I was staying with a lovely host family who had cooked meals almost every day and rarely ate instant noodles or frozen food. When I helped in the kitchen though, I realized that they did use some precooked food, but always complemented it in a way that ended making the meal like home made, never really just having the packaged thing.

But thruth is thst there are huge sections of frozen food in the supermarkets, and almost all of them have “cooked in the supermarket obentos”, even the 100 yen ones. Also, nearly 10 million rice balls or onigiri are sold at conbini (convenience stores) every day, and instant noodles are available in every conbini, not only supermarket, every day at every hour, since conbinis open 24/7. This impression came lately in my stay in Japan, but you can have almost any type of food in a ready-made package if you look for it. There are from gyoza or korokke, wich are more likely to be in the frozen food section, to pasta (sauce included), sushi or deserts.

My previous thoughts about japanese food have been certainly affected by this facts, while it is still tru that you can eat very healthy if you want to, it is also true that they have a huge market for frozen and ready-made food. Conbinis sell all sorts of them, onigiri, fried chicken, nikuman, obento... and some even have a resting space where you can eat them while sitting in the same store. It is a common image to see workers sitting in the curb outside the store, or hurried salaryman filling their bags with onigiri and energy drinks at lunch time. Of course, they could also have delicious home-made obento, which is what I though it would be the most present, but apparently it is way easier to just buy a quick meal on your way to work or at your lunch break, and I have to say that some of them are surprisingly good.

Portrait of a Japanese person

When I satrted to think about who to make a portrait of, I realised that most of my Gaidai friends aren't fully, or officially Japanese per se, so the first question I had to make is "who can I consider Japanese?". But there again, who am I to judge that? So I just asked one of my friends to explain for herself.

I picked someone who was born and educated in Japan, her family has lived in Japan for four generations now, but according to the government she isn't officially Japanese, but South Korean. When I asked about her nationality, she simply said "I'm zainichi, Japanese-Korean".

For those who aren't very versed in Japanese diversity, Japan isn't a homogeneous country, there are minorities, foreign residents and also remainings of former class distributions that remain in the population in form of prejudices. The zainichi, particularly, are the Korean permant residents in Japan. Their families might have been living in Japan, and can be traced back in the country much further than other people`s, more Japanese families, but they still won't be considered Japanese. Would they want to, they could become Japanese, but it isn't particularly easy, and it involves several fee payments. In her case, she accepts her origins and is proud of them, but there are several people from Korean origins that don't use their Korean names, but only their Japanese ones, and try to hide their classification as zainichi for fear of exclusionism by society. For more information about minorities and Japanese regulations click here.

It is important to understand her origins in order to undersand and become to know her. Also, it is one of the first thing I came to know about her. Some friends introduced us and I said; "what's your name?"; she said "Jineui". The whole conversation was conducted in Japanese, so the sound of a Korean name stood out, and when I looked at her mildly confused, she said "I'm zainichi", and you can use my Japanese name.

Since then I became to know her more, she just turned 20, so she is officially an adult in Japan, her area of studies is English, she likes Iceland music groups and is a very interesting and rich person, but the thruth is that my first impression, and what made me want to know more about her was that initial honesty, self-knowing, awareness sort of presentation. Also, that introductions speaks a lot for her sense of belonging, of identity, not just as a person but rather as a part of a community.

Here you can see a home-made video, not of the best quality but interesting, about the opinion of Japanese nationals on Zainichi:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enas8kJGkx8    Warning! it's in Japanese

Neighbourhood Kawachinagano

We understand neighbourhood as a community defined not only by its geographical position but also by the interaction of its habitants. Given that, defining my belonging to one proves rather tricky, for I have lived in two very different environments now, Kawachinagano and Hirakata. During the fall semester I lived with a homestay family in Suehiro-cho, Kawachinagano-shi, and had the opportunity to participate and be envolved in some neighbourhood activities mainly through my family. But I also have interacted, though more briefly and in a more reduced scale, in Hirakata.

Kawachinagano is a very calm, countryside-like city, with a lot of neighbourhood organizations, each one linked to a shrine, with more than five shrines in the area. The first thing I learned about them was how to throw the garbage. The classification system varies from place to place, and it is considered the neighbourhood responsibility to keep the streets clean and have an organised garbage recycling. That is why, my host mother explained to me, there are rarely litter bins in the street, for "no one wants to have a dirty area near their houses", as it would reflect badly on them how the people made use of it. Also, tasks like removing dry leaves from the pathways are also responsibility of the neighbours and the dutie passes from house to house on a weekly basis. As a part of the neighbourhood, even though briefly, I participated too in those duties, often supervised by some passingby おばあさん (obaasan, grandmother, old lady).

This is the river that constitutes the border of the neighbourhood, past this point all you can find for around 3 km is forest.


Perhaps a better example of the construction of the neighbourhood would be the Danjiri Matsuri. It was held in late October in Kawachinagano, and I was able to be envolved in its activities. The Danjiri Matsuri is a festival that need of the community collaboration in order to be done. One of its main activities consists in parading the local Kami-sama, god, in the wooden cart called mikoshi. Since it is all solid wood, its weight makes it impossible to be moved by one person, and this is where the community comes in, for everyone participates in moving the mikoshi. The men carry it  (and are the only ones allowed to get on), while women and children go ahead of it with a rope for directions ( Video ). Also, other non so active participants are all the neighbours who all along the way prepare sancks and drinks for the little breaks that the carriers make on their way through showing the Kamisama where are the boundaries of its area, what is the place that they "protect".

At night, All the different mikoshi are united in a joint display, where all the different communities participate in the same parade, while competing as to which is the better cart, who sins more louldly and etc.  You can watch the video here.

Even as a gaijin, foreigner, they, as often happens in Japan, made me feel very welcome and invited me to participate in it, also sharing its rewards, as when the morning parade ended and all the senior members of the neighbourhood association ( called Nagano, as can be seen in their robes), had prepared flavored ice creams for all the participants.

Early Impressions of Japan

When I first came to Japan, six months ago, in about a week I had a large number of concentrated first impressions, which would pretty much become the base (hopefully to be developed) of my understanding of "Japan".  I still don't know what I expected it to be like, for my images of it were mainly extracted form pieces of manga, anime and Studio Ghibli movies, but one thing Japan doesn't lack of is display, so quickly I was filled with lots of  snapshots and pieces of the big puzzle that constitute it.

Curiously, many of those images seemed to be opposing each other, they didn't seem to be part of the same environment, like they don't belong together, but still coexist and are seen as normal for the japanese people,  while struck me as, at least, remarkable . For example, it can be seen in the constant struggle between modernization and conservation, the old and the new Japan, where homes jammed in narrow streets vary from old, with tatami three-generation family wooden houses to large, new buildings with several dozens of one-room apartments, suited for single people, students, salaryman with their home elsewhere and the like.

This can be seen in many places, but perhaps more clearly in Kyoto, where shrines and temples are integrated sacred spaces in the modern landscape, full of little shops, malls and traffic jams. Some are separated through symbolic 鳥居 (tori, shinto shrine archway), which clearly delimitates the change of environment, and some others constitute more hidden, subliminal details that, if paid attention to, can raise more than one alarm.

In the left, The Sanjusangendo Temple, or Temple of the Thousand Buddhas, that was originally finishes in 1164, though reconstructed many times since, and two benchs situated just in front of it, with the clear branding of "Cocacola" on both sides.






While still confused by some of this elements, thruth is that this sort of curiosities, contradictions and little details just continue to add to my previous amazement regarding Japan, and every new experience and reflection I get about it exceeds each other, making this country more appealing day by day.

                                               Shrine Archway that separates it from the city.