Escapee

“All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality—the story of escape.”

 – Arthur Benson

Everyone needs a break once in a while. You could watch a movie. Read a book. Play golf. But to really GTFO, you need to leave the country.

Part of the appeal of overseas travel is based on the fact that wherever you’re going, it’s not going to be like where you’re coming from. We want something new, an adventure. I remember my first time abroad. We drove up to Canada and I spent my first foreign currency on a scone at Starbucks. But it was my first time seeing snow—kind of a big deal for a girl from Hawaii. No matter where you are, there are just some things you can’t experience in that place; be it weather-related, food-related, or anything else-related, there are limits to what a singular place has to offer.

The seaweed is always greener. No matter how dirty, overpriced, or sketchy a place is, you can always find something positive to take from the experience. It’s the closest we can get to walking in someone else’s shoes. In the case of travel, more is better. Though not at the price of spending quality time in a place. Which brings us to living abroad, long-term but temporary.

Though there are a lot of reasons for studying and living abroad, it can be as much about getting away as it is about getting near. But being away from things the way you’ve always known them to be—that’s not easy. I don’t know if you can really prepare for that.

So what’s the difference between an adventure and an escape? I’m picturing a Venn diagram and see a lot in the intersecting region of these two circles. What makes an adventure an adventure is the pureness of the new experience, along with a little thrill and a little danger. As for an escape, that’s all just about getting away. Away from something you can’t handle, or can’t stand. Maybe it’s that in doing one you can find the other, or they are linked in that they are on the opposite side of the spectrum from normal and everyday.

And so whatever you find it being, adventure or escape, you do it to get out: out of wherever you are physically, out of your current mindframe, and out of what you know.

I’m seeing the big triangle of a delta sign right now. Change—the more things change, the more they seem the same blah blah. I’ve always been fascinated with the Buddhist viewpoint of the I, the person, as a verb, not the same as you were ten years or ten minutes ago. It’s kind of beautiful that we’re constantly changing but also kind of sad and scary. Being alive can be really overwhelming. And at times underwhelming. There’s that change again. But I don’t want to have to achieve a zen state to be able to understand this, I just want to be at a place where I’m okay with it. And I guess I’m saying that traveling can be a step in that direction? Anyway, whatever this post is about, or whatever it ended up being about, let’s leave it at adventure and escape are in the same vein, and an important part of life. And the change that comes with that. 

Disney dealings

In high school Asian history I was taught that the Chinese were innovators, but the Japanese knew how to take things and make them better. Cars. Game shows. Fast food. So naturally, the big question for me when I arrived at Narita airport was: could Disneyland Tokyo really be better than Disneyland USA?

I grew up on Disney. As a child, my dream career was Disney princess. Pocahantas, Jasmine, and Ariel were my favorites, and beyond being my go-to Halloween costume choices, they were my heroines and imaginary best friends. Gradually, my “Disney phase” ended, but I’ve never forgotten the words to a Lion King song or the memories from our family vacation to Disney World. And living in Southern California has relit the fire—I’m the proud new owner of the Southern Californian Disneyland annual pass and that is a privilege I’m planning on using and abusing.

The big deal in the Japanese world of Disney is DisneySea. Just like California Adventures Park is companion to our Disneyland in Anaheim, and Animal Kingdom is connected to Disney World in Orlando, Disney Sea is a park Japan can call its own. Armed with souvenir popcorn buckets and Mickey Mouse cutout Crocs, Japanese Disney fans brave the sweltering heat of summer and rainstorms of tsunami season to ride on Journey to the Center of the Earth, watch the revamped Fantasmic show, and of course meet Mr. Mickey Mouse. Disneymania is at an all time high in Tokyo, but with a slightly different flavor. Their favorites are Stitch, Mike Wazowski, and Duffy the Disney Bear. As for the last guy, who’s kind of unheard of to anyone outside of Japan, the Duffy craze is a bit out of hand. Duffy is this teddy bear that Minnie gives to Mickey like one time, when he’s going off to sea. Duffy bears, along with his endless wardrobe and pink girlfriend, Shellie May, can be seen on the backpacks of schoolgirls, cuddled by babies in strollers, and on grown women’s cell phones. Easily recognized by his Mickey mouse shaped paws and tendency to wear sailor outfits, Duffy bear has easily become the second most popular symbol of Disney. So DisneySea has its own mascot.

What really sets DisneySea apart is the layout of the park. Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, and Toon Town are great, but Venice, 1940s American Waterfront, and Agrabah? It’s no real competition. At DisneySea, I can walk from the gelato bar after a gondola ride to a swing jazz concert at New York Harbor. Did I mention that Aladdin is one of my favorite movies? On the Arabian coast, I can take a magic carpet ride, cruise on Genie at the double decker carousel, and visit the Agraban marketplace. And best of all during the summer, underground and air-conditioned Mermaid Lagoon is completely decked out with fluorescent fish, and in Ariel’s playground: both Ursula’s lair and the “Part of Your World” cave. Disney geek heaven.

So for me, as more of a Disney aficionado than a theme park junkie, DisneySea gets high points for style and flair. So what if the scariest ride is Splash Mountain set in a volcano and Mickey speaks Japanese? In any case, for now, it’s better that Disneyland California as close, because I sure as hell can’t afford a 52000 yen annual pass to DisneySea, or a whopping 80000 yen annual pass for the two Tokyo parks. For now, I’m happy to check out Cars Land and the new Carthay Restaurant and Bar. DisneySea: I will return. 

Coed dynamics, nihon style

Segregation is very much alive in Japan. Specifically, gender segregation. Its presence can be felt in America too, for sure, but I wonder if there are other places with such a wide divide present for reasons other than religion. Maybe you aren’t even convinced there is a big gender separation in Japan. But according to the Japan Times, “when it comes to gender equality, Japan has no shortage of distressing figures.” But without even going into gender equality, there are things any casual outside observer might realize about Japan while hanging out on a college campus.

First of all, in coed clubs, the girls hang out with the girls and the boys hang out with the boys. What, you may ask, is even the point of having mixed gender clubs then? At lunch meetings, you can literally pick out the divide and see all males to the left of the room and females on the right. Occasionally a brave boy may wander up to the edge of the divide to start conversation, but in general there isn’t much inter-gender mixing. I joined the racquetball club at my school, and at times it was almost straight out ridiculous watching a match between a boy and girl. Easily, the best girl was maybe sort of a match for one of the less-experienced boys. In a set, the girl would sort of daintily sweep the ball so that it hit the wall, and if the ball was a little out of reach she might half-heartedly swing for it, but 85% of the time the winner would be a boy, even if you can tell he’s going easy on the girl. But when boys play boys, the style of play is very different. Each takes shots low on the wall that are actually difficult to return, and boys can slide and dive for the ball. Different genders have actual distinctive playing styles. It can be argued that biomechanically, males and females have different body structures and might want to move their bodies in different ways that are more advantageous to scoring and winning a match, but this is beyond that. It’s like in any social context, and probably even at home, girls have a certain set role. At team dinners, a freshman girl will get tea for everyone. Girls organize the parties. But a boy is usually the president. Okay, maybe this is getting a little into gender equality.

Another odd thing: it can actually be pretty difficult to discern Japanese couples. Huh? Those two are going out? I haven’t even seen them talk to each other before, what? I don’t know if discreet dating is the right term, but at times it seems to have a secretive air. In a society where girls are at times in your face cute, and being unmarried at age thirty is a problem, you might think that having a boyfriend or girlfriend is something you might flaunt. Why are couples so hard to pick out? Another mystery.

And one more small observation: my host dad mentioned to me that as little girls, maybe kindergarten age, start to get older, they become less close with their fathers. This is pretty much a hard and fast rule. So there are no real Daddy’s girls.

Well this is only the very tip of the iceberg. And as globalization and culture exchange continue to move forward, male/female norms are changing. We shall see.

So far

Beginning research by typing in a keyword as general as “Japan” is probably not the greatest decision if you’re attempting to get started on a paper, especially one that requires fourteen sources. However, without any idea of what kind of scholarly journal articles there are out on the subject, I thought that a really general JSTOR search would help me find something specific to focus on. Ignoring results on “The brown frog of genus Rana from Honshu” and “The width of shore platforms in Britain, Canada, and Japan,” there were some interesting-looking hits on topics like smoking prevalence, gender and value orientations, and trends in old-age functioning and disability in Japan. For my first annotated source, I chose to look at an article titled “Gender and Value Orientations—What’s the Difference!? The Case of Japan and the United States.” Finding this article reminded me that I wanted to compare Japan and America, and the topic was of interest to me and seemed fairly easy to understand. Reading through the article, though the focus of the survey was on values, and associating men and women with public and private spheres respectively, I found it easy to connect the ideas to what I personally experienced and saw in my time abroad. Going off of that, hopefully I will be able to find more sources that are stimulating in such a way. 

Prior to Wednesday’s writing class, I mostly disliked research. As a fairly disorganized person, for me research brings up memories of finding nothing on a subject and half-heartedly attempting to make irrelevant articles seem like they belonged on the works cited page. Sure, I can conduct a JSTOR search as well as the average college student, but research always seemed like just another thing you had to do for a paper, maybe not quite as bad as actually writing it but a pain nonetheless. As a Kinesiology major, I was used to finding articles that I didn’t have access to, which was especially disheartening if that article was very pertinent to what I was writing a lab report on. After all this frustration and confusion, it’s becoming clearer to me that research can actually be carried out in a relatively painless way. By using tools like Zotero, citing becomes much easier. Choosing subcategories in your topic and picking certain keywords can also help to refine a search. Learning techniques like this will make the research process more efficient and enjoyable. 
So as of now, I’m at the beginning of research for this paper, and have a long way to go. The direction this paper is going to go remains pretty uncertain, but I think the sources I find will help guide it along, help me to find the niche I want to investigate more deeply. As I embark on this research journey, the next step is to read more articles, and see which ones will help me write my next paper. I’m not sure how I’ll determine this yet, but I’m sure it’ll get figured out along the way.