(((＠°▽°＠)八(＠°▽°＠)))

( ^_^)/ Konnichiwa sekai!

Tokyo is quite possibly the greatest city on earth, yet I could never live there. I’m not sure I could survive the temptation of endless Kapibara-san and Hello Kitty merchandise, nomiho, and pretty boys that dress better than me. Not to mention the crowds, chikans, and the horrible exchange rate. But despite being incompatible with my lifestyle, Tokyo is an amazing place to go to and observe a unique culture that seems so alien but also shares some universal traits with your culture and mine. As a semester abroad returnee fresh from a four-month stay in Tokyo, I’m here to share my gaijin perspective on anything Tokyo-centric.

In my time abroad, I lived with a host family, made nihonjin friends, and studied alongside English speaking Japanese students at Jochi daigaku. Getting to meet these new tomodachis and hearing about their dreams and opinions has given me a better picture of the Japanese psyche. What motivates people, how they feel about the world and its issues, why otaku culture is taking over the world, or even what the big deal is with blood type and why it matters: these are all of interest when looking at Japanese mass culture and and the ideas behind it. From the perspective of an outsider, this blog aims to find the similarities and differences between American and Japanese culture, and the ways the two have influenced and molded each other.

As an eager consumer of American pop culture and a short-term participant in the Tokyo scene, I have some thoughts on cross-cultural comparison and exchange. My Tokyo experience was *cliché alert* life changing and eye opening, and holds a dear place in my heart. It's a bummer that Tokyo is more part of my past than my future, but because the experience is receding farther in my rearview mirror, I want to reflect on my adventure now, and form and record my thoughts while they’re still fresh. Potential posting topics may include: tokYOLO and other gaijin mistakes; all-night karaoke and last train culture; changing family forms and why my dad takes a bath before me; emoticons and why is everything kawaii; earthquakes, train suicides, poorly planned Mt. Fuji trips and other things to watch out for; hotter than hot summers and how do people deal; face masks and other train etiquette; salaryman-centric culture and what this means for everyone else; matching cell phone charms and where do I find a boyfriend; etc.

In a more general sense, I might look more deeply into the concept of travel and adventure. Why do we travel? How far are tourists willing to go outside of their comfort zone? When you move to a new place, at what point can you call yourself a local rather than the new guy? As someone who feels pretty deeply rooted to my hometown, I am maybe even more so curious about what gets us out and about in the world, and why I have this urge to explore. And for those of us who are more the Garden State “feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist” type, here’s to finding that place and making it your own.

“And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
Then it’s time to go
And define your destination
There’s so many different places to call home”

- Death Cab for Cutie 
You Are a Tourist

Dedicated to heinous stories

Heinous stories, a tumblog dedicated to the study abroad experience of one American college girl, is actually operated by a friend of mine. Who better to relate my blog to than someone who shared an experience with me? Paku (nickname I just made up), an Oregon native who similarly studied Japanese for a few years before making the trip to Tokyo, is fellow adventure-seeking globetrotter who spent her previous semester abroad in Chile. As a Tokyo newcomer and undergraduate student she is fairly inexperienced in the world she has immersed herself in, but she’s a quick learner and has some compelling insights on the bunka, or culture of urban Tokyo.

Now that the abroad experience is over, Paku has pretty much stopped posting. However, during the semester her goal was to post every day, though she failed pretty miserably at that. It ended up being more like once every two weeks, though the posts would cover the timespan since the last.

Paku’s blog is fairly obscure. Paku did post a link to her blog via her facebook, which was how I found it, but she wasn’t very actively promoting it or trying to get tumblr followers or anything desperate like some other friends I have. Her shared link got ten likes and four comments, which gives us an idea of the blog’s audience; the comments were all from friends who had been a part of the same study abroad program and were mentioned in posts on the site. Basically, it’s a pretty personal and intimate collection of posts, more like a diary that she’s letting her friends see.

Each post is a list of whatever happened in the time since the previous post, so it’s difficult to choose a real stand-out, but her final entry, post-Japan and entitled ヽ(´▽｀)ノ (I didn’t know you could name a post with an emoticon) was a comprehensive look at the whole experience. All of her posts showcase her great deadpan humor, and her seamless blending of Japanese and English slang. There may be a word for that, like the opposite of Engrish I guess. Here are some standouts:

**i’ll miss you…… 

7…….tabehoudais (mochiron) 

7.6 actually wait. i take back the tabehoudais. that shit made me morbidly obese. 

17. ……cute passive aggressive japanese people 

***i won’t miss...... 

……heels. i’ll wear them, but not erryday you crays. 

 “The blog post that i half-assed my way through just to show that i’m still posting,” was pretty entertaining, especially since I know Rachel (girl from the first nine items on the list) but also because I can relate to falling asleep on the train and ending up at the airport and having a getting obese off of onigiri. Paku has some interesting and strange ideas and I’m glad she shares them here.

Heinous stories is pretty related to Purikura puroland in that we’re both basing our posts on this experience of being abroad for half a year. Because we were in the same program, we went to the same school, same field trips, shared some of the same friends, etc. Though her blog is organized in a list form, and posts don’t really have any particular theme, we’re both dealing with being confronted with a culture that is very different from our own, and slowly (or arguably rapidly) falling in love with it. Her blog is far from scholarly (aside from the fact that she is a student), filled with inane, tangential observations and inappropriate language, but she still manages to capture detail in her posts.

Most of Paku’s followers, who are friends and other members of our study abroad group, are relevant to the field in that, like us, they could be authors of similar blogs. In fact, CIEE (the study abroad program we were in) gives a small stipend to students who write for the official Tokyo blog.  Some are East Asian Studies majors, or interested in pursuing careers and lives abroad in Japan. We are the soon-to-be college graduates deciding whether or not we want to pursue Japanese studies, and so are pretty relevant.

This blog is a great source of inspiration to me, I wish I could be as effortlessly funny and charismatic. Until I find that voice, I will continue to look to Heinous stories, even though it will have to be all old posts since she’s pretty much over updating. My site will be different in organization, because I want to base posts on some sort of main topic or idea and go from there. In doing so I’d like to dig a little deeper at some larger issues that bother or occupy my mind. I want to work on making my blog more personal, which I’ve had the opportunity to do with open posts, but will continue to make an effort on. In any case, hope to adopt some of Paku’s spirit into Purikura puroland and make it more clever and cute for everyone.

The obvious gaijin      

Uiggu, a self-described “blonde Japanese-speaking girl living in Tokyo with [her] Japanese man” who also sometimes does things dressed as a maid for money (“NOT THOSE THINGS” she points out), runs a blog focused on food, unnecessary cute items and daily life. Mostly she blogs about her life, in which food and cute things are sometimes involved, looking at Tokyo from a Western perspective.
      
In Et tu Tabelog, we are introduced to the post with the following:  

Oops, it’s been over a month since I last updated. It’s also been about that long since I went to the gym. I shall blame my quite insane schedule and my ?? 4 hour commute every day.

Uiggu’s casual style and smooth incorporation of katakana give a sense of familiarity as well as authenticity on her part as a newly initiated Tokyo native. Telling us about the past month, she gives us the rundown in list form of what happened, assumedly in order of importance.

Right at the top of her list is “The Worst Izakaya EVER That Actually Ruined a Perfectly Good Saturday Night By Its Crapness.” Giving the bar what she deems is a more appropriate title, full of her own flavorful language, is humorous and revealing or her personality. She’s witty, and unafraid to speak up if she’s unhappy. Uiggu then proceeds with a description of how to get to said bar:

All you need to remember is the…fact that it’s on the 8th floor of that narrow building with a weird brightly-lit comics/anime shop on the ground floor and a tiny elevator which is past that expensive bar with the blue colour scheme, under the bridge and to your left if you come out of the Hachiko exit of Shibuya station and turn right.

The descriptive language lets us know that Uiggu is observant and familiar with Shibuya, as well as giving us her feel for this particular part of it—it’s a unflatteringly-lit difficult-to-get-to place that basically sucks. Continuing down her list, number two continues in the same vein. It details her attempt to write a “Scathing Review” (her term, reused multiple times) and explains why it is such a big deal that she bothered to write it in the first place.

We can get a good sense of her emotional state when she describes herself as “INCENSED.” Yes that is a combination of bold type, caps lock, and quotation marks. You can definitely feel the emphasis there. Uiggu also uses hyperbole pretty often:

THAT’S HOW SHITTY THIS PLACE WAS. I am not even exaggerating (and some might say I do that a lot too).

With the help of parentheses, Uiggu is poking fun at herself while once again emphasizing how angry she is.

As for linking strategies, Uiggu employs the basic hyperlinking to the bar’s site and review site that she hates with such a passion, Tabelog. She actually links to Tabelog each time she mentions it, which, knowing that she has vowed never to use it again, may seem counterintuitive but she is proving a point by linking to Tabelog each time. I get it, Tabelog sucks and I will resist the temptation to click the link each time. 

Uiggu’s voice is consistent across posts, though her emotional state varies. In Et tu Tabelog, she displayed anger, but in other posts she shows excitement and happiness, such as in Hand-made Valentines –OR ELSE. This post is about the Japanese approach to Valentine’s day, and how she too has been sucked into the chocolate-making, PSP-exchanging craziness.

In terms of content, Uiggu blogs about pretty much whatever she comes across. This includes topics she’s stumbled upon on Reddit, her everyday bento making, and strangers she runs into at train stations. These topic choices give us a sense of her personality through what she’s chosen to write about, and what dominates even her non-topic-oriented posts. We get to know what she’s interested in and passionate about, along with her pet peeves and what makes her angry.

Overall, Uiggu’s voice definitely complements the subject matter of the blog. Basically, the blog is about her life so it follows that her voice is going to shine through it. Her voice is definitely what makes the blog fun and popular; any blog involving a cross-cultural element should have a lot of voice and personality. Readers want to find out what’s weird and crazy about a exotic, far-away place, maybe that they’ve never been to but dream of going to, and they want to find out about that place through a cool and funny person. Uiggu’s your girl, doitashimashite!