Monday, July 28, 2008
Nihon-koku: first impressions
Well, it's quite hard now to write about the first impressions, as I also have some second and third impressions... Nevertheless, I'll try to make some nice description about it. (trying to ignore that the only option that has been voted in the poll was one I didn't put, and didn't get much votes either...)So, before the first impressions, is important to know that most of us has some prejudices about Japan. For example, I thought that Tokyo is a super chaotic city, that the Japanese society is very maschilist, that they don't have any free time and their culture, although interesting, is so much different from ours that is very difficult to appreciate.
Well, in most of the points, I realised very early I was wrong. Some points, I still don't have a clear idea about. So, for example, I immediately realised that Tokyo is indeed an extremely vast and busy city, but is not at all chaotic. On the contrary, is amazingly ordered and clean. People are very polite and trustful (I will come back on this later). The metro and train system is really as efficient as we think it is, but it surprised me also about how clean it is. (I even saw some cleaners cleaning the spaces between the tiles...) So, finally, although with more people, Tokyo gave me the impression to be much easier to live in then Paris or London (I will try to avoid comparisons with any u.s. city or place or piece of culture, as it would be not a fair comparison, better stay among countries with a history, some culture and some will of living without having necessarily a car). About maschilisim, it appear to me to be a very difficult judgement. There are mainly two aspects to take into account. One is that Japanese deeply rely on their traditions, so a woman not taking care of children and do the same job of men is sort of incomprehensible for them. On the other hand, they are very kind people, so women cannot be treated badly. We met quite several girls that work and proceed in the career, but they don't have children. I honestly don't know how long this thing will go on. The general impression I had was quite optimistic though, and I think that every gain japanese women will have, it will be a true one, not like us that we can enter into politics, but only by means of blow jobs.... so I have the feeling it is a very difficult matter to judge.
As for free time... well, at the end it is not so diffent then us. They stay many hours in the office, but not working 100%, so at the end is very similar to what happens in big companies here, where you cannot leave early, but you can check your email from time to time.... Is very interesting the social enviroment they form during work. I like it, at least in young age, because very often, if you move in a city only for work, the office is really the place where you meet more people. Of course, it can become too much when men cannot go home with their wives because they have to go for dinner with the boss....
Same things for the kids... we have this idea that japanese students have a hard time in school, because of the competition and the "afternoon" activities.... well, this can be actually be compared to u.s., and there is certanly worse, because the society is extremely more capitalistic, so only money counts. What you get is that the football quarterback enters in harvard and the black guy don't... in Japan the society is more meritocratic, maybe severe, but not different from many university campus we have in Europe.
Last but not least... the culture. That was the thing that amezed me most. For those of you who read the Gattopardo, is a bit a reinterpretation of the famous sentence. "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
In this case the interpretation is that human being can grow in very different enviroments and in very different backgrounds, but if you let them develope by themselves for enough time, you get a very similar conclusion. I would be very curious to know if we would have let the native americans or the africans grow by their own, if this theory would be confirmed or not. For now, I think the asiatic culture is our only mean of comparison. Well, I have to say that is really amazing to see how their habits are so similat to ours, although they express it in a such different way. For example, the food. They go out eating together, they give importance to the meal as we (italians) do, and they are very skilled cookers. The difference is of course in the kind of food, in the tradition of eating, of dinking tea, of sitting at the table. But, as soon as you accept these different way of doing things, you feel immediately at home. As I mentioned before, the kindness and the politeness of the people really helps in these matters. But this is not the only example. Also religion, festivities, country festivals, theatre, literature, poetry, everything seems a real parallel to our colture. Everything we are used to, there it exists also, it only looks different. To me this is really great, because you can discover so many new things, always keeping your habits there.
Ok, well, I just mentioned a little bit some first impressions, to give you a hint about how enthusiastic I've been of this trip. In the next post I will be more precise about some aspect of the country impressed me more.
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1 comment:
visti cosi`, su due piedi, sembriamo dei dementi...
in realta` siamo profondamente pervasi dallo spirito scintoista del Geta-san, colui che sconfisse il male stando in equilibrio con i sandali giapponesi.
(Anche se effetivamente sembriamo piu` il fichissimo del baseball e Coccinella)
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