The rhythm in the title of this blog is taken from the famous character of the legendary film, Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars.From the 5th grade, I've been a serious fun of the film. It's made it easier for me to start conversation with people from all over the world who I first meet and bond with them.
In this blog, I write a lot about Japan. But for the fact, I don't live in Japan. Honestly speaking, back when I was there, I was desperately looking for the opportunity to get out of Japan and live a totally new life in a totally new world. I didn't like Japan, my mother nation. I used to hate Japan's lack of diversity, Japanese language, Japanese products, Japanese cityscape and landscape, the way Japanese people are. Everything about Japan looked pointless and ugly to me. Once when i was in late teen, I tried to list up all the shortcoming, at least for me, of Japan. About when I reached roughly 40 or 50 shortcomings, I went to a rest room. I was washing my hands, then I looked at a mirror, found I myself was the very Japanese thing. I was so desperate and stopped counting. Looking back, it was totally an adolescent depression that almost people would have. But this has been a sort of a cornerstone of the way I think about my life and defined (or in some case, limited) my life a great deal.
One of the good things about getting old is that you could gradually accept the way myself is. In my case I could gradually take off the blindfold on my eyes and start looking at a bright side of Japan. Coincidentally the gradual change of my attitude toward Japan has come at the time of Japanese economic decline, and moreover Tohoku great earthquake and Tsunami in Mar 2011. So it may be because of a combination of the process of getting old and compassion for the struggling country. But whatever it may be, it is also true that over the years Japan and Japanese culture has been widely spread around the world and got serious popularity. It dawned on me that when I'd refused to take even a single look at Japan, the world had learned a lot about Japan and discovered there's something special there. I felt I re-discovered Japan through the western media and foreigners who passionately love the country. And I have to admit it's much more feel-so-nice to hear about Japan from non-Japanese than Japanese, simply because those foreigners talk about Japan with considerable passion (not all of them but many of them do). On the top of that, to describe why they are impressed with Japan, they present comparisons between Japan and say America or China or UK or Italy or S.Korea or whatever countries. When I grew up in Japan I was taught things are the way they are because that's the way they are. There's few logical reasonings, which drove me mad. But Japanese things once I thought pointless or stupid are sometimes have some good points in comparison with other cultures, and that cleared my mind.
I'm still not sure what this blog is about, but I think it can be read as a diary about how I'm re-discovering Japan and what does it mean to me as a Japanese expat.
I never try to write something we can generalize, because what's presented here is myself and filtered through my world view extremely. But still I'm really glad if you find it interesting.
P.S if you know some cool stuffs, I hope you will let me know. Funny pictures, interesting websites, cool videos, nice toys or goods, whatever, I will really appreciate you.
