Early Impressions of Japan

My first two weeks in Japan have yielded some interesting experiences, and not always the experiences I thought I would have. Certainly, I have seen cute characters on otherwise severe street signs; amusing Engrish; Japanese people have laughed at me and stared at me and bowed at me and I, standing at my lofty 1.90m, have received a lot of 「わぁぁ！背が高いねぇぇ！」 ("Whoa, you're so tall!"). Thus far it has been - as I really ought to have been able to predict - a bewildering, oftentimes tiring, charming and fascinating experience. I am so excited about this opportunity to start bringing my experiences in and observations of Japanese people and culture to life and to light with my photography.

Each week I am to submit two photographs for the class, upon a given theme. The theme for this week was "Early Impressions of Japan". A couple of apologies before I go on - never a great start: firstly, I have three pictures this week, not the required two. This is mainly as I love these three pictures so much that I couldn't choose. Secondly, as this is only the second week of this semester, and as such we have neither read much nor had very much time to research, the comments I'm about to make are mainly my own thoughts and observations. On that note...



I am so pleased that I managed to capture this moment. I was standing at Kuzuha station, waiting for a train to Kyoto, this train happened to stop, the door opened in front of me and there stood three Japanese people in traditional dress: two men in hakama and one woman in a kimono. I had my camera out anyway so I snapped this shot.

This photograph, I feel, is quite representative of my early impressions of Japan. As someone who has never been to Japan before, has only studied Japan from afar and as such can only have based my expectations of Japan on my studies and what I had seen in the media. What I expected, and what I see here, is a country which constantly mixes its past, present and (in a way) future. Here, we see three people dressing in the costumes of their past, travelling in the clean, fast and extremely efficient public transport of their present - perhaps with the man on the right holding the future in his little pink bag? To me, this is a true clash of the ancient and the current.



This picture was also taken at Kuzuha station, while waiting for my train to Kyoto. The platform was now clear, most people having filed on to the previous train, and alone on the platform were myself, and this other man, standing near me. I jumped at the chance to take this picture.

This picture, for me, confirmed my expectations that Japan is a place of beauty amongst the ugliness - and vice versa. Allow me to explain. From the pictures and videos I had seen of Japan, the (natural) scenery is beautiful and dramatic, flat plains of rice paddies and fields, leading to hills and mountains swathed in green trees. Amongst all this, pylons and powerlines and concrete jungles haphazardly mar the otherwise striking landscape. This is what I see in this picture. And in front of it all, this man, standing alone, in silhouette. I still can't decide whether this picture is beautiful or lonely. Maybe it is both. Despite the fact that (at least now, so early on) living in Japan can sometimes feel like you're living on a different planet, amongst so many crowding people, loneliness exists here, too.



Finally, a photograph I took on a street in Namba, Osaka. Japanese people hurry by in the foreground, while a taxi waits patiently in the middle distance, and in the background, the bright neon lights that are so inextricably associated with Japan. They speak of new technology, cloying advertising and a whole lot of electricity consumption. I almost feel as if that green light is beckoning me to go, onwards, into the experiences I am yet to have. So that's exactly what I shall do.