Your First Experience with Japan

[losdutchmen]

Ok, second attempt at getting peoples' minds off of waiting another couple of weeks for notification. I would put a disclaimer on here, but I can't think of a way people could take this topic the wrong way. Hopefully no one finds a loophole and takes a negative tangent.

Think back, what was your first experience with Japan? Where did it start? How did you get interested? What was the "thing" that led to you wanting to pack up and move to a small island nation halfway around the world?

I'll let others start this one....

[ali_the_ant]

My high school was offering a judo class in my first year. I enrolled and liked it so much I joined an official club at my local University. My Sensei had an agreement with an old friend in Japan that on alternating years the coaches would bring students to each other's countries for two weeks of training/sight-seeing/cultural exchange. Two years after I had joined my Sensei asked me if I would like to go to Japan. Other than judo I really had no idea or connection to Japan and Japanese culture, but I thought it would be fun and a good experience. I went to Japan for those two weeks and was just floored by how nice and kind everyone was (especially my host family). The food was unbelievable too! When I started University I started taking Japanese language classes and in my second year I went on a year-long exchange to Japan. That experience was just as amazing but I was able to experience Japan more from a local point-of-view than a tourist one. Since then I've got it in my head that I would like to work in Japan and experience Japanese culture from an employee's perspective (instead of a tourist or student's).

[SeaJay]

I actually thought about starting a thread with this topic last night! I'm glad someone did.

My very, very first contact with Japanese culture was through my grandparents. They are globetrotters and when I was about 9 or so they went to Japan. My grandmother brought me back this beautiful rice paper and on the front of it a lady was painted in an extremely elaborate kimono. I was so in love with the fan and almost immediately started telling everyone I could that my favorite foreign country was Japan.

In middle school, my art teacher did a Japanese inspired art section (we were doing block printing, making Japanese clay tea cups, and doing some origami) with us and as a special treat she took us to the Asian Cultures museum in town. My hometown isn't all that big, so I suppose it was kind of strange that we had an Asian Cultures museum. It's very small but the exhibits they did have were awesome. We got to take part in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, learn how to use chopsticks, learn the history and tradition behind origami and also learned a little about Japanese theater and the Samurais. By the time we finished our day at the museum I was even more in love with Japan. I bought a beautiful Geisha doll in the gift shop - she still sits on my shelf.

In the later years of middle school and much of high school I got into anime. My very first one was Rurouni Kenshin and as a result I got very interested in Japanese history. Anime was how I fed my craving for any kind of Japanese culture the rest of grade school.

In college, I was able to finally pick and choose any classes that I wanted to take. I started out as a theatre major and in my theatre history classes we actually learned a lot about Japanese theatre and I fell more in love with the culture. When I changed over to English Writing & Rhetoric I took a Japanese Women's Literature class to cover my lit credit, an Asian Traditions class to cover my religion credit (I went to a private catholic college) and two semesters of Japanese (would have taken four if I had had the time in my schedule ) to cover my language credit. I took almost every class having to do with Japanese they offered.

It was in my Japanese language class that I learned of the JET program (my sensai was an alum), but at the time I wrote it off because teaching wasn't exactly what I wanted to do at the time. It wasn't until last October, in the middle of a small post-grad life crisis, that I thought of the program again. It seemed to click all of the sudden. Everything I'd been doing, my English degree, my love for Japan, the Japanese culture classes I'd taken in college finally added up. They all converged in the JET program.

And here I find myself, dying with anticipation.

[nicole.ai]

I wish I could say my first experience with Japan was something profound, but it's not. My mom is Japanese, so my first experience with Japan was technically at the moment of my conception.

In all seriousness, I didn't really grow up with Japanese culture in the forefront, but it was something I was wholly aware of as my mom taught me tiny things here and there, like words, phrases, stories and songs. I visited Japan when I was 4 and 6, but then after that my family was not able to afford return trips since we are a family of 6, and it's impossible trying to pick and choose who can go visit. Japanese culture has always been something I felt peripherally a part of, but I never extensively studied in order to feel more ingrained in it (except for taking Japanese language classes in high school). I feel like this program would be a good way for me to immerse myself into the part of my heritage I'm not as familiar with, without feeling like a tourist visiting distant relatives.

[Otenba]

My first experience of Japan was my first ever two week holiday in my life - November 2007 spent in Tokyo.
I was aged 23. It was also my first ever flight on a plane (way to pick it eh?).
Holiday idea was inspired by curiousity of various pieces of Japanese culture for most involved; particularly music videogames, arcades, anime, manga... etc.
There was 4 of us for this trip and it was amazing to go. The exchange rate meant the holiday was reasonably cheap for us too!

Shame it wasn't the same for our second trip in March 2011.
That really was a shock when the tsunami disaster happened mid-holiday and the aftershocks that happened afterwards... wasn't easy to cope with considering the UK isn't known for it's natural disasters.

My partner and I still want to go back again regardless though. I think after seeing Japan cope so well with such a horrific thing, I think our love for the country and it's people shot up.

[punnyIA]

Oh wow...thats kinda a difficult question.

Since I was little I've been obsessed with small intricate things. So when my parents would take me to 2nd hand shops like Goodwill, or salvation army, I would instantaneously gravitate towards small decorative Japanese items like antique sake cups, Japanese tea cups, ceramics or porcelain figurines.

I think my first "real" experience of Japanese culture though...was the Japan Unit in 3rd grade (elementary school). From what I remember, our teacher taught us how to fold cranes, how to write kanji (my first kanji was 雨), and we got to eat sushi for the first time (which I didn't like so much at the time). I think what made the biggest impact on me was writing kanji. My classmates didn't like writing kanji, and at the time I wasn't very good at anything, but writing kanji made sense to me because....it's a picture.

Later on in middle school, I got pulled in a little deeper through watching anime and reading manga like Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura (Cardcaptors). I eventually befriended other kids in middle school who liked anime. My friend Lyz in particular was my encouragement for learning Japanese, because she was learning it on her own and wanted someone to talk to. I think back in middle school she gave me a hiragana practice sheet. Unfortunately I could not speak conversational Japanese till I took a few classes in college...but that's at least how my love of Japan started. :3

[merkypie]

My mom is half Japanese so yeah, echoing nicole.ai's experience. But, I'm a 4th generation in America, she's a 3rd... So, there's not a overtly strong Japanese cultural in my life (my mom's parents decided to raise her "American", so they didn't teach her the language or anything and that's how she raised me). Anyway, I was doing a report on my ancestry when I was in elementary school and my mom told me to do it on Japan and that caused me to be more curious about that part of me. Then it just snowballed with my cousins sending me stuff from over there and my grandma talking about how much she enjoyed it when she lived there... etc etc. So yeah, family reasons. Want to really experience the whole "motherland" effect.

[btlef0]

My first experience was just after I had finished high school. So as a 17 year old, instead of going to the traditional 'Schoolies' celebrations in Queensland, Australia, myself and some friends decided skiing in Niseko would be a better option...it was!

The people were exceptionally friendly...the owner/worker of a bar (Loaf Lounge!) even let us slide around the streets in Kutchan on his skimboard...very fun!! And the climate was amazing haha.Been searching for a way back ever since

[Maya_NaganoPA]

This is actually a great topic to start, since you will probably be asked this question a million times once you get here. Good to think about it and prepare an answer now

[word]

When I was something like seven years old, I watched this PBS movie called "Big Bird In Japan." Japan seemed vaguely interesting, and the chick playing Kaguya-hime gave me a weird feeling in my groin. Fast forward ten years later, and I'm a fat, desperate weeaboo with an insatiable appetite for japanimation and the worst infection of yellow fever that one can imagine (note yellow feathers in my pic). It took a few more years for me to make it to Japan, but I managed it somehow, and in that time, I developed a hatred for most japanimation, cured myself of the worst effects of yellow fever (by satisfying it), and learned how to stop being so pathetically desperate.

Still a fat weeaboo, though.

That should set the bar low enough to allow everyone to be truly honest here.

[eacat]

My HS exposure to Japanese culture was the usual--food and the dubbed anime they showed on adult swim. That being said, I didn't get really interested in Japan until I took a Japanese history course on a whim. My professor had us read literature that was contemporaneous to the period we were studying. That's what got me interested. I think we read Soseki's Kokoro. I know we read Tanizaki's Naomi, and that's what really got me hooked. The rest, as they say, is history.

If you haven't read Oe's A Personal Matter, do yourself a favor and read it. The translation is fantastic, and the writing is wonderfully grotesque. Oe won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature.

That being said, anyone have impressions on Murakami's latest book, 1Q84?

[Ertai87]

I'm pretty sure anyone answering this thread with anything other than "Sailor Moon" or "Nintendo" is lying. So yeah, Sailor Moon and Nintendo. (That's a joke, BTW, for those about to scream about Otaku-ness and so on. It's true for me, though.)

But in terms of things that were actually advertised as Japanese and were not (very poorly, in retrospect) attempted to be "Americanized", I'd probably say when I started reading Gaijin Smash back in Highschool. Believe it or not, despite all the awkward situations and silly things that happened to him, that blog made me want to participate in JET, and made me want to study Japanese in University, which led me to joining my school's Japanese Club and becoming more acquainted with Japan in terms of things that are not subculture.

[losdutchmen]

Alright, 10 replies, I can post now...

As far back as I can remember, my dad has had a cedar chest in his bedroom. Yes, a chest made out of cedar wood. It smelled great, and it added to the mystique of its mysterious contents. Basically, it was a treasure chest; odds and ends saved from the past, little bits of memories. A lot of the items inside were military mementos, my father and his father both served during wars. I can remember watching my dad pull little things out and describe what they were, where they came from. One of the "treasures" in the chest was a Japanese marine's cap from WWII. Someone had brought it home after the war and it ended up in the cedar chest. I remember how neatly it was folded, and how reverently my father held it when he showed it to me. The little speck of rust, or blood? If you looked inside the cap, you could still see the name written in kanji. I always wondered what the name was. I remember trying it on as a kid, it was really tight, making me wonder how small the person who used to own it was. That cap sparked an interest in Japan in me. Growing up in rural Iowa, that cap was about as exotic as it got. Holding it gave me a weird feeling, knowing that it came from so far away and from a person and a place so different than myself. That cap led to my obsession with whatever I could find about Japan, which was extremely limited because of where I lived. But I managed to develop a plan to become a ninja, teach myself to eat spaghetti with chopsticks, and copy Japanese calligraphy from a couple of old books in the library. I've added a few more "Japan" experiences since then, but that hat was where it all started.

[is_chang]

My first experience with Japan was really Sailor Moon. Since then, I vowed to one day be fluent enough to be able to read all the card-sized stickers I own and be a true Sailor Moon fan who could understand everything they were doing. Then I got over Sailor Moon.

Fast forward to a few years later when I started watching Hana Yori Dango. Include an introduction to sushi. Then fast forward to my trip to Japan where I stayed for two weeks (only stayed in Nagoya, haven't even been to Tokyo yet!) where everything I thought I knew about Japan was completely wrong. Now I just want to go back and figure out what Japan is really about. Such a complex and fascinating culture.

[shinmei2006]

Such elaborate stories...

At age 6, Dragonball and Sailor Moon. Very first experience with Japan. Simple as that.