The Trip Around Japan

In my four years in university, I traveled around the 47 prefectures of Japan, experienced and saw the various facets of Japanese culture and a wide myriad of natural and man-made sceneries. I intended to write all these thoughts into a book in Japanese, and publish it for Japanese all around Japan. Unfortunately, it did not all work out as planned. Faced with such obstacles, I had no choice but to take the second best option: to post them online, into a blog. And this is it!

Note: This is, after all, kind of a travel journal of my thoughts and experiences, and not a travelling guide nor a critique. 

Also, since these entries were originally written in Japanese, and the target audience were Japanese, the contents in English and Japanese vary slightly. 

If you have any comments or suggestions,

please feel free to leave a comment!

The Japanese have three quirk beliefs: 1. Japan is a small country. 2. Japan is the same throughout the whole country. 3. Foreigners can never understand nor master Japanese culture/ language.

Of course, all of the above are not quite true.

Firstly, the Japanese is forced to think that their country is small, probably because they are surrounded by giant countries, both in geographical and historical terms. Geographically, they are surrounded by China, Russia and a little far away, the United States of America. Historically, they were involved in World War II, where big countries like Germany, Russia, and the United States of America were participants too.

However, say this (Japan is a small country) to people like ME, and you will get a baffled look, the kind of look you get when you tell your friends “I did not study for this test”, when you actually scored full marks. Oh yes, I come from Singapore, probably the smallest country with a developed, or perhaps over-developed economy (and population).

“Japan is small…. WHAT? What’s wrong? Did you get your facts right? Your map? Your vocabulary? Your mind?”

In fact, Japan is ranked 62nd in the world in terms of country size, and ranked 10th in terms of population. Try finding Singapore in those rankings, and you would have to start from the back.

Secondly, Japan is not homogeneous, not in terms of race, nor in terms of culture/ scenery. Yes, Japan has very few foreigners (difference in race) in terms of percentage, but this small fraction cannot be overlooked. And do not forget the Ainu (of which I did my graduation thesis on), the Okinawan people, and of course the Resident-Koreans, -Chinese- Peruvians and -Brazilians.

Japan is not the same throughout the country too. Try traveling from the north of Hokkaido to the south of Kagoshima, or even to Okinawa, and you will see a wide myriad of scenery, experience a spectrum of cultural practices and hear a potpourri of regional dialects.

Along the way, don’t be surprised if you find deserts (yes, deserts DO EXIST in Japan, the mos well known one in Tottori prefecture), amazing waterfalls (well not as magnificent as the Niagara Falls but still…), beautiful Japanese gardens, dense forests, and so on.

Thirdly, Japanese language, well yes, is a difficult language in some sense: it has a pretty complex system of keigo (honorific forms), complicated ways of counting items, a whole range of onomatopoeia words, and a nightmare for non-Chinese-speaking foreigners: KANJI. And spoken Japanese language usually requires a certain understanding of the culture, manners and the mindset, which is another headache for foreigners.

However, apart from the above, Japanese is pretty easy, in terms of pronunciation, tenses; there is no definite or indefinite articles, there is no number or gender or case for nouns; and so on. In fact, I know of many non-Japanese friends who have mastered Japanese (well not to the level of a native, but impressive enough).

Japanese is no longer a language unique to the Japanese. Neither is the Japanese way of thinking, the Japanese culture or beliefs.

This book (now blog) was intended to dismantle the three myths Japanese have, and I attempted at it by travelling all over Japan in my four years here. Of course, I do not daresay that I know everything about Japanese culture and language, but this is just a little attempt at something that not many Japanese have not done before, let alone foreigners.

I hope that Japanese readers, or foreigners living in Japan, or even foreigners living outside Japan, would give me ideas or suggestions, of my next destination within Japan, or tell me something interesting so I could learn more.

That’s all for now. Enjoy reading =)