The Whitewashing of Avatar

I have been home for almost two weeks now. Sadface. I didn't want to leave Tokyo, I had an amazing year... I am behind on posting a few things, I know, and I'll try to get to that soon.

But first I wanted to post this. It's not directly related to Japan, and not at all to my stay in Japan, but it's something I still wanted to mention. I'm an Asian Studies major; I'm not focused solely on Japan, but also a wider variety of topics related to Asia.

Some of you have probably heard about the fuss over the live action Avatar movie that is being made by M. Night Shyamalan, due to its epic casting fail. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a popular tv show primarily aimed at kids (although I know plenty of non-kids who enjoy it as well!). It is not an anime, as it was not made in the States instead of Japan, but it has an obvious influence from anime. It draws heavily on Asian cultural influences and the creators of the series were thorough in their research. However, the live action movie, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is quite a different story...

I came across some interesting pictures/articles/videos I thought I would share. I've picked them all up through some wandering on livejournal, can't remember where I originally came across some of them.

First off, comparison of three of the main characters from http://racebending.com/v2/ that I've been seeing around (got these ones from kate-nepveu:



An in-depth video criticizing the casting




At one point it shows the Airbender casting call for each of the main characters (Wanted: Caucasian or any other race). Here is an interesting comparison between the Heroes casting call and the Airbender one. Also, lololol at the casting director for Airbender saying "We want you to dress in traditional cultural ethnic attire. If you're Korean, wear a kimono." BECAUSE KOREANS WEAR KIMONO. And pfft, what? This is a small detail that the casting director for a movie made up of Asian influences shouldn't be expected to know! You can't ask these people to do research for their movies. Even though the original Avatar did...

They also decided to use unreadable symbols rather than Chinese calligraphy in the movie. Generic fantasy squiggles are so much better than using an influential writing system that lends authenticity and is a large part of the identity and culture of the original series. It's a fantasy land. Who actually wants to use the language from the original source? It's not as if Peter Jackson made an effort to use the languages created by Tolkien or anything in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Some people say, "but it's anime! The characters LOOK white!" Oh, really? Aang is white, is he?

Here's a really interesting video about whether or not anime characters actually look Caucasian, and an article discussing the same thing.

Kamakura

Less than two weeks in Japan... :(

Whew okay I am behind on write-ups for a couple of things. But for now I want to write about Kamakura, which I went to last weekend with friends. Kamakura is a town about an hour outside of Tokyo. We were originally planning to stay overnight, but as everyone was too busy we ended up just doing a day trip. It was amazing though, I loved it - I wish I'd discovered it earlier!

The full set of photos is here. Some of my favorite photos, Kamakura was GORGEOUS.

Anyway. We got in around 10:30 or 11 in the morning, and after hopping on the cute streetcar-like Enoden train we headed off to see the Daibutsu, the second largest Buddha statue in Japan. On the way, we saw a sign for Hase Kannon Temple, and stopped there first. This is probably my favorite part of the trip. It was a beautiful, beautiful Buddhist temple. Much of Kamakura was more tropical-looking and covered in green, and Hase Temple has a beautiful garden, plus a walkway up the mountain/hillside covered with thick hydrangea bushes and other flowers, as well as bamboo trees. It had a lot of levels, and you got a great view of the ocean and the surrounding mountains/hills. It also had a cave full of little statues, that was very dark and very low and gave the tall German kid in our group some trouble. Overall, it was just so green and incredibly peaceful. Probably my favorite place that I've been to in Japan.


View of Kamakura

There were a lot of these cute states

Not entirely sure why these statues have bibs.



Next, the Daibutsu. Great big Buddha! An older Japanese man stopped to tell me I had a beautiful Japanese accent; he thought I might have been a natural speaker at first. :) That made me smile.


It was incredibly hot and humid, so we stopped for ice cream (mmmm, cassis ice cream) before heading off to another temple. I can't actually remember this one's name. Anyway, it had beautiful decorations up for tanabata (a festival on the 7th day of the 7th month, though most of the celebrations aren't actually until August, sadness) and a small inari shrine. We also ran into an Amish restaurant. In Japan. Wait, how did the Amish get to Japan?? Aren't planes...? We were so confused, but it was more of a cafe and we didn't go in to see if they were actually Amish people.


Crowd of people in front of the shrine, along with tanabata decorations

Inari statue

AMISH COOKING


Following that temple, we originally intended to do a hike and see yagura (tomb caves) along the way. However, when trying to find where the trails began, we found out that the hike actually takes about 3 hours, instead of what we thought would be 1-1/2 hours, and was quite dangerous. So we went off to find another temple that had them. They sounded really cool - exploring caves! Ooh! Unfortunately, after a forty minute or an hour walk to get to the small, out-of-the-way temple, we found it was less than enthralling. They turned out to be a hole in the cliffside, that went in about 6-10 feet. Well... it looked kind of cool from the outside at least. We sat around that temple for a little bit recovering from the walk and the hot, sticky weather, disappointed by the not-caves, but it was another beautiful spot at least.

It looked cool from the outside... This one was empty. Another, smaller one had miniature torii gates inside and a small shrine.



We took a long walk back, stopped at another small... temple? Garden? We weren't sure what it was, but it was very pretty. And also mosquito-infested. Despite spraying my legs with bug spray every hour or so, I got bitten over a half-dozen times and UGH Japanese mosquitos are worse than the ones back home! Anyway, we grabbed some ramen for dinner, picked up snacks, drinks, and fireworks (hanabi) and headed for the beach.

The previous few days were grey and rainy, but we ended up with a perfect day. It was sunny and if hot while exploring temples, it was at least great on the beach where there was a good breeze. Japanese beaches aren't terribly nice, but we spread out a blanket and started drinking, waiting for dark to set off fireworks (as it was the 4th of July and the couple of other American girls and I thought it would be fun). We saw a kitty on a leash stalking a pigeon at the start of the beach, talked, watched the huge number of dogs on the beach, and took a lot of pictures. We also soon saw the reason for a sign saying "beware of hawks" - a huge one swooped down on three Japanese teens, flying between two of them, to grab something from one girl's hand as she started shrieking and jumping away from it. Damn. I would've expected that from seagulls - oddly enough, there weren't any on the beach - but a hawk?? Wow.

Sunset was not quite as exciting as we hoped - got a few big dark clouds around that time - but it was still quite a sight and once the sun went down we set off sparklers and one larger firework. A few other people on the beach did the same.


Friends :)

Sunset



So yeah. That was an amazing trip. :) And I don't want to leave Japan, I want to do more traveling...

Ballroom Competition

A few days over a month left in Japan... =( I'm going to be sad to leave.

In the meantime, here are some photos and video of the ballroom competition I was in a few weeks ago. (Yeah, I haven't been very good at updating this lately...)

The senpai (older students) had a couple of really funny demonstrations.

First off, a cute quickstep from Waseda students: the guy is wearing a Japanese oni (demon) mask, I believe.


Darth Vader does a foxtrot:


A sexy rumba by Waseda students:


Funny Paso Doble, the guy has a great costume (Paso is described as a dance between the bull and the matador's cape):


Cha Cha from the president of the ballroom club and his partner:


As for the beginner kids... well, the older guys had a field day doing crazy things with the newbies guys' hair.

Yes, he has magazine cutouts of people glued to his hair.


Devil!


I... am very impressed that this stayed up the entire competition.


Ugh, competition makeup is scary. My partner, my friend Shiori, and me.


Mmmmm... We have some cutie senpai boys at Waseda. ;)

More ballroom circle stuff

Whew, well I haven't done a very good job of keeping up with this blog this semester. Mostly it's just that I haven't been doing as many interesting things as last semester; I've been focusing on schoolwork and my ballroom club.

For my club, we have 2 1/2-3 hours of practice twice a week. It's fairly strict compared to school clubs back home. The Japanese have a senpai/kouhai system (senpai are older or more senior students, and kouhai are the less senior - even though I'm older than some of the senpai because I'm a third year and all the other new students in the club are first years, they're still senpai because they have been in the club longer and have more seniority). I'm given a lot of leeway though since I'm a foreigner and don't quite understand the system, heh. It's not that strict for my circle though, really, apart from a lot of lining up and bowing to say please and thank you a lot.

It's a reciprocal system though - we get taught a lot in return. The Waseda ballroom team is apparently quite famous in Japan (I believe it's the biggest dance clubs in the country, and one of the top). Because joining a circle is usually a pretty serious thing in Japan, where you are expected to keep it up for all 4 years, there are a large number of senpai - whenever we dance, we have two senpai watching us, correcting our steps and poise. It's great. At GW, the number of more experienced students rapidly shrinks, so there's not nearly as much personal tutoring going on. I wish I could stay longer to learn more, or that we could go at a quicker pace - I've picked up so much more in the last month here than I did in the year and a half-ish that I did it back home! I wish they would let me learn more than the very basics along with the freshmen kids though, since I already have some experience with ballroom. =/ They're not teaching me anything more advanced. Well, at least I'm getting more solid poise down and knowledge of the steps on my own instead of just following my partner.

One snag that I've run into is needing a full suit in order to see or attend a ballroom competition. Very strict rules on that; have to wear a plain white blouse underneath, plain black shoes, and skin-colored tights (no colored) if it's a skirt suit. This is quite a big difference from the competitions I went to with the GW team, where people dressed comfortably (since, especially for competitions that were several states away, we were incredibly sleep deprived and you'd find plenty of people passed out on the floor, under the chairs or a table, when not dancing). For most Japanese students, that's not a problem; suits are absolutely necessary at some point, such as when you become a third year and have to start job hunting. Most students have them already. However, as an exchange student... I don't even have a suit and home and I certainly didn't bring one to Japan. They're too expensive to buy and I wouldn't have room to bring it home anyway. So I have to find a suit to borrow for the two or three competitions we have before I leave.

During Golden Week (a national holiday the end of April/beginning of May, when we had school off), we had a gashukuu (camp) for two days. We went to Gunma prefecture, about a 4 hours' drive from Tokyo in the mountains. It was gorgeous, but we didn't see much of it apart from driving through. We had a short ballroom practice, and then the main focus of the gashukuu - a huge drinking party. For a 4 hour drive and $100, I was hoping for a lot more dance practice... Ah well. They also had a kimo-damashi, which is basically a haunted walk. We had to go with a person of the opposite sex that the senpai chose and hold hands the entire time (matchmaking game??), follow a long narrow road outside that led up to a shrine at the edge of the woods, while senpai in masks jumped out at us. It was... interesting. Not really too scary though.

Just started an online course from GW that will further limit my time for fun things, sigh...

Oh, and finally: one of my guy friends from ballroom is an incredibly genki guy who's English isn't terribly good but he tries very hard. In certain ways at least. He had my Singaporean friend in hysterics because of his explanation on 産む, to give birth: "Egg. Hip." Touching his rear. "PONG!" gesturing to an, er, egg shooting out.

Japan's New Program

Hoo boy. A lot of people have been talking about a recent measure taken by the Japanese government, wherein the offer immigrants and Nikkei (Japanese who lived abroad/foreigners of Japanese descent who have moved back to Japan) $3,000 to leave Japan and and never return to work.

Jiro Kawasaki, "a former health minister and senior lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party" said: “We should stop letting unskilled laborers into Japan. We should make sure that even the three-K jobs are paid well, and that they are filled by Japanese. I do not think that Japan should ever become a multiethnic society.”

Japan's always had its issues with immigrants, but this is incredibly stupid. For one, Japan already has a labor force issue. It's an aging society, where nearly 1 in 5 Japanese are 65 or over, and not enough babies or young people. Its population rate is too low; an average of 1.32 in 2006. Immigrants would help that. "It could also hurt Japan in the long run. The aging country faces an impending labor shortage. The population has been falling since 2005, and its working-age population could fall by a third by 2050."

Articles at here and The Economist.

I'd write more but running off to dinner. :p

Circles and Dancing

"Circles" - school clubs - are very popular at Waseda. There's 1 or 2000 officially recognized clubs, and another thousand unofficial ones (I think at least; read that somewhere but can't find it again). In the beginning of April, there was a huge information fair for the incoming Japanese freshmen (the school year starts in the spring semester, not the fall). I've wanted to join a club, because it will really help me make friends and force me to use Japanese, but there wasn't much information about them last semester.

I spent several hours being completely overwhelmed enthusiastic kids popping up next to me and trying to get me to join their clubs (lots of sports; one that feeds stray cats; diving where they go down to some Pacific island and scuba dive; waterskiing; music clubs and musical/theater/orchestral clubs. They had EVERYTHING). I finally found a ballroom dancing club, which is something I did a little bit back at college in the States and was hoping to do again. There were a few weeks of demos and drinking parties that were incredibly cheap for the newbies, and practice started last night.

At first it was really, really intimidating. I was the only visible foreigner there (at practice I saw one other girl though), and when I went with another friend (also very obviously foreign), we were ignored for a while when the older students went up to talk to the new students one-on-one. Once they realized we spoke some Japanese and hadn't wandered into the wrong place accidentally, they were incredibly friendly and I've gotten so many new numbers haha... It's been great fun.

Practice is 2 1/2 hours, two days a week (Wednesday and Saturday). Going to that from no exercise was a little bit painful. :p It was somewhat chaotic, as there are over 100 students in the ballroom circle, but actually surprisingly organized and I got to dance a lot with more experienced dancers. It really helps to do that; when it's just two newbies muddling along and getting the steps wrong together it's hard, and I've done ballroom for about a year though not too seriously. And whew, I have certainly been using a LOT of Japanese! My listening is definitely getting better. There's a lot of words people use that I don't know, but I'm picking up what I do know a lot better. My speaking is still quite disorganized (as soon as I open my mouth - grammar? I've learned grammar?), but apparently my pronunciation is getting better and I can usually get my point across well enough. There's a few people in the club who know English though, as well as another exchange student friend that I got to join, so I can get translations. :)

I just need to buy proper ballroom shoes, which are quite painfully expensive...

Sliced my finger on my razor while showering this morning, and freaked out the guy cleaning the bathroom by running past him in just a towel to grab toilet paper because it was bleeding a lot (community baths & showers in stalls in the same room). Also just realized I was trying to tell him "すみません、くびを切った” instead of ”ゆびを切った.” Kubi, a friend pointed out to me when I told them after, means throat. Yubi means finger. I was telling the guy I sliced my throat instead of my finger.

...Woops!

Japanese celebrity!

Whoooa. I went to see the Waseda cherry blossoms with a friend today, and on the way back we saw a crowd of people and tv microphones and the like. We joined the crowd to watch, and Gabi whispered excitedly, "I know that guy! He's on a gazillion tv shows!" I have no idea who he is, but we ask a guy telling people not to take photos what's going on. He said they're filming for "Bura Tamori," an NHK program airing in October. We hung around for a while, watching (and think we may have been in the camera's view at times - sadly we won't know if we are since we'll be back in the States when it comes out!). They seemed to be discussing the cherry blossoms, but we weren't close enough to hear anything.

Tamori is considered one of the three biggest comedians in Japan, along with Beat Takeshi (who we learned about in one of my courses last semester actually), so he's a big deal. He hung around for a while, hoping they might wrap up and we could get an autograph or something, but it was getting cold and dark so we headed back. :p Still really neat though. Never seen a famous person before, haha.

Back in Japan & Ohanami

I'm finally back in Japan as it grows to the end of spring break. Though jet-lagged and out of it, it's sakura time and I went to Iidabashi with my friend Mari to take a look at the famous cherry blossoms. Most are only partially bloomed, as the weather turned cold again - they'll probably reach their full bloom later this week and I am going to Yoyogi Park at least on Saturday for more, but they were still quite beautiful. As always, more photos on flickr.











Hungry koi, a staple of Japanese gardens. :p

Hokkaido - yukimatsuri

So... Here is my delayed write-up on Hokkaido and the yukimatsuri (I flew back to the States a day after getting back). All my photos are up on my Flickr account, but there will be some in the post too (as well as some photos taken by friends).

First day
We left for Haneda airport in the morning. I like Haneda, it's smaller (mostly just domestic flights, though also some to Korea and such) and so relaxed - they didn't even check our ID! We arrived just before getting dark, and headed to our hostel, which was a few minutes' walk from Sapporo station, right at the center of everything.
We grabbed some ramen for dinner (Hokkaido is known for its miso ramen) and headed out to see the ice sculptures all lit up at night. Unfortunately on the way, I realized my boots were not waterproof and in fact had holes in them - snow got stuck up the holes and then melted, and melted on the end of my boots and soon I had wet, freezing feet. We stopped at a convenience store to grab some plastic bags that I wrapped my feet in (and would the rest of the trip, sigh). The sculptures were *amazing* though. They had mostly snow sculptures (quite a few of them huuuge) at Odori Park, and ice sculptures down the entertainment district of Susukino. We mostly saw the ice sculptures that night.

Hokkaido from the plane


This sculpture had fish and various sea creatures frozen in the ice blocks.

Phoenix


Day 2
All 8 of us slept in one room (girls and guys - slightly awkward, and arrrgh a couple of the guys snored and kept me awake!) We woke up later than intended, and I went down to the basement to shower - but the showers were open only from 6-9:30 in the mornings, and I went down a few minutes before 9:30. A woman glared at me, pointed at the hours, and went "Nooooo! Cleaning! Nooooo!" Seriously, she had this long, drawn-out "nooo!" as though I was killing a puppy or something. I snuck down again a half hour later, she was gone, and showered quickly - but she came back as I was getting dressed and went "Noooooo!!" again. Yeesh. :p

We went out to see the snow sculptures in Odori Park. Some elementary school kids came up asking us to fill out some surveys for them, practicing their English - they were so cute! They gave us little laminated cards with their names and what they like on them. Aww.



Disney sculpture

Filling out the survey for the kids


Then we went to the Sapporo dome, which had snow slides and more snow sculptures - unfortunately it closed 15 minutes after we got there...
WALL-E~~ ♥


Day 3
The girls went to a Scandanavian (?) bread museum; the guys went to a beer museum. The bread museum was pretty boring (although we did buy some tasty bread) - the "museum" was a single room, only interesting thing about it was the huge longboat in the center with stuffed caribou on it. :p
We then went on to a chocolate museum/factory that was known for its shiroi koibito (literally "white lover"), which was a cookie with chocolate in the center. The factory was beautiful, but rather bizarre. It had exhibits of western tea cups, saucers, etc., as well as a large exhibit of old toys. It had a lovely view of the mountains though.
After we came back to Sapporo, we went to the Sapporo Factory, which was a huge mall (but full of only pricey stores). The center atrium was beautiful.

View from the chocolate factory

The chocolate factory itself



Final Day
Our last day, we headed out to Otaru - a fishing village about a 45 minute train ride from Sapporo. They have illuminations at night, with lights strung out along the canal and candles in little snow sculptures along the sidewalks.

Sea + snow!

Hokkaido's peculiar mascot........ It's called marimokkori, after a little ball of algae (marimo) that we saw being sold in a lot of souvenir shops, and the word mokkori (slang for "large crotch"). Soo, it's basically what you get if you cross the marimo algae with mokkori... Read more here.

Illuminations






We came back in the evening, failed to sleep (much to my annoyance, people were still packing at 2 am), and got up at 6 am to fly back to Tokyo. And there you have it. :)