It was taking me an awfully long time to think of a legitimate topic for this particular post.
Globalization... what was it? There was plenty of evidence of adopted American culture here already, and it all seemed quite obvious and uninteresting to me. Japan has a lot of things America does as well. They eat at McDonalds, buy coffee at Starbucks, and even seem to have a strange fascination with Snoopy. But what was something more extravagant?
Then I thought of something new. Back where I live in New Jersey, it was only a short train ride into New York City. I met my friends there often. But where did we always love to drop by? It had to be none other than Chinatown. Something about how cheap and silly everything was always amused us, from the plastic toys to the badly written signs (that one is ALWAYS a favorite-found almost anywhere). We always knew it was a pale comparison to the real China, of course, but it kept us coming back anyway.
What does this lead me into? Well, the major cities of America aren't the only ones who have "culture districts", as fake as they may be. Japan has one too; it's called Amemura. That's right, America Town. I've been there twice so far, and the second time it was easier to find than the first. All you have to look for is the Statue of Liberty square in the middle of the city.
The main attraction for that night was a small restaurant/bar down a side street, titled nothing more than DS*CAFE. It was interesting, to say the least. If anything, it could have fit in with those homey restaurants like FRIDAY'S back in the states, if FRIDAY'S had added about ten times more random stereotypical symbols of America to their walls. The only thing that didn't seem to fit in were the chopsticks.
In addition to the decorations, a big screen television on the bar was playing the movie I, Robot, and the employees were a cross between some kind of trucker and construction worker, if a construction worker ever wore a full body jumpsuit.
Was this the impression the Japanese had of us? In some ways it felt logical; I could see where they were coming from when they came up with the place. But for the most part, it's an overrepresentation of America, if anything. I'd hate to know what the Chinese think of New York City, then.
WE MAKE NAME BELT photograph from BLUE JAKE
2 comments:
I like this post a lot - equating NYC's Chinatown with Amemura and Friday's is a very interesting way of discussing globalization. You have nice photos that complement your text well. The Statue of Liberty link seems to be off though...
While "The Japanese Version" might be a bit dated, "The Japanese Impression" does a good job of illustrating similar themes.
The construction worker photo is a little difficult to see. How did you decide which photos to show and which to link?
I would like to read more of your ideas. This is good in the sense of leaving your audience wanting more. However, you are setting yourself up for a continued level of quality. I think you can do it. 頑張って下さい。
The Statue of Liberty link is off how? It isn't working? That's odd, works for me. It happens to be a link to a picture of the structure (though I have to admit it's a very bad one that I took; I couldn't find anything more interesting and I wanted to illustrate that point).
It's a shame, the restaurant was dark so it was a bit harder to get decent pictures from it without using the flash and disturbing people.
I wasn't thinking to heavily about what to link to and what to show directly, but I wanted it to flow nicely with my text and felt like showing the american flag and general look of the cluttered restaurant was most important.
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