Changing Impression of Japan

I have been writing this blog for four mouths and it changed my impression toward how I see Japan. As native Japanese (although I think I have other cultural influence as well), I did realize that I was surrounded by Japanese culture until I did this blog. After I came to realize that many things relate to Japanese culture I believe I became more “Japanese” than before and better photographer.

Before starting this blog, I thought it was easy to find Japanese culture since I had an idea about what Japanese culture is.

But as you could see from these pictures, all the things that came up to my mind were traditional Japanese culture: things that I rarely interacted in everyday life. Therefore, I thought this blog posts would be challenging for me since teacher was looking for specific item or fact about Japan(more on things that can be found in daily life). By paying attention in class and hanging out with foreigner, it helped me to focus on specific things in Japan like school uniform, Japanese fashion, hosts and etc.

The practice of taking picture that is Japanese things became custom for me. Consequently, when I went back to my home (Mie) this May, I took many Japanese things. I think this happened because as I developed custom, my unconsciousness became consciousness. Therefore, things I feel that I became more Japanese than before. 

These are more pictures that I thought I would not have taken before I did this blog. I feel doing barbeque with only sea food is Japanese and so on. (Pictures were taken in Wakayama).

Throughout this blog I also improved my photograph skills. As I learned from this class, I try not to include lights or background that maybe disturbing. Moreover, I learned many techniques that may be useful in the future as well: skill for portrait pictures.

I enjoyed posting blogs and I think this helped me to understand my culture better and become an egg of visual anthropologist. So if I were to do this blog post again I would like to use character like my pet, Moose(cat), so that it would be more interesting for people who is reading this blog. May be like this?

I would like to keep posting more and more so that I would be conscious enough to introduce Japanese culture when I go study abroad. I would like to thank Mr. F for giving this opportunity to think about Japanese culture. It was good experience and had so much fun.