Sakura Flavoured Tragedy

Both – in sorrow and joy Japanese people gather together: to grieve about the victims of Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Disaster (東日本大震災, Higashi Nihon Daishinsai), happened exactly a month ago, on March, 11^th, and - to celebrate the short 10-days sakura boom all over the Sun-Rising Paradise…

In grieve…

Whoever of my Japanese friends I would talk to – everybody’s equal in the opinion that the tragedy in Miyagi and Fukushima has made everyone join hands to encourage and stiffen the spirit of those who has lost their families, home, job and peace of their minds… And even living pretty far from Northern Japan, I had felt the united efforts of the whole Japanese nation wherever I would go: TV commercials, donations gathered by various organizations (there is a box for Tohoku victims support near the cash register in all the tiny shops, supermarkets, cafes and restaurants), festivals and services by the churches, temples and shrines of all confessions, baseball in Kyoto, long-distance running competition in Hirakata, concert in Osaka – every single event this month (and I’m sure for the nearest time further as well) has been organized for donating and supporting our Northern neighbors.

 

Words are useless here, just watch some of the next videos, I’ve found the most interesting to reflect the whole atmosphere here.

•  SMAP (Japanese old version of Arashi:) in CM for Japan 
• let’s not waste our money on trash we don’t need and turn the electric appliances off so that to help Northern Japan to save electricity and get rid of blackout sooner.
•  celebrities persuade us not to waste money and electricity, being caring about Tohoku victims
•  Foreigners try to express their feeling as well - listen to this song 

… and in joy…

The same way as the Tohoku tragedy may be felt in the air, it is sakura blossoming time has finally caught us napping. What does the whole sakura thing mean for a Japanese person?- someone would wonder. As far as I see it, sakura implies not only the tender, delicate woman-like beauty, but also a brand-new start in a life marathon, for at least the beginning of one more spring makes everybody leave their “fuwa-fuwa” (fluffy) warmers and heated with kotatsu (a heater under a little table) houses.

Hanami (花見-literally means “flower” and “look, enjoy”) as a Japanese sakura (and sometimes plum-trees too) cherry-viewing custom first appeared in one of the oldest and fascinating novels in the world - “The Tale of Genji” (Heian Era 794 – 1185). Since that time the tradition is being held every year, although the motivation for cherry-picnic has been changed from highly appreciating the beauty of light-pink pedals flying in the air - to the joy of sakura-flavoured consumerism. This tendency has found its equivalent in the old Japanese saying – 花より団子（hana yori dango – dumplings before flowers http://books.google.com/books?id=qQPWtyEP23kC&pg=PA41&dq=%22HANA+YORI+DANGO%22&hl=en#v=onepage&q=%22HANA%20YORI%20DANGO%22&f=false）.

Meanwhile, this truth works for the best: any main dish, desert (sakura parfe doesn’t need any introduction), ice-cream, perfume, alcohol - every single thing is flavoured with sakura. What kind of clothes do you think is the favourite among Japanese women of fashion? Of course, pink, mild-coloured, in tiny flowers, windy and feminine… Actually it also reminds me  what sabi-wabi aesthetic principles say about beauty – simple, harmonic, humble (http://mercury.lcs.mit.edu/~jnc/nontech/wabisabi.html ), but it’s absolutely different story… Anyways, who knows, may be the whole modern かわいい（kawaii - cute）culture roots from the universal Japanese worshipping of sakura blossoming?..

Or may be it’s sakura, what to consider the inspiration for Japanese  頑張る (ganbaru) –  working hard nature? Because a new kindergarden, school or a college semester and a working year begins in the very beginning of April. Why? Silly question. Because it’s so beautiful outside, don’t you see?

 

They Are Always Together

Did you get the connection between all-over Japan support for Tohoku and all-places sakura-viewing custom? Exactly, their all-overness. Have you ever seen a lonely person doing hanami? If you did – it was me or other awkwardly handling his/her chopsticks gaijin, for sure. No, Japanese people live in various groups, and for thousand years they are used to solve all the problems and share happy moments together.

However, nowadays due to the Western influence (again “white man burden”かもね？) on Japanese culture, it’s become fashionable to picture collectivism negatively and by all means they hurry to assure us and themselves as well that the Japanese nation’s becoming very individualistic. Even our Japanese language textbook refers to this idea, teaching us a remade very-Japanese old proverb:「出る杭は打たれない」- the stake that sticks out wouldn’t be hammered down).

... While the reality shows the magnificent mutual all-over-country support, encouragement and fantastic endurance – to what all other individualistic but unable to unite countries left to admire and learn from tiny but courageous and strong spirited Japan.

 頑張って、日本ね！

Learning from light-drawers, or what is the photography for me?

 I didn’t want to start my blog in a grumbling and grousing manner like “These days every fool can take a camera, go out and, taking some pretty banal shots, call oneself “a photographer”…

Nor I was going to begin in some condescending tone like: “For you to know, the word ‘photography’ is derived from the Greek words ‘photos’ (‘light’) and ‘graphein’ (‘to draw’), and was first used by the scientist Sir John F.W.Hershel in 1839...”

(taken from http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm).

No, for the photography has been tamed, modernized and popularized in a flash of the 20^th century, I’d be more careful with words, to pay my admiration and transports to it.

So, what does the photography mean personally for me? I decided to group three kinds of a photo application in our modern world. Why do we take pictures?

-           For memory: we get born, go to school, graduate, get married, give birth, travel, die… - and every family wants to leave at least some portrayals of its members to teach their heirs what kind of mistakes they are going to do in their future as wellJ

-           For job: the advertising and the promotion company in general as well as the information exchange – all those kinds of activities need to be confirmed by images, with what photography actually deals - deep message inside or not, we can observe it working everywhere.

-           For  art: my favourite in this list, for it being a summit of the photography application, especially as nowadays, when the photo-industry has been thrown open to everyone with the light-speed, it simultaneously has been losing its exclusiveness and uniqueness as an art.

Thus, for those, whose job is connected with art and inspired by memories, it’s a great luck to share their original view on life with the whole world, as Annie Leibovitz and James Natchway succeed to do.

 Annie Leibovitz: “I’m photographing my time”

borrowed from www.etoday.ru

(a fascinating interview - http://www.literalmagazine.com/pdf/L15_annie_leibovitz.pdf)

She’s a legendary figure in the photography history, for sure. The main thing in her job is that it’s her life – she lives, breathes, experiences life with her models on the same wave. And she’s a great woman, who is able to bring three little children up and have as much work as nobody seems ever be able to handle. And as a highly tactful and wise woman, she can listen keenly, please and satisfy, pay attention to everyone, who needs her, and at the same time give as much freedom and private space to her models as they need and expect. And which is of the greatest importance in any work - she is able to admit her mistakes and bring to perfection her every work.

borrowed from www.liveinternet.ru

borrowed from www.etoday.ru

Her love to the photography was inspired by constant moving around the U.S. (because her father used to be a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force) and further – around the world, so that the first pictures she took were in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. The photography has always been family-based for her, but then the circles of acquaintances start broadening, as she becomes interested in various artistic endeavors, writing and playing music… And then it goes work in “The Rolling Stones” magazine, Rolling Stones group concert-tour of the Americas ’75, last and sound portraiture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono before he was killed 5 hours later, one of the first scandalous pictures of nude and pregnant Demi Moore, world-famous Afro-American star Whoopi Goldberg, lying in a bathtub full of milk, Leonardo DiCaprio with a swan, with its delicate neck twinning round DiCaprio’s, then she cooperates with “Vanity Fair”, realizes projects with Queen Elizabeth II, Walt Disney Company and takes millions of shots, which are admired as world-greatest works nowadays, and no doubts – best examples of studio- and portraiture photographs for us, green young photographers…

borrowed from www.wordpress.com

      General Tips, taken from Annie’s works:

·        To be brave in ideas and way of looking inside people – why not trying the first craziest thing, having come to your head? It’s usually the way all masterpieces are done. From the same raw of “Eureka!”, light-bulbs and sudden dawning upon…

·         To play with light, colour and texture (of bodies, wrinkles, sheets, dresses, deserts…) – to draw parallels in-between a person and the atmosphere, the surroundings, to underline one’s personality with a plot behind, but so that not to lose a model in the decorations…

·        To be deeply interested and enthusiastic in people’s lives, so that to be able to understand better their views, life-styles, and correspondingly their personality as well.

Some people divide life into two colours – black and white, but I’d prefer to state that there are two other sides – colourful and b&w. So, if Annie Leibovitz is a consummate master of portraying people on the picks of their happiness, prosperity, health, sexuality and beauty, then we should have (and we do) a completely opposite genius, depicting a dark side of our life too - sufferings, grieves, starvation, poverty and death.

James Natchway:

borrowed from www.blogspot.com

“The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated” 

(http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/ )

 borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/

borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/

He’s a War-Photographer, a confident and methodical professional outside, but a sufferer and a lonely way-farer inside. He has a goal in his work – to alarm and awake people all over the world, showing them what a horror happens just out of their countries’ boarders, on the same Earth, done by the same, as we are, people. Inspired by powerful images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement, while studying Art History and Political Sciences in college, he decided to dedicate his own life to all existing wars – for them to stop existing anymore. Since the 1980-s he started as a magazine’s reporter in hot spots - in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

His photographs speak for themselves, so I need to comment them in details, but there are some tips we should borrow from his art:

·        Be tactful and attentive towards all people around, especially when they’re grieving

·        Black and white works better to strengthen one’s message

·        Use lights, shadows, darkness and contrast to make your shots deeper

·        Different formats of pictures – foreground, portraiture, background – harmony and balance, follow classical composition rules

·        Be courageous enough to break rules of composition and lightening

·        Find your aim and style

borrowed from www.jamesnachtwey.com/

What is the photography for me personally?

I’ve found a couple of answers on one of our colleagues’ blog: “I love those pictures, in which an author puts one thing, a critique would say another, but the audience would see something different at all…”.

“A complicated in its design a photograph should be simple in terms of meaning, but a simple, without many details, one must be deep and have lots of layers” (http://www.liveinternet.ru/community/bw_world/post80099856/ - my translation from Russian).

I completely agree with those opinions, because to my mind a photograph should have some meaning in it, ideally – some layers. A photograph also is one of the possible ways to express oneself. That’s why for me the main issue here is a personal, unique style of a photographer. Nevertheless, the same way as I really appreciate Takeshi Kitano’s cinematographically different films, I’d really love to see pictures of one author made in different manners.

In stead of good-byeing…

Mephistopheles

 …And daren’t stay a moment longer!

Goethe “Faust”

                            (http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesVIItoXV.htm)

The 21^st century is characterised as the fast-pace time: fast food, fast love, fast art… Which may be good for the civilization, but for me – it’s definitely an unfortunate thing. The photograph here kind of saves us – on the one hand it gives us an illusion of living on a level higher than just everyday routine, for we express ourselves and make people around us think, on the other hand – it answers our fast-rhythm life, because few of us has time, patience and skills enough to paint or draw… 

But I would like to add that the photograph is also a good “slower” for us nowadays, as it give us a valuable opportunity to stop our race and look around right now and here – to weight, appreciate, judge, conclude and may be a little bit, at least with our own lives – to correct the present for it not to have wars, poverty and misery. Because life is not about yesterday or tomorrow – it’s all about now. The same as the photography art.

In the Silent Land

Have you ever heard of the deaf people? What would you expect or imagine when you hear such words as “deaf, silent, sign language”? Probably some really dark-colored gloomy atmosphere, hopeless, unsatisfied in anything people and impossible to learn language of the chosen, right? But in real situation…

Honestly, I faced with first deaf people in my life just two weeks ago, when being bored after four classes on Wednesday, I decided to participate in our Professor Fedorowicz’s Japanese Sign Language club (here our you can find your friends fellow-students from KGU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGj-M7NAa_0).

The first person I’ve met there in a classroom was always radiant sunny Junko-sensei, who hears and speaks a little, and also knows Japanese, English and even Swedish sign languages. Although I came there having no idea what’s going on in the deaf world nowadays and having not realized even such a simple thing that sign language varies in different countries and cultures (and even in different areas of the same country! We’re studying Kansai-ben [dialect] in our club, for example), I didn’t feel awkward, frustrated or even puzzled. Why? Because you can’t even imagine how relaxed atmosphere in the deaf people society, how clear their logic works in terms of the nature of every sign, how energetic and optimistic they are, the people, who can’t perceive the world the way we don’t even pay attention to.  

On the same weekend with a couple of my new classmates-senpai (seniors) I went to Osaka deaf-people café to enjoy Pr. Fedorowicz’s photo exhibition (here you can find address and information about the exhibition and café itself - (http://visualanthropologyofjapan.blogspot.com/2011/02/sign-language-faces-visual-anthropology.html ) and try to meet more new friends among the café’s customers. And we succeeded in both! I don’t really remember how the process of our communication began and how we became friends after only one hour of me learning their mysterious but so easy to understand language, but that night ended in izakaya (Japanese traditional bar) in a funny company of new friends with bunch of plans for the nearest time: Osaka plum-trees’ blossoming, kimono-wearing class together, sakura-hanami (enjoying Japanese cherry blossoms) in Kyoto in kimono… 

My best friend – Emi-san

She was one of the middle-aged ladies in charming kimono at the deaf café, where we came and luckily got to the kimono-wearing class for the deaf people. Emi-san is an ideal personification of a classical Japanese beauty – modest, tolerant, funny and slightly coquettish. We talked just a little bit because of my inability to say anything more complicated than personal introduction (after only one lesson, don’t forget!), but I want to assure you - the conversation with deaf people is a very fascinating thing: they eagerly teach you lots of new words, they will be very patient and helpful and really-really happy to communicate. You’ll feel the same and  won’t be able to hide your smile while hanging out with them.

By now I’ve met Emi-san twice – in the deaf café and next weekend after it when we went for a walk to Osaka castle to enjoy plum-trees. Here you can see two pictures from our second meeting. Emi-san’s a very opened, enthusiastic and beautiful person – in all the meanings. Her hobby’s photography the same as mine, she likes takoyaki (me too), she adores kimono culture and seriously studies all the detail about it. She’s very kind, generous and out-going person – I’m very happy to spend my spare time with her and I’m very thankful that she became my friend though I’m not that good company in terms of communicating her language yet. でも、頑張ります！(But I’ll work hard!)

 Listening with a heart, not ears

Just imagine one sunny wonderful March day you’re walking in a garden full of plum-trees blossoming various colors and shapes of flowers and invading its aroma all around. There are different people – little children, hugging couples, coughing but still cheerful elderly with giant cameras, relaxed office plankton under the trees with o-bento (launch box) – everybody’s here. And my friends also came there to share the happiness of a new spring coming - together with the rest.

Suddenly the prettiest sounds of harp music next to the very entrance of the garden are coming to our ears, so that my Emi-san notices it too and begins taking pictures of a musician and the whole unusual procession. And everybody seems to be happy, but I know - she could never hear how marvelous the music was.

The essential thing in the deaf communication is to notice tiny changes of feelings and emotions of your partners – in facial expressions, movements, speed of gestures, so on and so forth. Every time since I became friends with my Emi-san, I make myself imagine how it feels like – not to listen to the music all the way to school, not to pay attention to the birds in a spring garden, not to hear steps of a friend behind my back, not to be able to join to the noisy bacchanalia in izakaya, not to turn to the children cry or laugh…

Only silence here and everywhere.

*  *  *

 Links for Mr and Ms Curiousity:

Add caption

1)      http://www.jfd.or.jp/en/  - Japanese Federation of the Deaf site, where you can find information about official deaf world events in Japan, the history of the organization itself and some tips for learning Japanese sign language.

2)    http://www.kyoto-be.ne.jp/ed-center/gakko/jsl/  - Wanna learn Japanese Sign Language? Do it right now with the help of this easy to work with and quite well-structured material

3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BszkSIlrJaA – pretty nice video for willing to study simple phrases in JSL (with English translation)

4)    http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4538 – “DEAF IN JAPAN
Signing and the Politics of Identity” by Karen Nakamura

となりの枚方たち (Hirakata & Co)

Late February. In my cold and snowy Russia it would mean still -20C (-4,00F) and snowy obstacles on the roads. In Japan it smells spring… Daffodils, tulips and plum trees are blossoming, light April wind plays with my hair, Kansai Gaidai inhabitants bathe in the sunlight and Japanese girls start forgetting about winter  boots and warmers…

This week I happened to get my bicycle broken and therefore spent the whole week moving around our Hirakata neighbourhood walking. And to say the truth – I enjoyed it, because slow-pace life lets you notice little pleasant things you would never pay attention to zooming by bike and being busy with some insignificant routine.

The first thing I’ve noticed was the fact that on our way to school from Seminar House 2 (Kansai Gaidai dormitory) we are used to pass by two Buddhist temples next to each other looking almost the same as usual private houses and one Shinto shrine attached to the Elementary school. Every day I passed them by, tempted to destroy the silence inside and only by Friday I got enough guts to come in one of the temples.

The temple is called Myoukyouji (妙教寺) and is looked after by cheerful Nishimoto-san’s family, who lives there. I was met by his wife who was really pleased by a gaijin’s interest in Buddhism, and she let me come and take pictures not only of a carefully landscaped tiny Japanese-styled garden but also inside of the temple itself.  Being busy with taking pictures of a shining golden altar full of flowers and statues, I didn’t hear heavy shuffling footsteps of the host. A little bit sleepy aged man began talking to me in Japanese (!), telling me lots of fascinating things such as the history of Buddhism and the temple itself, about Japanese people beliefs and connection of Shinto and Buddhism… Interestingly, he told me that nowadays the belief that Shinto deities (神様) were actually born from Bodhisattva, and although in Meiji period temples were completely destroyed, for Shindo (he pronounced it like this) was the only central religion and the reflection of unique Japanese national ideas, there are more and more people believing in Buddhism as a primary religion now. So, being enlightened with a real knowledge of religions’ origin and invited to the nest service, I left the temple.

Of course everybody here, in Hirakata, knows what New-Deli is, right? When we hear this magic name of the Indian restaurant, we imagine hot chicken carry, soft and warm, melting in our mouth naan (Indian huge pie), fabulous aroma of free (!) mango lassi (milk shake) and ice-cream with mango jam for a desert when you can’t eat anymore… And no doubts everyone does remember 33-teeth “元気な” (cheerful) smiles of Indian waiters, don’t you? This time we met there the greatest waiter ever – Yumin Go, a Chinese-Japanese Kansai Gaidai student,　speaking flawlessly English and Japanese and always ready to raise her customers’ mood. We noticed her laughing with other hungry for Indian hospitality people there, and when she came to our table, she began joking, mimicking Japanese eternal “すみません” (“I’m very sorry”) regretting grimace so skilfully that we couldn’t stop laughing till unbearable laugh cramps in belliesJ. After having eaten everything (and even three more free naans), my friends continued talking but I left them and came in a tiny sacred place – kitchen, where found friendly team of tree real Indian cooks ready to talk to me. They came from Calcutta – 8 months, a year and 3 years ago. They really enjoy life in Japan for a unique opportunity not only leading their own business but promoting Indian culture in their neighbourhood, where the sun rises first. We left the place of full stomachs Nirvana late at night, having learnt how to thank in Indian – “shukria”, seen enough Indian beauties on a screen and full of memories for the whole week – not only in our hearts and stomachs, but on our clothes as well, smelling one of the best substitute for Paradise on the Earth…

  

Shocking Therapy in Japan

Japan appeared under our airplane with its special charm, as if hiding in the curly clouds… Leaving the plane - the only connection with my last life in the other world of frosty Russian winters and cool white-nights St-Petersburg’s summers, I found myself in a yet sleepy and slowly but always systematically working Japan. The country of my dreams opens its warm embrace to me and…

Shock № 1: 内と外の人々

…and the crumpled and Japanese travelers have been separated into two groups – the gaijins (外国人 – strangers, foreigners, people coming outside) and the Japanese: different lines, entrances, windows, places in the society. That moment one bitter thought sneaked into my head – I would always be here an odd man out… And the wave of the first cultural shock rose and swamped me.

For quite a long time Kansai Airport was chewing its new guests in its halls and it took me some time to prove that I came to a customer’s motherland with extremely positive intentions.

Shock №2：the Japanese masterpiece

My first acquaintance with it happened during my first minutes on the ground of Japan. The doors of the place were reasonably coloured pink and blue according to the gender of the guests and inside… - oh, inside the pink one it smelled (don’t ask me why^^) kids’ bubble gum and the seat was soooo warm, that you would forget about all your troubles and stresses on it. Moreover there are lots of various buttons with the most unexpected purposes sometimes – wow!:) And if you’re too shy to demonstrate what you’re doing there to everybody outside your little private space, be sure to touch a special button to turn the sound of the pouring water on, so that to feel peacefully while doing your dark business. By the way – just to know for you, guys, remember that many doors are opened inside not to take extra space in this tiny paradise.

Shock № 3, or the 1^st Red Flag: “They’re strange!”

Soon after my coming to Hirakata, Osaka, I with all new international students had to make a Japanese banking card – just to be able to get the scholarship on it. So we prepared it and in some days we should have got the very cards – but of course I forgot my password and had to get to the bank by myself. Having just entered the bank I was met by a pretty old gentleman, who was bowing(!) to me. I asked my self – where should he hide his pride to bow every random man coming in? And I tried to explain it to myself – it’s so called “TEAM WORK”, when one doesn’t have any individuality while helping out one’s team to achieve its goal. That old guy plays a role of a “carpet road” inside the company, the representatives of which are the young ladies just out of their colleges’ desks. And it struck me how an old man can work just “a bower” for years in the country where the age is respected most of all… However as it turned out – the age doesn’t ha anything in common with a social structure over here – it’s his “giri” (duty) to present his team, he’s a little wheel in a big, powerful and astonishing mechanism called “Japanese society”. So, I got my number in the line (thank you for a system in everything, my Japan!) and when it was my turn – a young woman, neglecting my broken Japanese, hasn’t changed it to English – what made me really proud of being able to support a conversation by myself. And then asking me to show her my passport and a card, she gave me a plastic plate, which purpose even my Japanese friends can’t explain exactly, but maybe it’s about privacy and respect towards a guest’s things – so that not to touch it with your indecent palms… So, having heard as much keigo (super polite speech) as it could be possibly used for 15 minutes, and sweating while trying to find that forgotten word I needed most of all, I left.

Shock № 4: Exotic nature shows itself

And then a real fall began. No-no, not according to our European or Western Russian measures – it’s more like the second half of our hottest summer, that what they have in October -.-. Humidity, warm rains, of course sun (of which we used to dream for 8 month in a year:), and the leaves, as far as I got it, are not going to change their colour or place. And sometimes, you know, you’ll look out of the window in the time of a shining sunset and you could possibly see some strange “birds” almost the same size as a Calibri but with incredibly big wings and weird sounds coming from their fluffy tiny bodies, which sometimes hang on the trees upside-down, making a pioneer-gaijin tremble by their twittering. It took me some time to get used to their daffy flies just a little over the top of my head in those nice summer’s nights…

Shock № 5: Is the grass on the other side really greener?

No doubts, the concept of beauty differs with every culture, what could be observed in native arts and traditions of any country. And isn’t it wonderful that in different corners of the world we are attracted the way we used to consider according to the historically and culturally formed ideas of what is pretty and what’s ugly? I guess – yeah, it’s cool. But Japanese guys and girls don’t think that their ancestors were fair enough chanting geisha’s raven black wonderful hair and willow like body… More often I can hear Japanese girls almost crying because of jealousy about my friend’s blue eyes or my blonde hair, or guys on the streets staring at us as if we’re goddesses. I know it might sound cocky, but I don’t really like the way they praise our Western appearance – it’s silly not to notice how charming their own girls, who’d better not to dye their hair blonde – it looks really odd and even frightful sometimes. And being in the shoes of the trade companies in Japan I would promote their own ideals, while the whole cosmetics market is occupied by long artificially made eye-lashes, blonde wigs, blue and green eye lenses and white powder - which is actually sad for me who values natural beauty best of all. Especially in Japan.

***

I've been studying here in Japan for almost half a year already, but every day I still have a little cultural shock of various kind. And you kno what? I enjoy it with all my heart, as it means that I'm still curious and interested enough to be surprised every other day. Love you, Japan!