SO363: View of Japan as a Child

As a child, Japan was a place I dreamed about going to- an ultimate getaway, a topsy-turvy and whimsical Neverland that I hoped to which I hoped one day to escape. Japan was color, hope, and tradition, it was happiness in a far off dream. I think that there was a part of myself in childhood that imagined Japan as a place where I would finally fit in, a place where I would feel at home. I suppose it's often that children of divorce never feel that they fit in anywhere. While my parents tossed my brother and I across the US every year, my life felt like it held no constant, no thread connecting who I was with my father and who I was with my mother. That's when I found anime.

Perhaps it was an odd thing to glue my life together, but it gave me drive- it expertly tied together my desire to travel, my desire to be far from where I was, and, I thought, my desire to fit in. It's funny looking back on my immature notions of Japan now. Japan was the last place to go to fit in, but it was certainly one of the best to go to get away from where I had been. Still, I realize that the purpose Japan served didn't fit in exactly with my perception of it. When I thought of Japan, I thought of Sailor Moon and Geisha, Ninjas, Samurai, and Temples. One Christmas, my mother bought me a photobook of Japan and I loved it dearly. When I was feeling lonely, depressed, or out of place, I would look through it and close my eyes, imagining that I was Japanese. The pictures that stuck in my head were the busy, bright, and bustling streets of Tokyo, the Golden Temple on the water, gates to Ginjaa, and a young woman practicing kyuudou (Japanese archery). In retrospect, I guess I didn't really think about how those pictures might not have fit together, all I wanted was to be in Japan.

When I came to Japan when I was 13, my image shifted quickly. Japan was still lights and life, but suddenly it was karaoke, shopping, crowded trains, kanji, and courtesy. It was warmth and happiness, like a warm blanket, but it was far from what I had felt originally. Even now, I feel that image warping yet again, as it should be. Still, it makes me wonder if I will ever have a consistent view of Japan- but, I suppose, I don't seek out that consistency as desperately as I did in my childhood, as life is change.