Culture

Culture

My name is Connor Hasting and currently I'm in Japan and I'm just simply amazed by their culture. They have all sorts of art everywhere ranging from their traditional art style which you can see on the right to a very contemporary, colorful style like on the left done by Takashi Murakami. Japan seems to have a society that is filled with both new and old ideas. Like how many people still wear traditional clothing such as the kimono even in this now modern society. The only real differences between mens and womens kimonos is that men's are typically dark, subdued colors. Casual styled ones seem to ahve texted and be more bightly colored and sumo wrestlers seem to prefer wearing the brighter colors.

So a popular way to travel here is by rail. Get this, it's so crowded that they actually hired people to cram the passengers inside the train. It's crazy busy in Tokyo.

As for food here....well I tried raw horse meat...it wasn't that bad I guess. Not as good as some of the sushi I had. I also had raw squid which was just unflavorful and slimey, I don't recommend it. Luckily they have different kinds of noodles like soba, ramen and udon EVERYWHERE which I find delicious. It also turns out that most people slurp their noodles super loudly as a sign that it's delicious and to cool down the noodles.

Also, if you think we're lazy in the United States, here in Japan they sell beer, cigarettes, hot and cold coffee and tons of other miscellaneous items from vending machines. I find this to be a great idea as most people drink coffee...and eat rice at pretty much every meal...They like rice here.

Japan has a very strong sense of family especially considering how economically strong they are. Just about every home has a butsudan which is an altar of the ancestors and elderly people are taken care of by their families in a home. Something else is that most people work for the same company their entire work lives. Typically layoffs and dismissals of employees is very rare and in 1997 their unemployment reached a record 3.5%.

Their current insurance system includes national health insurance, welfare annuity insurence, maternity coverage, unemployment insurance, workers' accident compensation, seamen's insurance, a national government employees' mutual aid association, and day worker's health insurance. They also have pension plans designed to maintain living standards for the elderly determined by their years of employment and for families of deceased workers. Something else that's pretty unique is that there's a family allowance for all residents with children under the age of three. Just about everyone that lives there receives some sort of benefit from the health insurance system. You're either insured through your work or the National Health Insurance program if you're unemployed.

It's quite a change from the United States to know that just about everyone here lives on way more benefits and with a much stronger since of family. It seems to be working for them pretty well even though they're not necessarilly an economically stable company.

Sadly most non-Japanese minorites and ethnic Koreans and strongly discriminated against and bullied. Bullying is a serious social problem for the children in japan. There have been several reported cases of suicide due to bullying. There's also a growing problem of violence against teachers.It's not an issue with the government as they genrally respect all human rights, it's just a social issue.

There's a book about the issue of violence against teachers rising and what they do about it called Battle Royale. What they do is they randomly select a class each year and make all the students in that class fight to the death until the last man is standing as punishment for treating teachers so horribly.

Japan overall has a lot of old traditions mixed in with new ones and it's quite a unique culture over here. Especially clothing wise, you may be at a festival and see everyone in traditional clothing, students in their uniforms, businessmen in suits or some truly crazy outfits in the cities and shopping districts like Shibuya.

Here's a video showing what their vending machines are like and how high tech everything is.