Over the past three months of blogposts for this visual anthropology I have had the oppotunity to try to better understand the community and the country I have been living in for the semester. Through interviews with locals, although sometimes difficult to do in a language you are learning, I found the importance of gaining information from the communtiy as well as established institutions, such as newspapers and boradcasting. It was interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two concerning what information they find is relevant and should be shared with their viewers, or in my case when talking to people on the street, a foreigner who speaks sloppy Japanese. Trying to judge a source's potential bias and agenda was also an important skill I came to better understand through interviews. My impression of confomity in opinions has changed, as the Japanese hold just as much variety in opinions on social, political, etc. issues as any other country.
Besides information distribution there was also a lot of time spent trying to understand cultural differences and see them as differences only. To put it in the simplest way I can: observing that people here drive on the opposite side of the road as oppossed to using the terminology that they drive on the wrong side of the road(in comparison with the U.S.), which is not the case. This may seem like a moot point to discuss, but I think it holds a lot of relevance in how cultures understand each other and how a foriegn anthropologist records information about the people they are observing. Instead of making broad surface judgements based on your native customs, trying to communicate and reach a better understanding with the local culture as to why they do the things they do that differ from your home country. Some customs became much clearer with and explanation (and some remain hard to grasp), but learning to continue to seek knowledge, even in areas which you consider yourself a proffesional. I would see this as less of a change in impressions of Japan and more of a change in how to observe and undesrstand it from a foreign view.
As I am still living in Japan for another 7 months I still have much to learn from the community about the local customs and culture and am greatly looking forward to the journey. I would have to say that my impressions will continue to change as time goes on. My biggest change in impression has come from being in night life districts in Osaka and Tokyo, where it is easy to observe that Japan might be viewed as a conservative culture, but in certain parts of town it is anything but, with an array of clubs, host bars, and other establishments. These districts obviosly don't represent everyone in Japan, but it is a stark contrast observing the salarymen going to work in the morning during the week and seeing (a small minority) sleeping in odd places on Friday nights after their long work week has ended. Some things in Japan will continue to be strange or amusing to me, but I will try to keep an open mind and a desire to learn.
