"Were you a Japan-o-phile.. before you started living there? Either way, was it what you expected it to be?"
McGaijin amusingly wrote:
I don't think "hell, no" is a strong enough term. I hate anime (though have recently made an exception for Miyazaki) and while I grew up eating Pocky sticks and playing Nintendo, I was wise enough to realize that I could enjoy those things in America, and had no need to move to the nation which invented coffin hotels to experience cookies and 8-bit. That's when it even occured to me that they were Japanese. (In retrospect, nobody else I knew ate Pocky sticks, so maybe that says something about my parents.) The sexism, not-so-latent pedophilia, and racism of this culture nauseated me, and it was truly on the list of "last places I would ever want to live on earth" narrowly beating out Ulan Bator and Siberia. The fact that Sam's lieutenant's wife told me that I would just have to get used to being a second class citizen made me even less eager, and angry at Samfor choosing it. He isn't here enought to ever deal with that attitude, and of course, is not a woman. Put a feminist in a country where she is expected to keep her head down and mouth shut, and watch the fun. I tried to get into the history and mythology of Japan, tried to get excited about it. But really, I didn't choose this place and I didn't want to come here. Japanophiles, for the most part, are not my favorite people. Most sit at home and watch cartoons and will never, ever come here, and even if they did, would likely see it only as a fulfillment of their fantasies. And that's the thing--this place only works if you have a fantasy of it as something better than it is. The Japan-of-the-Mind is a powerful place. In reality, it's just another place, and there is nothing particularly magical or zen about it. There have been moments, but moments so small and hidden that no Japanophile who came merely to consume this culture would ever have found them. I'm grateful for those moments. I, too, can, have, and will again write a book which communicates the Japan I can make up in my head--it's far better than the real thing. And Westerners convinced of the Power of the Exotic East will flock here, as they always have, because they want to experience the Japan of someone else's mind. I'm hardly immune from this--Europe was that way for me. But Japan is not my fantasy woman, and so I could never be her perfect ex-pat john.
A hentai-loving cosplayer I was not. And am not. I did not come here to revel in the otherworldy beauty that is Japanese schoolgirls, first crack at all video games (which doesn't work, by the way. Can you read kanji fluently? Then you can't play Final Fantasy XXXIV before your American buddies), or to complete my manga collection. I am not impressed by flashing neon lights. Is it what I expected it to be? I had no expectations. It has been revelatory in many ways, but I would not come here again.
The best thing? Oh, who knows? Shinto and food, I suppose. They have very good chocolate.
