Stand In Awe: Impressions, but not necessarily the first....

To have a first impression, one should be encountering an object, person, or place for the first time. This first encounter leaves a mark on one's mind and, thus, one has an impression of the first time they have been to, or seen this person, place, or thing.

I have now been to Japan three times and I don't think that this post will be about a first impression. I have long since had my first impression of Japan. However, because of this, I have had some time to look at Japan, and find things that have surprised and interested me. Instead of first impressions, I will enlighten you with a couple of break-throughs of mine.

My first break-through came while sitting and eating dinner with my host family. We were watching a quiz show where famous actors and singers sat at brightly colored desks and buzzed in after various clues and video clips had been shown. I asked my host mom what was going on, because the language was moving too quickly for me to catch much. She told me that they were answering a question about a business man's hotel where the bath doubled as a toilet. I'd always thought Japan was resourceful and practical, but this was bringing it to an extreme, and almost unsanitary point.

Putting aside personal preference, however, I do appreciate Japan's innovativeness and move towards a greener, more compact future. The fact that my host mother uses the finished bath water to wash our clothes everyday is smart and totally resourceful! Why through away nearly clean water? It's not like our clothing needs to be washed in purified water. Most water touches soil anyway. Its simple stuff like that, that other countries don't think about or would consider unsanitary but actually saves some of our quickly depleting resources.

My second break-through also happened at dinner time with my host family. We were watching a show where celebrities sit around, watch video clips and talk about various topics (pretty standard it seems) when the host brought out some food that was being shown in the video clips. Of course, we all followed suit in saying "ah, that looks good..." and only once I had said it did I realize.... Japan has a strange obsession with food. Every talk show, music show, news show has someone make interesting food, talk about it, and then everyone on the show eats it and exclaims about how amazing it is.

Not only that, but food is made into more than just plastic replicas like in restaurant windows or for children to play house with. Bags, keychains, and pencil cases are made in the shape of food or with food plastered all over them. Food is even alive here! I always thought "How cute! A strawberry with a mouth and eyes!" but really.. it's kind of interesting. In a country where food, especially fruits and vegetables, are so expensive, they use the image of food on everything. People dangle food from their cellular phones! Although I don't have much of a conclusion for this point, I do find it something worth noticing.