I wish it were easy for me to feel at ease as a tourist. However, no matter how I try, I am always slightly embarrassed by group photos, sight seeing, and other obvious signs of tourism. While I am aware of the blatant consumerism that usually accompanies the tourist industry, I think the main reasons […]
National Parks of Japan- A Product of Glocalization
Food is one of the most highly glocalized items in the world. In fact, my first experience with glocalization in Japan was at a vegan ramen shop run by and for Muslim women in Shinjuku on my second night in Tokyo. Since then, I could not avoid seeing the traces of glocalization at every meal […]
Sayonara Satoyama
In Japan, the term satoyama describes both a feeling and place. It is a situated feeling of nostalgia associated with life lived in the countryside before the influence of contemporary technology. Centered around agriculture, satoyama encompasses rice paddies, orchards, woodland forests, grasslands, and thatch-roofed farmhouses that became the culmination of culture and biodiversity in the […]
Structure and Manipulation: A Japanese Approach to Environments
When you think of Tokyo, what may often come to mind are the bustling stations and jam-packed train cars that comprise the daily transportation of thousands of Japanese. We experienced the craziness of Tokyo travel firsthand during our first week in the country. At nearly all the stations, people rush to get to their platforms […]
Mt. Fuji: More than Memento
Representations of Mt. Fuji abound in Asakusa. Located there is the site of the biggest Buddhist temple in Tokyo, approachable almost exclusively from a network of streets lined with souvenir and specialty shops, snack booths, and restaurants. Milling about the streets was the largest collection of foreigners that I’d yet seen in Japan. Some Japanese […]