Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Japanese Fashion

So let me tell you about shopping in Japan. First of all, throw out any ideas you have about the proper SHAPE of clothing. Japanese people don't seem to have a concept of things "fitting" properly. In fact, if I could explain Japanese fashion in one word it would probably be something like "shroud." Yes, this "shroud" might be pink with polka dots and have adorable black bows all over it, but it's a shroud nonetheless. It might also only come to mid thigh, under which would be worn NOTHING but some adorable knee high boots, but the description of "shroud" remains.



Now, imagine me trying to look good in any of these outfits...it's hopeless.


I once had a friend who told me a particular shirt dress looked good on me because it concealed my chest so as to make everyone wonder what I had under there. The J-fashion takes this logic and run 50 Kilometers with it. Since there is little to "show off" on top for most Japanese women, they dress in bags and call it good. The truth is, it generally looks alright on them. There legs are cute and skinny, their arms are tiny, their faces delicate. They put on this bag and get the sort of affect of an angel running around in a cloud. But think about it from my perspective. I go to the store and SEARCH the clearance rack for ANYTHING that is shaped in any way appropriately. The whole bag-thing may work for most Japanese girls, but it doesn't really work for me, not everyday at least. I'm sorry if I feel silly running around in a poka dot sweatshirt dress that goes to my hips and has a flouncy ruffly skirt attached that only reaches to my mid-thigh. I like shirts to hit just above my hips, not below them. And I prefer to swim at the beach and not in my own clothing.




Don't let the cool glasses fool you - this would not look good on me.


This gets even worse when one is trying to shop cheap. Cheap, quality fashion exists in ONLY ONE PLACE in Japan, and that is Uniqlo, the J-GAP. And Uniqlo is great for sweatshirts and sweaters and tights but if you're looking for anything else, it's a little limited. So if you thought you could "shop around" in Tokushima, you are gravely mistaken. I have tried, and tried, and tried again. I can COUNT the items of clothing I have purchased in Tokushima - it's a very small number and I haven't really been thrilled with any of these purchases. In almost EVERY case, I paid more money than I would have in the States, and all that, for something inferior. Cute clothes exist in Japan, but they're quite a bit more expensive than I'm used to paying, and even though I have more money now than I had before, paying more for something that I don't even like that much totally kills the joy of shopping. I'm one of those "hunt" people. However, the thing about hunting is that one generally gets the enjoyment of finally triumphing. That almost never happens here. I feel as though I'm losing my shopping sense and my style sense simultaneously.



This isn't bad...but still, not going to work for anyone bigger than a size 00.



Pretty cool - but going to cost a considerable amount of money to work up this little ensemble.

The other thing about Japanese fashion is the "cute" factor. But in Japan, "cute" has a different meaning than in the States. In the U.S. "cute" can be a pair of skinny jeans and a cute sweater and boots, in Japan "cute" means any or all of a number of other things: pink, polka dotted, ruffled, bow-encrusted, fake-jewel-encrusted, satin-encrusted, lace-covered, fake-fur adorned. For the most part I can avoid these things if I want to; however, you have NO IDEA how many times I've seen a pair of cute shoes I liked only to pull them off the wrack and realize they had satin ruffles at the back of the heel: totally kills it. This is AFTER I avoided all the shoes that had jewels or bows or fur on the toes.



Ummm. Are you kidding me? No.



I HATE this style of shoe. They are everywhere!



I could live without ruffles FOREVER after being in Japan...

The truth is a lot of this struggle is due to a lack of variety and options. I live in Tokushima. We don't even have Starbucks here. If I were near any bigger cities, my complaints would be quite heavily diminished. But I'm not. And so...I complain. One of these days I'll take a camera shopping with me and give you all a real taste of what this is like. For now, I had to search the internet for rather pathetic examples of what I'm referring too.

Well, I have a car now. The next trip I'm making is probably to Takamatsu, about 2 hours up the road where I'm told they have much better shopping.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Snapshots of Belief

I seem to have multiple focus disorder. If my brain were a series of snapshots, it would look like this:

The sun is just setting behind the mountains out my front door. It strikes me with it's majestic beauty. Surely that's not an accident?

There's a fight being waged in the U.S. A fight between conservatives and liberals - or so they say. Anymore, I really don't care. Something in me wants to distance myself as far away from politics as possible. Please please please don't get God involved in this, I think. Don't dirty his name with your petty money and agendas.

I'm playing this song in the background:
There are tears from the saints
For the lost and unsaved
We’re crying for them come back home
We’re crying for them come back home
And all your children will stretch out their hands
And pick up the crippled man
Father, we will lead them home
Father, we will lead them home

Sometimes I read Paul and anymore I get more frustrated with him than anything. I can't handle condemnation at this point. I have a problem with judgment, with hell. I tell myself that this is something I have to come to grips with - somehow. I'm not always sure how. I see people as victims for the most part. Victims of things that have happened to them. I suppose I have a problem with responsibility. I feel there are 2 sides to these stories. I'm taken back to Vic Lit and our talks about MacDonald and Universalism. I can see it's appeal now.

In Japan, there's very little positive Christian feedback. Mostly it's criticism. I hear criticism of everything from American Republicans to the rapture to whatever else happens to be on the plate for sarcasm that day. It's not that any of this is directed at me, but it affects me nonetheless. People's opinions have ALWAYS affected me. I've decided I'm too egalitarian with regard to ideas. It's like I think they're all equal. Even in my own church, I sometimes feel the need to filter the things I hear, filter them through my education, through my own beliefs about church and the way Christians behave. I'm sick of hearing about politics in church.

The lens refocuses - there's too much. I'm a little girl with a hymn book; my favorite song is "Trust and Obey." I also have an affinity for "It is Well With My soul." Strange songs for a little girl to like. But I questioned back then too - all the time. Mommy, why does it say "Let there be light before God created the sun?" It didn't seem to compute, until I realized that he is God. It's not hard for the Father of light to shed it before there's a ball of fire to do it for him.

I ask myself, why, why, why.

Because I want to believe that there's more to life than getting my PhD, publishing novels, and driving a nice car. I want to believe that the people who have been pressed down, kicked, beaten will someday get their recompense, that someday the tables will change. I want to believe that the cosmic beauty of the earth isn't accidental. I want to believe in mystery, beauty, truth, moral transcendence. I want to believe that we are each precious in our own way, apart from some hippie individualism. I want Jesus to be more than a "nice man." I want to believe that what I do matters, that the last will be first, that people can change. I want to believe in the resurrection of relationships, futures, lives. I want to believe in hope. I want love to triumph.

And so I try to sift through it all, the filthy, philosophical, individualistic debris of postmodernism, the plastic faces we don to keep everyone else in the dark. How are you? I'm fine. We're all fine. We're all PERFECTLY fine. We don't NEED anything. Religious expression is a pathetic relic of the past, supposedly. We're too self-sufficient. It's disgusting. I hate it, but I deal with this belief on a daily basis. To "help" me is the sad truth of the religious institutions of my homeland:

There are schools full of hatred
Even churches have forsaken
Love and mercy
May we see this generation
In its state of desperation
For Your glory
This is an emergency!

The songwriter is right in saying so. God save us. I hope He is what he says He is. No other deity could triumph at this point.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I like you because...

Foreign English teaching has it's enlightening moments. This time, it came in the form of a song I sing with my elementary schoolers. It's called the 'I like you Song.' It contains a long list of the reasons why, 'I like you'. The funny thing is that in Japanese, people never tell one another they love each other. They say 'daisuke' which means roughly 'like a lot' or 'love' in the 'I love ice cream' kind of way. Using the word 'love' on a regular basis is just too personal, even among boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife. I partially interpret this song to be a bit romantic because of this AND because in the version we sing, it's a duet between a boy and a girl.

First of all, she lists the reasons she likes him. He's kind, smart, strong, and funny. Then he replies with his own list: she's tall, cute, quiet (??), and brave. She replies again with more things, 'I like you because you run so fast...swim so far...sing so well...smile a lot.' I'm pretty sure there's another verse but I can't remember it. I like this song because I think it's cute, but everytime I sing it it makes me think about why we make friends, become boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife. It makes me think about liking and loving. These are obviously all reasons people find valid for liking another person. And yet my mind wanders to the recent film Valentines Day, and the infamous Taylor and Taylor (in character) citing their reasons for 'being in love': she's so beautiful, he's so athletic. While these reasons look shallow and naive in the film, in reality, they would come up on 'I like you because' lists if we had such things.

I WANT to seperate reasons for loving into primary reasons and secondary reasons. The primary being the REAL reasons we love or fall in love and the secondary being the ones that get tacked on as extra bonuses. Of the primary I would expect things like, you're kind, you're honest, you're a good person. Of the secondary, you're beautiful, you're funny, you run so fast. And yet oddly enough, people are generally attracted to one another based on the secondary reasons. How many people would go on a date because the other person was honest? In fact, a lot of people would say that these lists should be switched. Or better yet, that the dating pool should begin with people who fit the primary reasons and then the picking should take place based on the secondary. In fact, I think there are a lot of people who would say that it would be impossible for them to fall in love with someone who failed to have at least one of their secondary criteria. People have to have things in common, right?

Personally, I WANT people to fall in love for the right reasons. I want good people to find love regardless or beauty, weight, intelligence level, or athletic ability. But I myself never worked outside of these parameters when I was scoping out potential boyfriends (I could give examples, but would rather not...).

Sometimes I write blogs because I'm not sure what to think about something and I want to flesh it out. I often feel pressured to come up with some poignant ending, but this time I'm going to leave it open ended. I'll finish with a Meghan Young-like question of the day: What do you think is a valid reason for loving/falling in love? Do you think there are any shallow reasons?

Thanks for reading, y'all.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Graduation, Drunk Fathers, et cetera

So let me take you inside a junior high school graduation. (For those of you reading who already know what it's like, skip down a few paragraphs...) First, EVERYONE sits in the school gym. The students clustered tightly in the middle/back, the parents further forward, the graduates in the middle front, the teachers on the sides, the band sits in the back with their instruments. It's March, so it's freezing cold. I have my hands tucked under my leg to try to keep them warm, but it's not easy. This is a formal ceremony. Most the female teachers are in black dresses and suit jackets with pearl necklaces and corsages. The art teacher made corsages for every teacher so I got one too - they smelled so good :)

This thing lasts over two hours, is extremely boring for a non-Japanese speaker. It incorporates singing the national anthem, singing the school song, and standing up to bow MULTIPLE times. The principal has long coat tails and white gloves. The vice-principal just has the white gloves. The girls bawl their eyes out, and the speeches are long. Seventh grade boys that would usually be talking amongst themselves and fidgeting sit silently, their feet in front of them, their hands in their laps. There's not a peep from the mass of students or parents, despite their being crammed together like sardines.

About 20 minutes into this somber event, a man slips in the back; he's wearing a full suit with vest. A teacher stands up and ushers him to an empty seat. "That must be embarrassing," I think, imagining the poor kid who's graduating with the knowledge that their father was too busy to be on time. Honestly, I had no idea. A few minutes later, another parent steps in late. But this one sent more red flags. He was wearing track pants and a athletic jacket. He looked slightly disoriented as a teacher tried to lead him to the parents seating. As he walked past my seat, was it my imagination, or did I smell alcohol? Unlike the first latecomer, this guy was talking in an audible voice to the teacher. The senseis around me craned their necks and made faces at each other. Then, to everyone's embarrassment, this guy went traipsing into the crowd of seated students. He walked across the middle of the gym in plain view of everyone past the halfway point. Meanwhile, the principal is giving the students his graduation speech. I thought the worst of it was over, but it wasn't. He proceeded to come back across the gym a second time and then he found his kid, a graduating ninth grader sitting near the aisle in close to the back of the group. His boy stands up and the father starts talking to him. Meanwhile, the principal, fully aware of the spectacle occurring in the middle of the gym, tries to remain composed and drones on. After a few excruciating moments, several of the male teachers accosted the drunk fellow and started physically forcing him away from his son and towards the door. The boy sat back down and the teachers took the dad outside. I could still hear him talking on the other side of the wall behind me.

By this time, I was in agony, for the boy, for the other students, for everyone. This type of thing would have been overwhelmingly embarrassing for any kid in the U.S. but in Japan, the embarrassment has got to be 5 or 10 times that. My heart was aching. I can't imagine being that boy - humiliated by his own father in front of over a thousand people, hundreds of which are his classmates. The sad thing is, this type of behavior embarrasses EVERYONE in Japan. The ceremony is ruined. It's awful.

I've been kind of on a rant this week against parents that disadvantage their children voluntarily. Today was one of the worst examples of it that I've ever seen. My heart goes out to that poor boy that graduated junior high today.