Friday, September 24, 2010

Culture shock much?

This is my second time in Japan so I'm sort of used to how different things are here. However, there are 2 things that have unfailingly cause me to do a double-take.

Sorry, no pictures to show in either instances. Here it's actually quite rude to take pictures of someone without their explicit permission. And I can't do it discreetly either, because crediting all the perverts who like to take up-skirt photos of schoolgirls, Japanese phones all have automatic noise/music function built into their cameras that cannot be turned off or even tuned down :X

1 - Grandmas with neon-colored hair
Yes, the vast majority here are very daring when it comes to self expression, but I have to wonder whether there is a difference between Harajuku fashionistas or cosplayers with electrified hair and grandmas in daily outfits, some in traditional kimonos even, with hot flamingo pink or neon purple hair. Whatever floats their boats and I'm not trying to pass judgment here. Just that I couldn't help but, discreetly mind you, stare. Every. Single. Time.

2 - Kids groping each other
No, I'm not talking about rebellious high schoolers making out on the subway. That would actually be interesting, not their tongue sparing session of course but rather the surrounding reaction to it. I'm talking about adolescent-teenage boys hanging all over each other in a very, umm, intimate fashion. The other day on the train a group of middle-schoolers were being boisterous after a baseball practice session. Looking over, I noticed one of them were fondling another's butt cheek. No, not the 2-fingers pinching but the full-hand massaging. 

When I was a JET, this was one of the very first elements of culture shock for me, the interaction between the kids. I taught at 2 senior high schools, so this touchy feely stuff is not toddlers' play. What mind-havoc am I talking about?
- During class one day, Boy A climbed onto Boy B's lap, put his hand over his friend's shoulder, and they shared a text because Boy A had forgotten his at home. Every once in a while, Boy A would lovingly smooth out Boy B's meticulously groomed arches with his fingers, and Boy B would then snuggle his head into Boy A's collarbone. I swear they were trying to distract me from that day's lesson because I had to pick my jaw off of the floor several times.
- Then there were the cafeteria sessions that made spectacular lunchtime idol dramas. Boy C was eating his lunch when Boy D sat down across the table and proceeded to opens his mouth wide, asking for a bite. Boy C fed his friend a spoonful, then tenderly wipes off the corners of the friend's mouth with his own thumb. And so on and so forth.

If I didn't know better I'd have thought they were married. Nor any of them effeminate or somehow less "manly" to the rest because of their intimate gestures. If anything, those boys were all star athletes of the school and were quite popular among the gals.

So why is it so hard for my to wrap my head around this? Because in my experience with the Japanese senior high classrooms, the boys and the girls were almost always seated separately, boys on one side of the room and girls on the other. Any proximity between certain boy and certain girl will get them both teased to tears. And sharing food or drink between a boy and a girl? Oh no, forget it. That is considered an "indirect kiss." But interaction between the same sex? Grope and fondle away! Uninhibited displays like the above mentioned, boys among boys or girls among girls, are completely normal and acceptable in this society!

See, five years later and I'm still trying to cope. It doesn't help either that I was raised in a Puritan society where anything less than football machismo is derided with all sorts of nasty homophobic slurs. Definitely not an excuse, I fully understood, nor do I think such derision is acceptable, which is why I'm trying very hard to accept this fact of life on the other side of the planet. It's actually a truly refreshing (and amusing) change, though it would have been so much easier for my narrow little mind if they were just openly touchly feely all around, the boys and girls together, but it just doesn't work that way. 

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