Hello Kitty and festivals involving nudity and genitalia

First things first: I have a new article up Matador Trips!  I know you've all desperately wanted to know about Hello Kitty attractions in Japan and Taiwan, so I've gone through the very hard work of scouring the Internet to formulate the Hello Kitty Tour.  If you have spare funds you'd like to donate to a worthy cause, I would love to use your money to sleep in a Hello Kitty hotel and eat sweets shaped like cats wearing ribbons.

At left are Christmas presents from my host family to prove that, yes, I have a real addiction, and, yes, they do exacerbate it by sending me more Hello Kitty things than I could ever find use for.  I have Hello Kitty wine glasses.  Wine glasses.

Today is St. Patrick's Day, which for most college students is another excuse to drink heavily and engage in some reckless behaviors.  But for cleaner, more perverted fun, one could visit Komaki, a Japanese town shortly out of Nagoya. Every year on March 15, citizens gather to for a penis festival that celebrates fertility and the harvest.  Check out an article and slideshow about the event here; the girl in red on photos 12-14 is actually a friend of mine.

Unfortunately,  I didn't make it to the penis festival when I lived in Nagoya in 2008.  However, I did attend Hadaka Matsuri, or the Naked Festival, which is also held outside Nagoya.  Check out some of my photos, which surprisingly display no nudity.

The Stupidity of Comparing Experiences

Over the summer, one of the craziest things I was asked was whether I liked Korea or Japan better.

How do you answer a question like that? Two countries with a history of bad blood between them, and you want me to say I like one better than the other? I may be crazy, but I'm not that stupid.

Of course, it's a little more complicated than just picking a favorite, as well.  I had two completely different experiences in each country, and both of them were stressful at time but utterly fantastic.

Covering subcultures in Japan

I have a love/hate relationship with the mainstream media's coverage of Japanese fashion subcultures.

Sometimes the outlet does a really great job of portraying a subculture, such as this Wall Street Journal article and video on himegyaru and this fantastic New York Times piece on the lolita fashion circle in New York.

But sometimes, coverage of a subculture ranges from anywhere between sloppy and poorly reported to inaccurate and exoticizing.

Full disclosure: when I spent time in Japan in 2008, my interest in lolita fashion helped me make friends in Nagoya. At the school I attended, Japanese students had classes on the Japanese school schedule, where foreign students went to school for the typical September-May calendar common in America. For this reason, during the spring semester, it was months before we were on campus with any Japanese students.

I didn't really click with many of the other foreign kids, so my participation in the lolita subculture was a very vital way for me to make both Japanese and English-speaking friends. I estimate that I dressed in lolita fashion about twice a week.



Being a lolita myself and an admirer of other Japanese fashions such as gyaru and mori girl, it rubs me the wrong way when I see articles on youth subcultures that just aren't what they could be. But as a journalist, I can surely understand how some of these mistakes are made.

I'm sure covering fashion isn't the biggest priority for foreign correspondents. I can see how it could be seen as an easy article to pay the bills while working on something bigger and more important, such as an article about politics or social issues.

In my opinion, though, stories about pop culture are important, especially when thinking about how the media frames stories about Japan. Japan is seen as an eternal paradox: we think about the low birthrate, the conformity, the salarymen and then on the other side there are men who wear lace or carry around body pillows with pictures of naked anime girls on them. Japan is portrayed as either sexless or sex-crazed, conformist or just plain fucking weird. The in-between isn't really noted because it's not interesting. Journalists don't think of normalcy as news, and because of that, news about Japan tends to send a message that all of Japan is extremely polarized.

It is extremely crucial to take these pop culture stories seriously, if only because one-sided coverage can so easily push a story into that dreaded "weird Japan" narrative instead of humanizing people who obviously have a story to tell.

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a story called "Cult of the Living Doll in Tokyo" that contained several inaccuracies and did not present an educated view on Japanese fashion. The thing is, this is not an isolated incident, and reporters frequently make mistakes like this all the time. I've gone through the "Living Doll" article and pulled out some of the most glaring errors.

Back in Japan-- Kozo's view

I'm not done with Korea yet, but I figured that since my timeline is all kinds of screwed up, I might as well post a slideshow of the photos my host father took in Japan. Check out the captions for my running commentary!

Sorry Mom and Dad (NSFW)

After finishing camp and meeting the governor at a dinner, all of the teachers took a trip to Jeju Island. It was a really beautiful place that I hope I can come back to at some point. Honestly, my time on Jeju Island was strictly controlled and somewhat sanitized -- a twenty minute stop at some beach, a forty minute bus ride, a thirty minute stop at a park, and so on. All day. All tourist spots. I do have photos of these places, most of which I don't remember that well, and I'll get to posting them later. Forgive me if I sound ungrateful; going to the island was a great experience. But after working 10 days straight from 9 in the morning to 9 at night, I wanted to spend my time in Jeju peacefully, taking my time to see the sights I wanted and straying from the group of 70-something teachers to meet other people.

For the most part, this didn't happen.

Luckily, nights were free, and I vowed to myself that I would go to the place I've wanted to go ever since I looked up Jeju Island on Wikipedia.

I was going to Jeju Love Land.

Proceed only if you are 18+!

Danse de caractère

Over the summer, I've been working on contributions for Arabesque, a zine focusing on the idea of otome, which is Japanese for maiden. The zine is finally finished and is taking pre-orders!



More details and pre-order information here!

I contributed some photos and reflections about my time in Korea and wrote a blurb about the souvenirs from Japan that meant the most to me. The zine contains a little of everything: fashion, photography, comics, academic articles, translations of Japanese stories, travel reflections, and cooking tips. I hope you pre-order a copy so we can make another issue! I, personally, had a great time, and I want to see it keep going! Everyone involved is extremely talented, and I was so privileged to work with them.

Big Bang Class

It wasn't the landscape of Korea that made me love it. Rather, it was the handful of kids in my homeroom class.