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.

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.

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+!

Swear I'm Not Dead...Promise

I'll be back with at least one update tonight. Until then:



Now imagine a group of 12-year-old girls singing and dancing to that song.

That was my homeroom. I'll introduce you to them soon.

When in Doubt, Dance.

I have great story about Tuesday to tell, but it's going to have to come later. It was just so strange, so epic of a day that I want to recount it for you with all of the details and pictures that a day like that should have. You know, those great days that come out of nowhere because the people you meet are so incredibly interesting? That's why I love traveling, not because of the great scenery. Although I have photos of that, too.

So far I'm really loving it here at Damyang. It's certainly not a big, cosmopolitan city with lots of things to do and places to see, but there's actually buildings, bars, cafes, grocery stores, cars, and people. If I venture out of the college, I pass a bamboo forest, walk down a bridge, and go past little stalls serving street food such as fried fish, barbequed chicken, and fried green tea pancakes that taste like funnel cake and are filled with melted brown sugar, honey and finely chopped nuts.

My camp is amazing, filled with such a great mix of energetic and laid back individuals. And I absolutely love my co-teacher, Ja In, who speaks great English and has been a very good friend and co-worker to me. On the first day we met, she offered to take me to Gwangju to shop, but we weren't allowed to leave until the principal arrived at camp. We missed our chance to go, but she bought me ice cream and chips at lunch that day. Later on, we went with Jessica, another co-teacher, and other native English teachers to a hof, which is what they call bars. We all had a bottle of beer and ate fried shrimp, melon, and fried pork.

200 Pounds Beauty

On Wednesday night, I watched the Korean film 200 Pounds Beauty, a movie about a 200-pound girl with an ugly face. Hanna works as a phone sex operator and is the singing voice of Ammy, a mean, manipulative pop star. After a hurtful prank causes Hanna to lose face in front of Ammy's attractive manager, Hanna blackmails one of her phone sex clients into giving her total plastic surgery. She goes into seclusion for a year and works off literally half of her body weight (there are scenes with a newly beautiful Hanna jumping around the house in one of her legs of her old jeans). Her face is completely reconstructed.

I'd like a double cheeseburger with bacon and mayonaise, fries, a side of mayonaise, and a Diet Coke.

We're finally getting a little information about our situation.

Basically, we are going to have at least one of the camps, most likely the elementary one. Afterwards, the touring will proceed as usual and I will be able to visit my host family as scheduled. Of course, this is all subject to change.

This week has passed by so slowly, with only the internet and hiking as things to occupy my time. We're hopefully visiting a city at the beginning of next week, and our quarantine ends tomorrow. I wish they would let us take a cab to a city or something, but one of the Korean staff members here found out about some Wando residents protesting our presence. I doubt anything is in the cards until Tuesday.

I am so sick of the food here. I'm sure Korean food is great, but this cafeteria food is driving me nuts. All I can think about is eating a big cheeseburger, some fajitas, thick slabs of cheese and salami, or some pasta. I think my trip to Nagoya will definitely involve a visit to Mos Burger for two teriyaki chicken sandwhiches, fries with mayonaise, and melon soda. Toward the end of my stay in Japan, a friend and I would eat lunch there once a week and get donuts afterwards. Somehow, despite the globs of mayonaise, I still kept losing weight. Hooray for an active Asian lifestyle, right?

I'm sorry this post is so boring; but I feel as though this week has been boring. I'll be posting a review of the movie 200 Pounds Beauty tomorrow; that's about as near Korean culture as I've come this past week.

In the meantime, how about an adorable Chinese song?

Here by the sea and sand, nothing ever goes as planned.

Here's an update on our status.

• Last night I got my swine flu test results back, and I am negative. Unfortunately, the other two who were tested were positive.
  
• Today a group of workers were dispatched to clean all of our rooms and wipe down any visible mold with bleach, which should help a lot.
  
• Construction on the building has stopped, and all the trash in the back should be gone by tomorrow.
  
• We are all starting Tamiflu tonight. Tamiflu won't prevent swine flu, but for those who have it and haven't shown symptoms, it will help fight the virus quicker. Most of us have decided to take Tamiflu, and we all will be tested for swine flu in five days. Those who pass the test will be able to move on! This is incredibly exciting to us, because we thought we could be quarantined indefinitely until seven days after the last confirmed case of swine flu.
  
• After the quarantine, we will be given the choice to go back home early. Our first camp is cancelled, our second is probably cancelled, and after the quarantine our group will be touring Korea for a period of time. Which sounds great, except if someone starts showing signs of swine flu again, rumor has it we may have to start over.
  
• We will be getting compensated for the first camp, and our two representatives are working to make sure we get compensation for the second as well.
  
• We have contacted the U.S. Embassy and have someone working on our case. She's making sure most of our requests are met and has been sending daily updates.

I want my mom, a Disney movie, and a cup of chicken soup.

Swine Flu update, part 3: I don't have it.

However, I do feel crappy today and will save a full update with pictures until later tomorrow. Stuffy/runny nose, congested, headache. I took some sinus pills and will be going to bed early tonight. Hopefully that does the trick, because I need to stay healthy.

Today was by no means a bad day, but I'm getting cabin fever from being shut in a wet, moldy building all day (maybe this is all allergy related?), and...

Scratch that. Karaoke in 30 minutes. Perhaps I'll shower and stay up a little later.

I am going to learn this dance:



Be scared.

I'll make it rain...ism.

Today was the day of shopping before the trip, which is always the worst. Don't get me wrong, I love shopping. But I prefer to do it for things I don't need, unfortunately. Things I need to survive in Korea (or at least to survive with working electronics) are no fun to buy at all, and they're so expensive. Electric power adaptors, voltage converters, lithium batteries, a new pair of plain flats, an SD card reader, and about $100 gone all before I've left the country. Ouch.

Hopefully I'll be ready to leave for Korea by Saturday morning, but there's still so much more to do.