Franklin College Japan Academic Travel -- Fall 2005

Science Fiction

2005-10-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

"Science Fiction uses as its point of departure anxiety. And when you start with anxiety, you usually just back yourself into a corner. This does not jibe with our overall approach to making movies for children. And also, reality is always much more complex and stimulating than science fiction. If you came to Tokyo, I could show you places much more alarming than anything in Blade Runner. I don't plan on taking you there, but you could discover it on your own."

- Hayao Miyazake, interviewed after Princess Mononoke was released in the USA.

Not seven minutes after this photograph was taken in our traditional Tokyo hotel (ryokan), I was on the top floor of and suddenly: an earthquake. Anxiety? You betcha. Especially when I had already read in my guide book that the really "big ones" come every seventy-odd years, and that the last Big One was in 1923, killing 140,000 people. The Japanese were thereby several years overdue for the next Big One. Was I just a little bit worried I had chosen a bad time to come? Oh, I can't say it didn't cross my mind...

Happily, we looked down from our sixth floor window and noticed that no one in the street was alarmed, and no one was running. The building stopped shaking a few seconds later, and we stopped shaking a few moments after that. And then -- bah -- the rest of the trip was earthquake-free. But it was definitely the kind of welcome that makes you reset your expectations clock to zero.

This set me to thinking. By the end of our two weeks I had more fully developed my hunch into a full-blown theory about all of Japanese civilization, in all its ancient and modern technological glory, beauty, and weirdness. It results essentially from a dual combination of zero predictability and control (esp the history of earthquakes and nuclear bombs there) added to the already known characteristic behaviors that come out of proximity theory -- about which more later. Subsequent posts will explore various dimensions of the hunch-turned-theory.

Welcome To Japan -- Now Start Shopping

2005-10-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

These are the first three signs you see when arriving at Narita International Airport outside of Tokyo. The signs are in English, and they speak for themselves.

Sign One: Welcome to Japan! See Mt. Fuji!

Sign Two: Japan welcomes Visa (and the humans that carry it!)

Sign Three: The competition speaks! As Pepsi is to Coke, as Reeboks are to Nike, as Burger King is to McDonald's, so too is MasterCard to Visa. The second place in the global infotainment marketplace also wants a piece of your high-interest-yielding purchases beyond your income level.

Notice too the subtle gendering of the two ads: The Visa ad is clearly aimed at men with money to spend. The MasterCard ad is clearly aimed at women. It is reminiscent of the color theory and store layout differences between Home Depot and Lowes Home Improvement Center. Home Depot is industrial strength orange, a man's man shop for men who crave power tools. Home Depot is the home improvement store For Her , and highlights the feminine side of domestic aesthetics.

But if the recent article in The Economist is any indicator ("The Sun Also Rises"), then Japan is doing precisely what it should be doing by the absolute law of contemporary technological capitalism: drive sales at every possible point. Economic business is the only business of culture anymore, and there is no place like Japan to see this in action. All of history, religion, culture, arts and crafts still exist, but they exist only insofar as they can drive sales, turn profits, generate revenues, or become cash cows.

This takes a lot of work, and you may find yourself thirsty -- in which case you should grab a nice cold bottle of Pocari Sweat. This was the first of many surprising product names we encountered, whose nutritional and flavorful qualities were nevertheless dimmed by our mind's linguistic suggestion that we were perhaps drinking the chilled and bottled sweat of a man named Pocari...

We're Going to See Japan - Japanese Style

2005-09-13T02:53:00.000-07:00

Satellite image of Japan.

The 28 students of Franklin College's Fall 2005 Academic Travel Japan Trip are going to see Japan the way the Japanese see it: fast, full, and fun. We will be travelling from Lugano, Switzerland to Narita/Tokyo on Saturday October 15, 2005, and returning on Friday, October 28.

The co-leaders are FC librarian Susan Gilfert, who has lived and worked in Japan, and FC Assistant Professor of International Communications Read Schuchardt, who is going for his first time.

This blog is dedicated to the trip, and to the experiences, memories, images and words that the students post before, during, and after our adventure.