If someone asked me in the begging of this course, what are the Japanese culture, what makes Japan interesting place to visit, all I could think of must be the old, traditional aspects of Japan that most people outside of Japan have had enough of. Then, I had to force myself to look into Japan from the outsider point of view. I realized how our culture is a great mixture of the East and the West. Everything I see in my daily life were not quite Japanese but were not quite Western neither.
And then, when I tried to imagine Japan, I could only see the positive, peaceful and calm Japan in my head. In the latter part of the course, we watched The Cove, The Great Happiness Space and Against Coercion. These two films reminded me of the dark side of Japan and I realized I had been ignoring the negative aspects of Japan.
Controlling of the media, moral issues, nightlife, night jobs, stressful society, conservative government structure and irrational rules. I started to think that Japan is not as peaceful as it seems to be. We might not feel the downsides of Japan in the daily life but then when I look back on my past, I was always under the pressure of something and was not able to tell or follow my intentions due to this inflexible Japanese society. This course gave me an opportunity to observe my own culture from the outside and to rethink when I stumble on something that I do not understand well.
