Dreaming in Japanese - my entry for Rainbowholic's Japan essay contest ~

Heeeeyaaa everyone,

so in January I participated in Rainbowholic's [ http://the.rainbowholic.me/ ] Japan Essay Contest.
And so I wasn't among the 3 'big' winners [which I never thought anyways since, pheww what are writing skills ;D] so I was really surprised to be among 5 striking/notable essays and I won something too, don't know what but heey, I normally never ever win anything or succeed in anything so this makes me really happy :D

Below I'll just post the entry if anyone's interested ~ :3

Dreaming in Japanese

When did your love for Japan start? Why? How is that even possible? Why would you want to go there – our cultures are so different?!” Just a few of the question everyone asks when they find out about my love for Japan. Some people are like ‘Wow, cool!’ others are like ‘uh-huh, interesting’ and then there are the ones who simply don’t understand why I would love Japan, why I would love a country I have never been to or why I would love a country whose culture is so different from our own? To all these things there is one answere: it is because Japan is fascinating, because the culture and the people are fascinating and the huge difference between my culture and the Japanese is what makes it all the more interesting and because I feel like I can relate much more to Japanese people than I can relate to the people in my country, it’s simply because it’s Japan.

My love for Japan started a good 2 and a half years ago. Starting with the simple obsessing over an anime called InuYasha- not that this was my first anime ever though, I already loved anime when I was 3 years old, Sailor Moon was my hero back then. It started with watching it in German but then the German episodes stopped and I had to switch to Japanese with subtitles and I fell in love with the language, the language alone already fascinated me because I thought that it was beautiful but this is not what started my love for Japan. What started it was when I listened to the soundtrack of InuYasha and somehow the opening made it onto the soundtrack and that was when I heard the first Japanese song in my life, it was Hamasaki Ayumi’s song ‘Dearest’ and even though this was not even the whole song, I fell in love with it. I listened to it over and over and over again until one day I decided that there has to be more than just these 2 minutes of that one song so I started looking up Japanese music and in the end ended up with J-Rock and Visual Kei.

A few weeks passed, if not a few months, and I was just listening to the music, enjoying the sound of it, enjoying the voices and enjoying the language- not really caring about Japan as a country and a culture at all. Though one day this changed rather drastically as I found a book about a ‘geek’ in Japan in my local bookstore, I bought it but mostly because there were a few things about Visual Kei, cosplay and maybe a few other subcultures in it. While I read it though something inside me changed, first I did not give Japan two thoughts about Japan but while I read this book I started to be utterly fascinated. These people- whom I just knew as these annoying little Asians who are always taking pictures of everything, flooding my city- suddenly started being interesting and suddenly became someone to me. Their culture was so different to mine, much more like how I would imagine my ideal culture where everyone is polite and where not every single person is rude and impolite but where people still take care of other people. Their views were completely different from what I always knew, they cared more about the whole group than the individual as it is the case in Europe. They knew better than to be rude and impolite. The Japanese started fascinating me from this point on where I realized just how they think and how they act and what is normal for them.

After that nothing could stop my love for Japan anymore, I bought tons of books and I read them all, trying to absorb every little Japanese detail into my brain. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to know about the culture, the people, how it is living there and I wanted to know about their mentality and ideals, about the nature, about the cities, about the problems, the history. Just everything suddenly seemed interesting to me. Things that never interested me before, suddenly did. Soon their sense of fashion poked me too and the next things happened that I was interested in the fashion and the different subcultures in fashion. Their style seemed amazing to me, Harajuku fascinated me as a place where no one would ever judge you or laugh at you because of what you wear but as a place where it’s awesome if you have your own weird but somehow stylish sense of fashion, not caring if it’s lolita or morikei or visual kei or all of them in once. There was no such thing as a bad sense of fashion as long as you feel comfortable in what you’re wearing and just wear whatever you like and however you like it.

I believe that loving Japan has changed my life. It has given me a reason to always keep fighting, keep working hard and keep absorbing everything that has to do with Japan. I would even go as far as to say that finally having a dream and taking an interest in something has saved me, saved me from failing all the way in the future. It gives me hope and energy every day to reach my Japanese dream.
The dream of living and working there one day and to finally one day be able to speak Japanese properly which is an endless struggle, with me not really having the time to put more time into studying Japanese right now. Japan has given me a perspective and made me realize what really interests me and what I really want to do for a living one day. It showed me just hooow much I adore languages and how I would to once teach them in Japan and to teach it with the same passion and love that I have for Japan. It gives me hope and a dream and a reason to work and fight hard for this one dream, my own personal Japanese dream.

One of my main interest of Japan has always been the culture as well as the pop-coolture of Japan’s streets, especially the one’s of Tokyo. I found myself comparing the Japanese pop-coolture with other Asian countries’ pop-coolture and the way I see it, the other countries, like Korea or China, do have their own pop-coolture in a way but I sometimes feel like these too have huge similarities to the Japanese pop-coolture. The street fashion in particular is very similar if you comapre China with Japan, if you ask me, because they all have a very similar but crazy and fashionable style. As I see it though Japan has the most influencing and most trend-setting pop-coolture. It’s not the other countries that set the trends in fashion nowadays, so the other pop-cooltures are not as strong yet as the Japanese though I see the Korean coming pretty fast since their fashion and pop-coolture has been made widely known through k-pop and especially PSY last year. So the others are slowly rising I would say but none of them being as popular and amazing yet as the Japanese pop-coolture with all their otakus and fashionistas setting trands all over the world, not only when it comes to fans of Japan but also to others. I just think that Japan’s pop-coolture is influencing the others a lot but not only in Asia but all over the world.

I do not think that the global-coolture is heading anywhere in particular. It is just always going to keep being influenced by other cooltures from other countries, there will be no such thing as a general global coolture since basically that would mean that every country kind of has a similar coolture and this will never be the case. There will always be countries who influence other countries cooltures and the global coolture is just a big, crazy mix of all of them coming together and if someone likes something, they pick it as their favourite coolture. In a way for me, each person has their own coolture, a mix of things they like and consider ‘cool’.

Looking at my country I don’t see such a thing as a coolture. Austria is a country that gets influenced heavily by American things, American fashion, American trends, American food, you name it. Austria has never been and will probably never be influenced by Asian cooltures as here everyone just thinks that America is doing it right in all kinds of things regarding the coolture. So basically, my country adapts a lot to the American coolture, simple and woah, just don’t dress differently or look different because you’ll be laughed at and judged for it to no end. Not just by the elderly but even from young people you get a lot of judgmental glares and looks for looking a tiny bit different from the rest.

I feel like in my country it is as bad as it can be, regarding Europe. You get judged from the beginning to the end, people here can’t tolerate a diffrent person. Another reason for me to adore Japan because they don’t care what you wear, young people won’t judge you. It is quite scary here to see how everyone looks so similar and likes the same music and the same things, it’s like everyone is identical to the other with only a few exceptions, which then get judged for having their own coolture, for not adapting to what is considered normal in Austria.

As a final thought regarding our generation of people obsessed with the idea of world peace and cultural harmony, there will never be such a thing. People will never learn how to tolerate other people, other cultures. Their will always be cultural differences that can never be broken down. Western people are not really able to adapt to eastern cultures and it is just the other way around. The differences between east and west, rich and poor are too big to ever vanish completely. Cultural harmony can’t be achieved, completely in this world since the idfferences are just to big and same goes for world peace. As sad as is but I don’t think that world peace will one day be possible, there will always be some crazy people who will try to take over a country on their own, there will always be crazy people who will bomb others and start wars with others. This is just not a thing that can be stopped from one day to another. There will always be things that come between people and countries and these will be the things that start wars. It’s just unstoppable.

The differences between people, cultures and countries are just too big to ever be able to overcome them.
Our generation is ruled by materialism and the wish to be powerful and some take it too far, starting wars with their obsession to be a powerful leader, to lead a whole country, no matter what it takes. They even kill for their ideals and dreams, hopes and views.

We live in a crazy world with lots of different cultures but with every single one of them being fascinating. All these cultures have a long history and people who love these cooltures. If it’s the Japanese now or any other. In every country lies something that will always fascinate people, no matter how different we are. If there is one thing that can overcome this differences than it’s people sharing the same interests, then it doesn’t matter what god you believe in or where you’re from, all that matters then is the love for a thing that you share.

It’s important to keep dreaming and to never stop trying to fulfill this dream. Dreams are what keep us going, what keep pushing us forward. No dream is an impossible dream and as long as you fight hard for it, nothing can stop you and take this dream away from you.
Dreams are there for us to live them.

And so will I, one day I will live my Japanese dream.