our reality?
 

hello

recently, i've been very interested in japan, and by googling ;=) i became even more interested and very fascinated with its culture and people, and so i wished to live there as soon as i would graduate

let me say this once again, that i find japanese culture absolutely stunning and supperior to any other culture that i know of in present. usa, europe, arabian world, africa... etc all have some certain level of traditions and culture but i guess the rest of their culture got lost in the globalisation process, they just weren't interesting to me anymore after i discovered japan.

however since i consider myself a sober man, not rushing into things, i began to do my little research about japan and the life over there. i found wonderful things about that country, they have very nice traditions, they seem very polite and hard working people. however when putting myself into that i ran into a term 'gaijin'. after that i was reading stories of other gaijins that lived or live in nihon, and after some thinking i came to realise that perhaps japan is too good to be true, since no matter how good would i try to assimilate to their culture, learn language .. etc the bottom line is i would trully never be 100% japanese, since my race is different (caucasian), of course i could become japanese citizen-national but in practice i could never be nihon-jin. altho i could enjoy just by living by them ;)

can u imagine me sitting with them at some traditional event? ofcourse if we close our eyes ;) i could speak the same as they do, even do same things (maybe even better than them ;) ). however when we open eyes you would see a man who's indeed a lot different than the rest of people at event, usually bigger, different color, face etc..

i dunno how it is for real since i've never been there, but perhaps the japan has preserved it culture by being closed for foreigners? or it still is partly closed (only about 1% of foreign people in japan) ?

however i still consider japan a paradise on earth :) and this is only my oppinion, it surely doesn't have to be correct at all. i posted it only for discussion, to see what the rest of you think, both japanese and others

pardon my english ;) i'm not a native

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Indeed, you can never become a Japanese the same way as one can become an American.

hah, i never thought about that, but its nice to be reassured that its a possibility not to be ousted :-)

I'd love to attend a traditional event in Japan. :) I love the music they play. Agh, now I can't stop thinking about it. xD

I've been to school "culture days" and sumo tourneys and all kinds of stuff. In 2007 no one cares where some one is from, just that they are enjoying themselves. I also participated in some "danjiri" festivals which are some local neighborhood traditions, and I was invited by a top guy (whose son was a friend of mine, and the same age) and was told that no foreigner had ever participated before, but they would let me in, because I was friends with the son. It sounded very secretive, but the "tradition" involved a lot of drinking beer from 10AM and walking around the neighborhood.

No problem.