Research on General Japanese Living
 

Hello,

I'm writing a book and my main characters are supposed to be Japanese but my knowledge of the living style is limited to what I've learned from my ettiquete guide. I did search but I didn't find anything similar to what I need and Google is useless. :mad:

I need to know things like daily life routines, how natives navigate Tokyo and surroundings, popular hangout spots and such. I don't have much of an idea.

Any help (maps, pictures, ect) would be very nice. Anyone who helps will be noted in the sources of my book.

Thank you!

Are you hoping to get published, or is this just for fun?

You should really spend time here if you're serious, because nothing we are going to tell you is going to be enough. You will make mistakes, and some pretty glaring ones...

...which is why I no longer read anime fanfiction anymore. It is impossible to suspend disbelief when every other paragraph describes something that would never happen in Japan, doesn't exist in Japan, or has some aspect of Japan I know a lot about completely wrong...

Published! No! ^^ This is for a geography/creative writing homeschool assignment.

...would be cool though....


Anyway, spending time in Japan is pretty much impossible for me right now. Unless my parents win the lottery, I get a grant or scholarship of some sort, or some generous soul donates the money and helps me get over there. I'm saving but I only get five bucks an hour once a week for three hours if i'm lucky, minus 10% religious purposes and 50% of the remainder for gasoline. I really need as much information as I can get. :rheart:

You should read some concerning books and put yourself into the living. From this way, you can get a good book

Do you know of some good ones? I've read lots of books but it doesn't feel right.

I had some books in college that were interesting. They are a bit dated, but are suprrisingly accurate in some areas (while also surprisingly innacurate in others).

"Communicative Styles of Japanese and Americans" by Barnlund is a decent one. It talks a lot about language and communication (which often goes beyond simply language in the general sense). I think it has a lot of explination of the "between the lines" styles of English and Japanese which might something to look at.

"Doing Business with Japanese Men: A Woman's Handbook" by Christalyn Brannen, Tracey Wilen was one of my favorites. It's good for a laugh sometimes, too. Even though I'm a guy I learned a lot from this book. It is pretty old, although a lot of it hasn't really changed. A lot of it is written by the people who had different kinds of experiences. Some of them have advice on how to handle it (some is good, some isn't). Even though you can laugh at a lot of it (and some of the parites involved look at it humorously), it does reveal a lot of the darker (depending on your perspective) things in Japanese society.

"Japanese Beyond Words: How to Walk and Talk like a Native Speaker" by Horvat is another one that has some neat stuff about it. It talks a lot about culutral differences and has a lot of little anecdotes.

There are more... some are better than others, but I think these books give a pretty good insight on a lot of Japanese culture that foreigners are concerned with. None of these books are "cover to cover" books in that you can open them up and read a little portion and get some knowledge like that. They might be discontinued, but I recall picking up used copies on amazon. I got one for like under 20 cents if I remember correctly.

Edit: As far as writing a book with a main character from a place you've never been to before and having him/her go around to famous places that you don't know much about goes, I personally think you might want to reconsider. You might as well make it about a fictional place LIKE tokyo or whatever, because it's gonna end up like that anyways. Assuming he/she's in tokyo, most of the people they will interact with will be Japanese, too... which will be extremely difficult to pull off. At any rate, if you are interested in Japan and want to learn about what people are like, those books that I mentioned might help you get started before you take a dunk headfirst.

Thank you veryu much!

You need to be a bit more specific with some of your questions- where the natives hang out? What age group are you thinking of? People in their 50s don't hang out in the same places as teenagers. If they're teenagers, rebellious teenagers or "good" ones?

People in Tokyo largely get around by (very crowded) trains. You must have found something during your searches that told you about a typical day for an office worker or high school student. If you want us to help you with that, again, tell us whose typical day you want to know about.

Well, it's kind of complicated. My story is about twins who get slipt up (by their own choise) after the death of their parents. I just need popluar places that are well known, things that would be likely targets for criminal activity, just the general layout and how these places are connected; how someone would get there.

Do you know any Japanese? I think you would learn the most about Tokyo by talking to some Japaense about their day to day lives. I also think that unless you've been there it's hard to understand just how massive it is. I'd check out maps of the train/subway systems and look at google maps' street views where they are available just to get an idea of what you're dealing with.

Tokyo seems like the holy land for most foreigners but I can't really stand it for more than a quick vacation... even still, I'd rather go somewhere else. It's too crowded; the amount of people is just too overwhelming.

With that being said, if you're talking about some kind of chance meeting in a city of that size, it's kind of interesting. I've never really bought stuff like that, but two weeks ago I was in Nagoya Station (which is also one of those mega-ly crowded places) and I met a friend there by chance.

Not to reiterate too much, but I think that writing about a place that you are thouroughly familiar with is quite a task, let alone a place that you know nothing about. I think that by looking at the massiveness of tokyo you might reconsider things.

Try looking at it this way: some Japanese person decides to write a book about an American in Los Angeles even though she doesn't speak English and has never been there before (or America for that matter). The person then goes on and describes places where crimes often happen and goes into detail about other things like day-to-day lives of regular people and the places they like to hang out at.

Seems like a far fetched idea... but I don't want to be a complete naysayer. I don't know if you want it, but my advice is to learn about it by experiencing it or talking to a ton of people who are experiencing it. Right now it's like you're trying to build a 10,000 piece jig-saw puzzle without more than just a few of the pieces. That will lead to an incomplete work or something filled with fantasy... that's what Tsuwabuki was talking about if I understood correctly. You have to create an atmosphere filled with Japanese (or Tokyoan) idiosyncrasies. However, you have to present it in a way that will be condusive to the idea that you are writing for an English speaking audience.

Yes, and how old are they? Male or female? Are they wealthy or more working class? Do you want them living in the centre of the city or out in the suburbs? What kind of criminal activity? You are still being quite vague.

I am going to give my personal opinion on this...

Stick to places you know, or places that don`t exist but are still within your culture and experience... Otherwise leap to total fantasy. Anything that falls between those two (places that exist but are filled in with lots of fantasy) is really going to fall flat for anyone that doesn`t share your exact background. Especially for people who do know the location and culture you`re writing about, and who can tell at a glance how much fantasy there is.

You just don`t have the background to write a believable Japanese character. And please don`t take that as an insult - it`s pretty common. I couldn`t write a believable (insert pretty much any nationality other than Japanese or American - and even American is getting kind of doubtful these days) character no matter how hard I tried. Even if you do tons and tons of research, get the setting down to photo-realistic levels, you still have the problem of how the characters would act and react to various things. No matter what their personality, people are so heavily influenced by their culture and lifestyle that without having some sort of experience in the same culture and lifestyle... It is pretty close to impossible to write a good believable character.

I avoid at all costs books and movies of this type. I have read some truly horrible published books taking place in "Japan" with "Japanese" characters. It is almost always in name only, as they do things no Japanese person would do, say things no Japanese person would say, and live in a place that certainly isn`t Japan. In the end it is cringe worthy and completely ruins a book no matter how great the writing or story is.

One of the best pieces of advice for writing is to "stick to what you know".
And if you don`t do that, "stick to things that no one knows".