{"id":146,"date":"2008-09-18T22:39:55","date_gmt":"2008-09-18T13:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seanmisen.com\/?p=146&language=en"},"modified":"2008-09-18T22:39:55","modified_gmt":"2008-09-18T13:39:55","slug":"this-isnt-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/japan\/this-isnt-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"This Isn’t Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been to Hokkaido a few times before, but didn’t really appreciate it until this weekend.\u00a0 Having lived in Honshu for a year, I have developed an image of Japan and the Japanese that I’ve had wiped clean by this place and its geography.\u00a0 I went east to Nakashibetsu for an ALT party but was astonished by the landscape.<\/p>\n

\"hokkaidoblog-04.jpg\"<\/p>\n

It reminds me so much of so many other places that are nothing like Japan: Alaska, the American Midwest, Australian Pasturelands, the German Countryside.\u00a0 Cows, Corn, Hay, Potatoes, Onions, Cabbages, Horses, Unused Forest, Wild Animals.\u00a0 There is room here.\u00a0 Niigata feels like a closet in comparison.<\/p>\n

\"hokkaidoblog-05.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Really, does that image remind you of Japan?<\/p>\n

\"hokkaidoblog-06.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Or this one? Sheesh, it looks practically like an alpine environment.\u00a0 Did you know Hokkaido gets drift ice?\u00a0 And we’re at the same latitude as Seattle!<\/p>\n

There’s just so much space, and the land is so spaciously divided, I feel at home here.\u00a0 Here’s a view of the area of my town near Lake Saroma, a huge brackish lake connected to the ocean that is a massive scallop farm.<\/p>\n

\"hokkaidoblog-02.jpg\"<\/p>\n

It’s not just the landscape.\u00a0 The people are different.\u00a0 The fifth grade teacher at one of my elementary schools is usually wearing a White Snake, Led Zeppelin, Megadeth, or similarly casual T-shirt at school.\u00a0 I don’t feel like I’m underdressed all the time!\u00a0 People don’t assume retarded things about foreigners.\u00a0 The lifestyle is more relaxed and more independent.\u00a0 In Niigata, especially when I first arrived, I really felt like everyone was watching me, and I think perhaps they were.\u00a0 I don’t think anyone here cares about what the next person is doing.\u00a0 It’s their business.\u00a0 I watched a coworker at the City Office trim his nosehair with a giant pair of construction scissors the other day. He wasn’t embarrassed in the slightest.<\/p>\n

Hokkaido’s background is completely different than Honshu’s.\u00a0 Most all place names are derived from the language of the native Ainu peoples, who were gradually displaced over the past few hundred years and then finally in the late 1800’s as Japan made their imperial push north.\u00a0 What this means is that almost all of the place names are Ainu words that are now written in Japanese.\u00a0 Half of the places seem to end in -betsu, which means river in Ainu.\u00a0 What’s bizarre is that nearly all of these placenames are still written with kanji, resulting in some very odd ateji<\/em>, or phonetically matched kanji.\u00a0 Take a look at this road sign:<\/p>\n

\"hokkaidoblog-09.jpg\"<\/p>\n

Hokkaido’s a pretty good place.\u00a0 I’m still on the high of discovery, but right now I would say that Hokkaido is objectively a better place than Honshu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been to Hokkaido a few times before, but didn’t really appreciate it until this weekend.\u00a0 Having lived in Honshu for a year, I have developed an image of Japan and the Japanese that I’ve had wiped clean by this place and its geography.\u00a0 I went east to Nakashibetsu for an ALT party but was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-saroma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}