It’s now March. Winter is coming to a close. The school year is at the final weeks.
The weather has slowly been getting warmer. This weekend looks like it’ll be the last snow fall for the season… and while I’ll miss those dreary days spent staring at falling snowflakes, I’m pretty glad that its over. Winter in Japan is highly uncomfortable, especially along the Sea of Japan/Northern Japan regions where we’re constantly getting slammed by Russia and China’s sloppy seconds. I definitely will not miss the insanely powerful wind storms or the sea of mud and water once snow starts to melt after a heavy snow storm.
Or the lack of centralized heating. Prefer being able to walk around my apartment, not sit in one position because stepping at least an inch away from the heat source meant stepping into the arctic tundra.
It’s been six months here and I’m working towards the second half. I made it to the checkpoint and now I need to get to the finish line 
It doesn’t feel like I’m living in Japan. Even when I watch the weather reports and I see the cloud radars, it still doesn’t feel like I’m in another country a world away from home. I see this small island, I see it surrounded by China, Russia and Korea and yet it doesn’t feel like I’m here in Asia.
I guess its because a lot of parts of Japan look no different than America. Driving into newly developed urban areas looks exactly like some posh neighborhood in America.When I’m in Kanazawa near the university area or Yawata City in Kyoto, I feel like I’m in America with everything translated into Japanese. I see McDonalds, Subways, Dominos, Pizza Huts, and Burger Kings all over the place. I see huge cars that rival America’s obsession with trucks and oversized soccer mom SUVs. As Japan gradually edges closure to Western architecture and modernization, it gradually begins to lose its cultural facade.
I had a conversation with a local in my area about this. Their family had lived in this area for years, probably even before the restoration when it was known at the Kaga Domain, and so she had a lot of opinion on the gradual changes around her. The one thing that caught my attention about this conversation was how she said that Japan is becoming more and more like America. Japan is no longer remaining as ‘Japan’ but rather an American clone. She was primarily referring to the buildings and businesses but I had a feeling she was also referring to the younger generation as well. I had agreed with her on some points. In order to see the Japan that we in the Western world are introduced to, you have to drive out into the boonies and sometimes, even in the boonies, you have to go deeper in to the dying villages to capture the Japan prior the bubble.
And driving out to the dying villages are really something. There’s one village deep in the mountains that used to be a thriving mining town of a couple of hundred before the mine closed and the railroad was shut down and replaced with a bus system. Half of the village today is filled with empty, collapsing homes, with a population of less than a hundred people… all senior citizens making due with the ghost of a town their once bustling village has turned into. It’s surreal to drive through the tiny one way road (all the other “roads” have been closed off or destroyed from not being used in decades) and come to the end at an abandoned store (商店) that seems to be forever stuck in the late 1970s.
Even the farthest village in the city has a road that is shut down in the winter due to heavy snow and possible avalanches. I wonder what the people do who live in that town… or is there anyone still left in that town?
The school I teach at, 40 years ago, was large enough that it managed to have three classes for each grade. The school is lucky enough if it can get thirty warm bodies into it’s new first year class. The school is filled with anxiety knowing that all the elementary schools in the area barely have enough students. One of the school’s only have 4 students in it’s fourth grade class, who are now becoming fifth graders this year. They’ll soon be seventh graders, or first years in middle school, and who knows what will become of my school when that day comes.
Anyway, the older generation is dying off and with them will be the Japan that the world has grown a fascination with. The new Japan of my generation will be a more of a faux interpretation; people adhering to a culture because it’s what sets them apart from the rest of the world but not full understanding or appreciating its value.
Its a sad reality.