this experience has been told already. I demand better.

Perhaps what I struggle with here is the inevitability of the cliche. I despise cliches, I run from them at all costs. I deride what I believe to be an overused and obvious observation, even when I know that it makes me a fucking hypocrite. I believe it is the goal of any writer, any artist, to attempt to be original, to portray what one believes to be universal in a way that is startling in its presentation, to innovate, to provoke, to make your audience see something in a way they'd never even imagined was possible.

And yet here, all I see, all I hear, all I experience is a walloping huge cliche.  Perhaps it's why I feel so loath to participate in "cultural activities," like going to the tea ceremony, learning Japanese calligraphy, watching kabuki theatre, even eating sushi. Maybe you think I'm lazy, maybe you think I'm not taking advantage of these awe-inspiring opportunities, but to me, these things are not enough.  They mock what it is I want to learn, what it is I want to find. 

I just read a week's worth of articles on slate.com written by a journalist who spent two months in Tokyo on a media fellowship from the Japan Society. Okay no I DIDN'T read them, because they were titled as such: Japanese Cliche No 1: Wacky Food. No 2: Manga. Then came Inane Protocol, Capsule Hotels, Earthquakes...the list goes on and on. I couldn't bear to continue. And do any of those things even sound interesting? Maybe they do to you (you stupid gaijin!), but to me, they're clearly things we all have read about, all have heard stories about, and all could have written before stepping off the plane into the iconic land of the fucking rising sun. In fact, I could add dozens of facile, inane cliches to the list, and let me tell you, reading about them would be boring, unenlightening, and a waste of time.

What MORE is there to this country? Has Japanese culture become so commodified, so prized for its wackiness, so overdepicted that we have nothing left to discover? Wow Lori, but why don't you go to Japan and REALLY see what it's like. Maybe what we dream about over in America is WRONG, and you can find the REAL JAPAN!

Give me a break. You think that Seth Stevenson, with his precious funds from the Japan Society, didn't try to depict Japan as it really is? You think Dave Barry didn't really come here? You think that watching Lost in Translation didn't give you an accurate picture of Tokyo? He did. They did. They all did exactly what I'm doing right now.

Yeah, it's different over here than it is back home. That's why Americans like to come here, right? To marvel at the fact that you have to take your shoes off and bow, that you can eat Japanese food and listen to J-Pop, that people are so polite that they'll come chasing after you when you leave an extra 20 yen tip (and hey, that was going to be my trump card, the one story I actually found amusing. but no, it's simply fodder to add to the pile of cliches). But we already know the differences. We come here to get lost in them. Why else would Sofia Coppola have chosen such a place, where the neon lights filled with chinese characters and ubiquitous karaoke machines and drunken salarymen and oh-so-hilarious television programming make an American feel exactly not at home?

Don't get me wrong, I neither know nor understand this place and how it operates. There is something subtle and complex about the interactions between Japanese people, there is something indescribably beautiful about an outlook on life that I will never be able to voice, there is something melancholy about social trends and emotional consequences that I can't put my finger on just yet, and surely never will. What I mean is that what I have the ability to see, and what is handed to me on a daily basis is what I have described thus far, and that it frustrates me to no end. Finding my way out of this mess is what leaves me at a loss.  It is not the country or the culture that are at fault here; I am debilitated by my own inability to observe.  I disappoint myself.  Something is missing that I can neither name nor find the means to remedy.

So. I'm off to the city to drown myself in sake. Then maybe I'll watch some anime and finish my homework outlining a path to the nearest temple. Gotta love it here. It's just so Japanese.