Rambunctious Youth

06/02/2002 English German

Edition # 40
San Francisco, 06-02-2002

Japan, Finally Aircraft as Arcade Tokyo Gastronomy Tokyo Fish Market Masks Beverages Beer Paper tissues Shuwattchi! Fashion Safety Technophilia Shinkansen Japanese speaking English Busy Bodies Rambunctious Youth Surveyed by Students Geishas Original and American knockoff Consumer Frenzy Japanese toilets Bicycles in Tokyo Train station in Tokyo Uniforms Taxis To Bow Shoes Off and Shoes On Hiroshima Ryokan Japanese Bath In the temple for AOL Koya-San Cemetery in Koya-San

Rambunctious Youth

Figure [1]: Kindergarten children

Michael In Japanese society, everything revolves around group affiliation -— usually a group of colleagues at work. The group defines the rules, and children learn this early on, as they hardly do anything other than kindergarten and school (from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.), sometimes even on weekends. This, by the way, leads to the fact that it is almost impossible for foreigners to start friendships with Japanese natives. Even those "Gaijins" ("foreigners") who live in Japan permanently and speak perfect Japanese reportedly find no entry into these closed-off groups.

Figure [2]: School fashion: Letting your shirt hang out of your pants -- outrageous!

Figure [3]: Rambunctious youth are glued to their phones, while the elders polish the monuments.

It is naturally difficult for young people to break out of there -- sometimes you see amusing attempts within their means, like when the boys let their neatly ironed white school uniform shirts hang out of their pants. Oh my! Or they simply sit on the ground, even though that is considered completely unacceptable in Japan! A new Generation X on the rise!

Figure [4]: Young people on motorcycles

Figure [5]: Pastime Pachinko Games

Among the approximately 16-year-olds, there is now quite a good alternative scene, of course not yet comparable to that in the USA, but, oh boy, they do throw trash on the street! What experienced English speakers often notice, by the way, are the unintentionally funny English T-shirt slogans (see illustration 7). But you can find that in Germany too, where I've also laughed until I cried. However, I haven't yet found any pants there with "GERMAN DOG" written across the backside in 10 cm high letters, like I saw in the "Isetan" department store in Tokyo.