Space - Time Consciousness in Japan

Since antiquity, natural philosophers have struggled to comprehend the nature of three tightly interconnected concepts: space, time, and motion. A proper understanding of motion, in particular, has been seen to be crucial for deciding questions about the natures of space and time, and their interconnections. Since the time of Newton and Leibniz, philosophers’ struggles to comprehend these concepts have often appeared to take the form of a dispute between absolute conceptions of space, time and motion, and relational conceptions.
Standford Encyclopedia of philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-theories/

One thing that first amazed me when I first met Japanese people, before I put a foot on Japan, was their tellings about their livings hours. Only to go to university, some of them would not hesitate going through 1h30 of train every morning and every evening, when it was not double. They would stay 6 hours at university, go to some club for the next 3 hours, and then do either some part time job or go out with their friends and catch the last train

(or not)

and go through all the way back. And to my horrified face, they would genuinly answer that they could not enjoy their life if they were not doing so.
I think this a very basic difference of time consciousness between occident, let's say France, and Japan. In Japan, as long as you have free time, you want to use it to do something "useful", either to have fun or to work. Which is basically the thing when you are a student: indeed, university students are mostly doing some part time jobs after university. But is it that they really need itto survive financially ? Most of them have their parents pay the tuition fees and Japan is not so much more expensive that France is. But this different way of occuping time makes you spend much more money. Of course it would be less expensive to study at home around 5 than to spend 500Y to find a place in a café to do some homework between end of class and start of shopping session (plus 500Y of transport fees). Time in Japan is all about packing, no space for absolute lazyness, that is to say doing nothing, at home.

Space is also tightly related to that concept. Although I just said there is no room for lazyness, I actually think that what they loose on time freedom, they get it back in moving into space.
Trains are a major part of everyday life in Japan, most people could not say the kilometer distance Osaka - Kyoto, but no one ignores that you can use 3 different train companies, that the fastest in JR and the cheapest is Hankyuu.


Concretely, the hours spent in public transports stand for lazy times, or even study time. While their private time is reduced because they use their time with something else, time spent in travelling through space in trains have some private flavor. Even if you travel with someone, everyone is quiet, phone calls are prohibited, people fall asleep, look through the window, on the floor, use their mobile phones to eventually text back people they did not have time to so far... They use space as time.

Okinawa in a nutshell

The sea Influence

My Okinawan friend's brother playing on the beach

海開き day

Okinawa is an archipellago located between Taiwan and Japan mainland. As an archipelago, its relationship and culture related to the see is strong, and every year, Okinawa is the first place in Japan launching the “Sea Season” 海開き.

Interestingly, although for the past 20 years the southern most island of Okinawa had done it in first, this year some little village in mainland,

Okinawa went first and “stole” the merits and the tourism benefits that go along.

Kit Kat with the typical red potato flavor

As Okinawa, formerly Ryukyu, now belongs to Japan, the Japanese influence is the main one. The Japanese language is the official one, the food, although presenting some particularities like the omnipresent pork, has a lot of characteristic in common with mainland one.

Okinawa Soba

Although in standard Japanese you would read that "Kita Tani", the Okinawan reading is "Cha Tan"

They however do have their own language, which even if presenting comparable similarities with standard Japanese that English does do the language spoken on the Britannic Indies (words with close pronunciations but changed to make the speech secret). They also have their own reading of the kanjis.

The Chinese influence although going back in the age, is also strong. Their taste for the red color, the custom to burn fake money to offer ancestors show it particularly.

American soldier

Okinawa is also a lot of America. Wherever you go on the main island, it's difficult to miss the military bases. They are well established here. However, you can not say (yet?) they are well integrated. Some places like “American Village” in Ginowan, close to the capital, look more like a parody of America, with Fast Food every where and army surplus.

American School buses in the base

Flea market: market where Okinawan people can go inside the base (they are usually forbidden)

I found this sign very interesting as you can read "Make Okinawa home" on it. Of course it's much easier to make some place home than to actually try to become Okinawan

The Army hidden in the tropica landscape

In the end as its food specialty the so-called “champloo”, Okinawa is a mix of Japanese, America and former Chinese influence. These 3 have to cohabitate and one could say that the American influence is not well integrated and the fact that only the army part of is represented it may take time before everyone can live together smoothly.

“Now calling the curiosity of the world”