1st or 3rd impressions ?

I am in Japan. I am actually back in Japan.

The first time I stepped on the Japanese land, I was barely 19, had 3 Japanese friends living in the Kansai Area, could barely speak Japanese.

I looked like that:

Tired, happy, amazed, lost, excited...

And Japan looked like that:

crowded, colorful, noisy, busy...

...yummy...

...technologically advanced...

...respectful towards the so many rules and law...

...traditionally beautiful...

My perception of Japan was pretty much like that:

I would not wear the same colors people did, I had come from my picture whose blue, white and red colors contrasted the Japanese ones. They were watercolor and I, gouache. I then could not act nor participate to the whole picture; an evasive mix of beautiful sceneries with blurred colors. A grey side of things hiden below a good dash of prettyness. Still an amazing country in which I did not have any bearings, I was only a temporary visitor.

The third time I stepped on the Japanese land, I was almost 21, had a 50 more Japanese and other friends living in the Kansai Area and spoke Japanese fluently in everyday life.

I actually look like that:

Tired, happy, amazed, acquainted with the environment, excited...

And Japan looks like that:

...peaceful, colorful, quiet, routine...

...delicious...

...traditionally beautiful...

... technology late and lack of obedience in some areas...

It took me no more than a week to feel like kind of home, a week to forget the cultural fronteers between Japanese and westerners. I can feel and touch some aspects of the Japanese culture, participate and be a temporary resident.

Kansai Gaidai and its international community helps probably a lot, but even though I am still not, and will not be, fully watercolor, I am something in between, some international color that goes either with Japan as well as it goes with Brazil or Kenya without damaging the host picture nor erasing mine.