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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Global Village. 欢迎回来【小酒馆·大世界】.

But this time instead of inviting a new guest speaker to come on the show, we are talking to one of our own regulars. 如果你听过Geek Time或者是来上过酒馆的口语直播课程, 就肯定知道他,资深 geek-Brad, welcome back Brad.

Hey, how's it going, Lulu?

I'm good. I heard that your life has changed quite a bit. You're in Japan now,  right?

That's right. I'm in Kyoto.

Oh, one of my favorite cities in the world, so I thought it would be interesting to talk about your experience in Japan because you plan to stay there long term, correct?  

Yeah, probably, that's the whole point.

So could you, first of all, give us a little bit of an explanation or idea or ideas of your current life?  Like when did you move to japan? What are you doing right now?

Sure. Currently I'm living in Kyoto as I mentioned, I moved here just about a year ago, I think it was about 10 months ago.

I came here on a student visa. I'm studying Japanese. I just passed one of the Japanese language proficiency exams that's gonna help me with my future. But I've just been studying full time and then working part time teaching on the side while I do that.

So in the future, am I to assume that your plan is to get perhaps another degree in Japan and then maybe find a job there and then just settle down?

Yeah, that's pretty much the plan, I've been looking at schools. I'm in engineering, I really like cars and racing, so I kind of wanna combine my engineering and my knowledge of cars, so I have to get some sort of like certification or degree to do that. So I've been trying to apply for engineering schools related to cars or some sort of car related program like motor sports engineering.

I see, that's pretty cool. I mean you do have engineering background anyways, right?

Right. I have a degree in electronics engineering.

Okay. So I thought it would be fun in the next few episodes. Let's make this a series to talk about your experience in Japan, because Brad, you have a quite unique experience. You're born and raised in the States, you are an American, and then you lived in China for, on and off, for a decade.

Yeah, 7 years, the first time; and then 3 years, the second time.

OK.And now you're moving to Japan. There are lots of cultural comparisons, cultural topics that we can explore. But first things first, why Japan, like when did you become interested in Japan? Was it a childhood thing or what was it like?

I kind of became interested in China and Japan at about the same time. I grew up in a really small town in America. There is only about 7,000 people.

So there was no like outside foreign influence there whatsoever; and every now and then I would just see like a kungfu movie with like Jackie Chan or Gordon Lew or like a Japanese Samurai movie with Toshiro Mifune; and I just kind of became like who are these people and where are they from? Like, why don't I see this in the US?

It looks so cool, the kungfu thing, martial arts. So did you actually learn Asian martial arts like kungfu or maybe like karate as a child or as a teenager?

Yeah, after the karate kid movie came out in my childhood, I learned karate for a while.

Then I moved, so I couldn't continue that. But I did start learning like Taekwondo for a while; and then once I found a school for kungfu, I learned kungfu for about half a year or so, but I didn't really have time for it.

I got a job. And then I saw school that did like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which is like a Brazilian form of a Japanese martial art. And then when I moved to China, I did 咏春拳.

So you're just like really into martial arts.

Yeah, I also did kendo when I was in the US and then when I was a student in Japan, I did that as well. So I've done like a variety of different martial arts through the years.

For those of you who don't really know what kendo is, 就是日本的剑道. That just sounds like you have always been interested in the same type of thing. It's like an exotic form of close physical combat.

Yeah, I do. It's not necessarily like real fighting, I don't like going out and fighting people. It's kind of like a physical chess where like rather than you're just playing a chess on a board, you're playing chess with your body. And that's kind of the way I look at it.

There's actually a new kind of boxing and that's where people will play half a round of chess. And then after they play half a round of chess, they go boxing.

I've heard of that.

I guess that's why they call it martial arts. But can I ask you when you were growing up, you said you grew up in a small town America, where did you get these kind of culture, just from movies? What about animation, anime, manga?

I didn't really see manga until I was a little bit older, but like I saw there was some American versions of anime.

And then when I moved to Seattle, that's when I actually really got into anime because you could actually see it there. There was like a small video rental shop in my hometown, and they had an anime section.

It was really small. It was like maybe 20 videos at most.  But it was something that was always forbidden. My mom would just be like you can't rent that because she had no idea what it was. The covers looked a little bit racy, but there was nothing racy about them. It was just anime.

Yeah, Japanese anime, they tend to have sort of a bit of melodrama in it anyways, right?

Actually that brings us to the next question that I wanted to ask you, you move to Seattle obviously big city, you got more access to different cultures, but when you were living there or when you were growing up there, was Japanese culture popular in the States or like what about now, is it still popular like in pop culture sense?

Japanese culture is kind of... it's popular in the US, as far as like food, you know sushi and everything.

But as far as like anime and manga are concerned, it's kind of a niche thing still, like some people look at it as being kind of strange, just like why do you look at that, but it is quite popular. There's... even in my hometown nowadays I go back and I do see some people the younger generation getting into it. It's a little bit more common now, like you can go to the bookstore, you can get some like English versions of manga. You can order them online as well.

When I was a kid like they did have some stuff and like you could order it through a magazine and I did try to order a few things from the local comic bookstore through a magazine.

But the comic bookstore owner was really flaky and he just never ordered any of the stuff that people would ask for.

Yeah, I suppose like it was much more difficult to get access to like anime magazine, manga magazine that sort of thing.

But you mentioned that people still see it as a niche就是小众文化那种. But is there like I don't know for lack of a better word social stigma like before we were talking about people who are into comic books or graphic novels, are considered a bit geeky, nerdy, 有没有觉得看动漫什么就比较宅.

 This whole otaku thing, this imagery of being a geek.

Yeah, it’s still quite a bit of a stigma to it.  When you have young people who are into manga, it can be seen as like they're a little bit different from everyone else. They don't play football, they don't play baseball or basketball, they read manga, and so they're kind of sometimes seen as social outcasts, especially in smaller towns.

When you get to bigger cities like Seattle or New York. It's a very common thing, but yeah, it just depends on where in the US you're living.

 I see.

But what is the general perception of Japan and Japanese culture? Let's say your average American perception.

I would say the average American doesn't really think too much about Japanese culture. They probably don't know much about it beyond anime or manga, there are a lot of people that wanna let go and see the temples and things like that.

But they don't really know much about Japanese culture beyond what they see in the movies.

Mhm. Just it being very exotic and far away.

Yeah. Especially when you have something like sushi.

Yeah, it's actually we're gonna come to that. But I can't help asking is sushi popular in, let's say, big cities in the US.

Yeah, it's quite popular. There's even some like conveyor belt sushi restaurants in the US.

One of those回转寿司, ok I see.

So the more down to earth type of sushi, what was the first time you went to japan? How old were you at then?

The first time I went to Japan, I was 21, had really no experience going abroad before, I had actually got my passport when I was 18. I wanted to go abroad but I didn't really have a plan then, so it just kind of waited until I was 21.

I saved up some money and then I just, I went; I went by myself like I did want to go with friends, but there was just no one could ever take time off or I just could never get group of people or even a friend to go along with.

And so it's like I'm just gonna go by myself.

Did you speak any Japanese at that stage?

Yeah, I had taken 2 years in high school and I had also taken like half a year in university. So like I could get around, you know I could ask where something was.

Where's the toilet?

If they gave me a simple explanation like over there, I could understand what they were saying. But if they gave me a really difficult explanation to be like, I'll have to find it out on my own.

Just go in the general direction that they pointed.

I totally get what you're talking about.

But what was the trip like apart from the language difficulty? Did you enjoy it? How long was the trip?

It was like a 14-hour flight. I had a direct flight which was nice, actually did I... maybe I had a stopover in Los Angeles I can't remember, one of the trips I did.

I flew there, it was 14 hours and I arrived in Tokyo. My plan was to go to Mount Fuji. And so I knew that I had to take a train. I didn't know that I was actually gonna have to take three trains. I had a rail pass and so it wasn't really a big thing.

So I had to take a train into Tokyo. I had to take a train from Tokyo or through Tokyo to like I think it was Shibuya or something like that. I can't remember where exactly I had to transfer, but then I had to take a train near mount Fuji and then I had to transfer to a local line.

That must be quite a challenge for someone who's never really... never traveled that much, especially abroad.

 It was kind of difficult.

Then like the scariest thing, it kind of like I was just like what the hell, I get off of the train station at the last stop. It was the last train of the night,  the lights and everything just start going off, the train station start shutting down and like that's kind of creepy.

That's like horror movie, that's every horror movie, every Japanese horror movie I've ever watched.

I walked up to the taxi and just as I was about to open the door, the door came like opening at me and I'm like what？And like there's no one inside the taxi and I'm just like what the hell?

Oh, the automatic taxi door I always forget about that.  Okay. But apart from all these seemingly creepy experience, you know many people when I talk to them, whether they are Chinese or from other parts of the world, many people talk about experiencing culture shock the first time they travel to Japan. It’s not necessarily like bad, it's just very different.

Like when you were talking about your experience, things unexpected happened.

What about you apart from these automatic doors, they turn off the lights at the station. Did you experience any more serious culture shock seeing things that are completely out of your, let's say, comfort zone or what was familiar to you？

So I got to the hotel and it was kind of late at night, but I was just so full of endorphins that I couldn't go to sleep. The hotel I was staying at was a hot springs hotel, so I thought I'll go down to the hot springs, get down there and they kind of have like a little explanation of how to use the hot springs. You have to wash yourself off before you get into the water.

And so I did all of that, and just as I get into the water, someone else came in and of course naked because you can't have any clothing on when you get into the water.

And it's the first time that I think like I've just been somewhere completely naked and another person walks in on me. I was like, oh, oh, what am I gonna do？But yeah...

Did he try to strike up a conversation？I hope not because I would have been very embarrassed.

No, like he didn't try to talk to me at all. He just kind of got in kind of sat there. I kind of wanted to get out and go back to my room, but I was like underwater and naked underwater. So it's just like,  I'll just kind of wait until he leaves.

And how long did he stay？

I think he was only there for like 15 or 20 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.

That's not too bad.

In today’s episode, Brad and I talked about his experience with Japanese culture and his life in Japan.

In the next episode of Global Village, we are gonna continue with this topic.