Semester at Sea Fall 2006 Voyage

• Home Page
• My bio
• Multisited Ethnography Project: Music, Memory and Place (Croatia, Vietnam, Egypt)
  
• Shipboard Interview
• What I did not see in Hong Kong
  
• Hawaii: Shopping Culture Showing us our Worlds
  
• Japan: The Joy of Being Odd
  
• Egypt: The Same but Different
  
• The Little Old Lady's den of Corporate Sin (Vietnam Version)
  
• HSINAPS
  
• Croatia: Angry Men Screaming
  
• Turkey: An Uncomfortable Language Lesson
• Open Letter

The Joy of Being Odd

            As I entered Sanomiya Station I came to a sudden and liberating conclusion in my head I didn’t look like anybody else, and there was nothing I could do about it. People were going to look at me, some discreetly and some not. I could be wearing a Big Bird costume or a kimono or anything in between and it wouldn’t matter. As was mentioned in Takeyuki  Tsuda’s article " No Place to Call Home," even the Japanese Brazilians were noticed and I don’t remotely come as close to passing as they do.

          As I was riding the train to Takarazuka all these thoughts were running jumbled through my head till one really sunk in and that was about the semester of high school I spent in Madrid, Spain. Everyday I would wake up early and agonize over what I would wear to ride the buses to school, as long as I didn’t open up my mouth most thought I was Spanish, more often than not I would get downstairs and be told it would be in my best interest to go back up and change because everyone would stare and talk about me. I found that part of my visit in Spain the most depressing until a month and a half later I decided I didn’t care and started wearing what I wanted. Comparing it to my realizations on the trains of Japan I was blissfully liberated of worry about being an outsider.