TABLE
OF
CONTENTS
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A
Snapshot of Japanese Youth
By Becka
In
her book, Crafting Selves, anthropologist Dorinne
Kondo speaks of the “setting trope” as being shaped by a
“journey, more
or less
linear, where order and meaning gradually emerge from initially
inchoate events
and experiences” (p. 7) As I walked the
streets of Kobe, Japan I started to see what she meant.
I was overwhelmed by the flashing lights and
the mix of music and voices coming from everywhere.
They all seemed to call me toward them,
beckon me to enter and see what all the fuss was about.
Something
about the arcade on my right caught my eye, the
teenagers still in their school uniforms playing claw
machines
alongside men in
business suits; the brightly decorated stairs, lines with blown up
pictures of
young Japanese girls posing on green-screened backgrounds. It
was impossible to resist climbing those
stairs to the second level. The room the
stairs opened into was packed tightly with wall-to-wall photo booths
and groups
of young Japanese. The noise was
astounding,
every booth blared music and instructions, laughter rang out from
behind the
curtains. If you were looking
the youth
of Kobe, this was where to
find
them.
While
I stood and waited for a turn to use a booth, with
what felt like an insane urge, I looked around me. From
the booth on the far right I watched a group
of what must have been eight girls emerge and crowd into the little
editing room,
a smaller version of the larger booth, attached back to back. In the booth across from me a girl and a guy
emerged,
the girl was holding a bouquet and wearing what looked like a veil,
both were giggling
as they entered their machine’s editing booth. From
my American perspective, I found it odd to
see groups of boys waiting to cram into the machines and pose for
pictures on bright
backgrounds; I could almost hear my best friend at home and the things
he’d say
it would do to his masculinity. These kids
would
later cut those pictures away from each other and stick them to things,
broadcasting
to the world that they’d been out that night, taking pictures.
Personally,
I was pretty sure I’d hate taking my picture in a
booth, but my friend and I had some extra yen to use up. The
machine shouted things in Japanese and we pressed
the buttons randomly, posing for pictures on backgrounds with cats and
skulls and
umbrellas. I found myself laughing as the
flash came each time, grinning at the oddity of what I was doing. As we stood and waited for the pictures to print
out, I watched everyone around me again. Walking
into the arcade I was sure I would hate
the photo booths as much as I hated the ones we have at home, but when
I was over
I wanted to do it again.
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