Japanese Culture Overview

 Japan is well known for their unique and tasty food offerings. From many different kinds of seafood to things like fried pork, they carry a deep history with food, as well as a lot of variety in their offerings. Many people, myself included, find Japanese food to be of a certain quality and a very distinct taste and flavor profile compared to most other cuisines. For most forms of plating, the different parts of the dish will be separated , rather than all together. This is taken from the Chinese way of serving food in the time around the 12th-14th century. To me, this allows the different flavors to all shine in their own way, with many foods own distinct flavors becoming able to shine in their separation. Sushi restaurants even use ginger as a palate cleanser to be used between the different sushi rolls you end up eating. Japan also has some very interesting noodle and soup dishes that they tend to have available, like ramen, udon, soba, miso soup, and other things that are all rea

 Japan has a rich cultural history. This includes one of the most recognizable things from Japan, its music. Music has always played an important part in the history of Japan. The instruments that were used in the medieval period have a very distinctive sound.  Take the shamisen, for instance. The shamisen is a three-stringed instrument with a very large and specialized pick, called a bachi. The pick is used to create a long, sustained sound with the strings of the shamisen. This sound is iconic to the shamisen, and is used in a lot of music that attempts to emulate traditional Japanese music. Another very common Japanese instrument is the koto . The koto is a Japanese harp essentially. It has 13 strings held up via multiple bridges along the width of the instrument. Special picks placed on individual fingers are used to play the koto. The koto is often used with the shamisen and a bamboo flute called a shakuhachi in an ensemble during theater or for imperial courts. Taiko are a form

 It's hard to talk about Japanese culture without bringing up anime. The term "anime" is the Japanese word for animation, so they use it for any animation. In the west, the term "anime" refers to animation created in Japan. Anime has a very signature style that plenty of people all around the world enjoy, and the market for it seems to only be growing as time goes on.   Anime has a deep history in Japan. Starting in the early 1900s, with a short animation using some animation techniques taken from Western countries. Moving forward from this, many more anime were created using cel animation as the medium evolved. Due to the limited resources that animation studios in Japan had compared to European or American ones, their style evolved to fit as such. With simpler art styles and less animation frames, they could tell stories within the limitations they were given. This overall helped lead to anime's signature style, with snappy movements, simpler designs and

 Video games are my true passion, so I have a lot of experience in many different kinds of games that come from many parts of the world. The resurgence of video games after the Video game crash of 1983 was even thanks to the help of a Japanese product, the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The NES was Japan's first foray into the international video game market, and it was a huge success. In Japan, however, the NES was something completely different. It was known as the Family Computer, or Famicom. It had cartridges that were completely differently shaped from the ones on the NES and it had a completely different color scheme and controllers. The NES was made more bulky and had more monotone colors, to fit into the western market more. The name change was also to make sure that it was not confused with the PCs and such that were also in the market around the time. Since then, video games have become a huge and accepted part of society, with many different series' and references

     While you are in Japan, you may notice that there are plenty of ways to get around. Many people choose to ride bikes or walk places, some may choose to use a car if that suits them better. However, the main choice for most people is to walk everywhere. The reason for this is the incredible public transport system that is set up in the country. From simple bus systems to the intricate sprawling subway system of Tokyo to the quiet and speedy shinkansen, there are plenty of interesting ways to get around within Japan. I will go over a couple of these in this blog post. The Shinkansen     The first and most interesting form of transport that I will go over is Japan's own shinkansen system. The shinkansen is an incredibly fast bullet train that goes all around Japan's main 3 islands. It can reach a max speed of almost 200 mph and boasts its noise level and safety over similar trains of this speed.  A comparable system to the shinkansen would be the Eurostar. The Eurostar has a

     In April of 1979, the first episode of one of Japan's major cultural phenomena aired, that being Mobile Suit Gundam. It had a rocky start , with most people expecting a more combat oriented anime with massive robots. Instead, what they got was a drama centered around said robots, with realistic emotions and such. However, Gundam's ratings began to increase as soon as Bandai, a toy company at the time, bought the rights to the series, providing plastic model kits that were very easy to put together. Due to this ease in use, the plastic model kits helped sell the series as a whole, allowing for even more spin-offs and sequels to come out. The cycled back to more model kits being available to be bought and sold, and GUNPLA (Gundam Plastic Models) became a lucrative business .      I first got into GUNPLA through my friend. He was super into the main series and building the model kits of the robots from it, and consistently sent me updates as he finished kits, despite me not