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If you have any questions concerning this book, or problems with downloading it, please send an email to michael
atmichaelcurley.com. (For security reasons, this is not the real email address. Please not that you need to replace at with @ to make it a valid email address).
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The Japan that the foreigner never sees. A series of articles which will make you laugh, make you think, perhaps raise your
eyebrows. An outsiders’ frank and sometimes irreverent view inside a fascinating culture. Gain insights to the aspects of Japan that the guide books never mention.
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Whilst living in Fujisawa, Japan, I began chronicling my observations of this fascinating country and its inhabitants. These articles were subsequently published in an
English language magazine in Tokyo under the title ‘Impressions of Japan’.
Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, sometimes with a twinge of pathos, this is Japan seen through the eyes of a foreigner (a ‘gaijin’ as we are known to the Japanese), with a keen and irreverent sense of observation.
From these essays, I hope that you will gain an insight into the real nature of Japan and the Japanese, and that you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing
them.
Michael Curley.
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If you were dropped from the sky right onto the beach at Enoshima you would find it hard to believe that you were in Japan. As you gaze
about you, there are multitudes of teenagers with sun-bronzed bodies, sun or salon-bleached blond hair. Surf boards stick up out of the sand and groups of muscular youths sit around chatting and
smoking on the black beach, waiting for the waves to pick-up. The young girls with their strawberry blonde hair, pastel-colored bikinis and matching nail varnish, strut their stuff, giggling and
flirting with their nonchalant male counterparts. There is hardly a black-haired person in sight.
Yes this is indeed the beach at Enoshima, a short drive along the coast, south of Tokyo, and this is surf country. The waves never equal
those of more famous surfing resorts such as Hawaii in height . . (continued)
OkudaPark
It is 09:30 on a Sunday morning in July, and it is already hot and humid. As I pass through Okuda Park on my bicycle I remark that
the grass needs cutting on the circular patch of green, 100 metres in diameter that constitutes the ‘park’. Backing onto the park there is an array of apartment blocks, arranged like a
honeycomb of cells in an enormous white beehive. In front of them, a sweeping line of palm trees add a Mediterranean flavour.
The residents of the apartments make full use of their allotted open space. This morning there are several dog owners exercising their pets
(small dogs predominantly); a group of elderly men are stripped to the waist doing their daily morning stretching exercises, continuing the routine which they acquired long ago, whilst employed by
their company as “salarymen”. Two elderly ladies are chatting under parasols which shade them from the heat, the parasols bobbing in time as they nod their heads at regular
intervals as prescribed in polite Japanese conversation. On one of the green metal benches which circle the grass area, a homeless man lies asleep. All of his worldly goods are assembled about him in
a collection of plastic bags. On the bench next to him . . (continued)
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