Ethnography: Japanese houses

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CM3TXtDjE&t=24s


We had several links and resources provided to us to investigate this topic, including the current section in our Nakama textbook.  でも、前　映画を離します。先生says that we should practice more and “fail gloriously” - at least one of those two things just happened… ;).  

Hopefully I just said “however, I/we are going to talk about the prior film”… not sure about the particle that I used there because if you were talking about something it’s an object but it is also the topic and I believe it would be a direct object and get wo, but it could be indirect or not even that and get a topic marker… I am certainly not going to talk to the film I only do that in the privacy of my own home to the television ;).  But back to our actual topic…

I wanted to talk about this one because I had a few thoughts come up during it and I didn’t want to lose them. One of the first things that I thought was that there is a lot more space in this model home in the tour than I had expected to see. My second thought  was that we didn’t know where it was located - it could be in a place with a lot more space than, say, Tokyo. 

My third thought was when he was viewing the bathroom facilities and was sharing about showering first and then using the bathtub once you are clean and didn’t have to marinade in your own dirt. It reminded me of reading the Ian Fleming novel “You Only Live Twice”.  In that book he travels to Japan and a local Japanese agent tries to teach him to act Japanese and enough about the culture to not draw attention to himself.  One of the things that was mentioned in that book was about how Westerners marinate themselves in their own filth in the bath instead of actually getting clean. 

I hate to actually mention a book that is that old and out of date, but it was one of the few early exposures, other than in mythology, that I had to Japanese culture outside of my mothers racist and ignorant diatribes against them. She’s very impressed that I am learning Japanese… 🤣😩

It was interesting to see this actual house because most of the time when you watch anime or read manga, everything seems to be set in apartments in Tokyo, except for a very, very, few exceptions. I have seen houses like that with their own private courtyard and a small garden, including occasionally a small Koi pond but the majority of representation or expectation abroad is tiny apartments and even tinier hotels. 



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