Based on this blog and last week’s, readers might get the impression that I’ve done little in Japan but watch television. Not true! But somehow the range of experiences I’ve had in the wider world have seemed largely predictable –not to me at the moment I’m experiencing them, of course, but the interest of reporting them seems minimal. I’m guessing most readers would not be surprised to learn that some of the major intersections in Tokyo are very crowded, that fruit in department stores can be expensive, or even that I saw a monk checking his e-mail at an internet café.

This last item belongs to a particularly tired but nonetheless probably important genre: “a land of contradictions,” as my guidebook reports. Shinto shrines and golf courses! Avant-garde theater and the tea ceremony! Even –really—“neon signs written in Japanese ideograms”! Sigh. One might imagine a similar report on America. Genome projects and creationism! Rodeos and Italian opera! The Commander in Chief of the most advanced army in the world plays cowboy!

The problem, with respect to Japan, is, of course, not that there’s nothing new to see or to say, but that I haven’t yet found my way clear of the thick and tangled web of clichés and conventions waiting for me when I try to formulate those “new” things – a bit like trying to write a love letter. One wants to convey the uniqueness of one’s experience but discovers that not only does the available language seem to minimize that uniqueness but that, horror of horrors, it even seems to suggest that the experience and the feelings aren’t terribly unique.

Perhaps this situation can be addressed, can begin to be addressed, by a turning to little details whose larger meaning isn’t immediately apparent. Even the genre of “Those crazy Japanese!” retains at least a sense of wonder and confusion that isn’t immediately resolved into, say, “tradition and modernity,” or “the Japanese way.”

And so on to a few of the things I’ve been struck by on Japan’s airwaves –or, more precisely, on the digital video feed. One thing was a great commercial featuring the AFLAC duck surrounded by women in Chinese dress. At the culmination of the ad he opens a magic box, disappears in a puff of smoke, and appears in a new realm with a white, Chinese-style beard. (Apologies if the ad is also running state-side). For those interested in further researching cross-cultural fusions of such obvious importance, check out the site japander.com, which features extensive links to Western (largely American) celebrities in Japanese commercials. As you might suspect, the actual commercials are far less interesting than even the fact of them.

Then there was the show that featured four guys playing a game of air hockey. I mean air hockey! On television! That’s crazy! Oh wait, did I mention that one of the guys is wearing a lobster suit? As the whole cosplay phenomenon suggests, the frequency, and the meaning of wearing costumes is quite different in Japan than in the US. I don’t yet have a theory of why the hosts of one quiz show dress in Planet of the Apes costumes, but I’ll write a book about it when I do. Aping Culture? Hello, book contract!

One of the more interesting pop cultural phenomena I’ve seen is the hype leading up to the release of the latest Star Wars movie. The earlier movies (dubbed) are being run on television and so have given me a chance to check out how they handle some of the translation issues, in a number of different senses. What to do with C3PO’s Englishness? He just has a comical, vaguely feminine voice that doesn’t evoke an alternate nationality, as far as I can tell. Han’s voice is deeper and manlier; Leah’s seems to me more mannered and marked as feminine. And since Yoda’s trademark syntax is supposed to be partly modeled on the subject-object-verb word order of Japanese, would he –please!-- put his verbs at the beginning of his sentences? If only! But watching Yoda, with his stringy white facial hair and his knotted walking stick, teach his young disciple about the Force made clear that the Japanese –well, “Japanese”—influence was already there all along: in Darth Vader’s samurai helmet, maybe in Leah’s early hairstyles, certainly in the name and dress of Obi-wan Kenobi, the first character we meet in the films who is a jedi –a term taken from the Japanese jidaigeki (‘period drama” –generally featuring samurai during the Tokugawa era). (Thanks to Wikipedia for that last bit).

One of the things Yoda teaches me, then, is that not everything gets re-reversed in translation and, related to this, a lot of what’s interesting about experiencing other cultures at our historical moment is the difference of similarities. This, I think, is why so many travel writers are impressed by the sameness of other cultures –consider the photo essay in The New York Times a few months ago showing Chinese people using –cell phones!!! The character of these impressions generally leaves something to be desired, but they do register, in their mild astonishment and disappointment, the increasing interconnectedness (not flatness!) of the contemporary world.

I’ll be watching some Japanese baseball over the next few weeks before leaving for China. I wonder if they’ll have tea?