多文化主義 (その一)

After a rough 11 hour flight, we arrived safely at Narita airport on Thursday, May 09, 2019. I have been on many airplane rides, since I was three years old, and I could say that plane ride was the worst I’ve ever been in. The lift off was a little shaky, turbulence a few times over the span of 11 hours and the landing was something out of the TV documentary series called Mayday.
The first thing I realized after landing was that a majority of the people lining up for customs were tourists from China or Hong Kong. Majority of the travellers were speaking either Mandarin or Cantonese loudly and only a few were speaking other languages. Another thing I noticed during my wait in customs were that most of the Japanese workers were quite fluent in either English or Chinese. It seems that being fluent in either Chinese or English is a very important asset when it comes to getting a job in the airport.
I have lived here for almost a week now and have travelled to a few places around Tokyo. During my adventures around Tokyo, I’ve seen a lot of restaurants selling food from different cultures. There is an Indian curry restaurant on Senshu Ikuta campus, a Chinese restaurant near Mukōgaoka-Yūen Station, an Italian-Japanese fusion udon restaurant in Shibuya and many American fast food places like McDonald and KFC. If the interview done by The Japanese Man Yuta stands true with the general consensus of Japanese people, it is very interesting to see so many different cultures representing their food. The restaurants aren’t even unpopular, which is very surprising. A lot of the Senshu students recommend going to the Indian curry restaurant as it is delicious and cheap. It is interesting how so many cultures are exposed to the Japanese people via their food and restaurants.
Another interesting information I found through speaking to the Senshu students were how excited they are when it comes to speaking to foreigners and how most of them would like to travel abroad for school to experience a different culture. I am not yet sure if this is because the students at Senshu University have the opportunity to interact with foreigners, thus being more open to accepting different cultures or if it’s because they are of a younger generation than the people in The Japanese Man Yuta’s video. Another interesting thing is that a lot of the students are very eager to learn English while in The Japanese Man Yuta’s video, all of the interviewees were unwilling to learn English and felt that it was too hard of a task.
To summarize my findings thus far: the Japanese people are exposed to many different cultures because of the amount of different restaurants opening in busy areas of Tokyo and, majority of the Japanese students are eager to learn about different cultures and would like to study abroad to experience that culture first-hand. Because I’ve only been in Japan for about a week, I haven’t had much time to gather more information. I hope to further experience the different cultures Japan has to offer.

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