Joshua Schultz Introduction ジョシュアの自己紹介

Hey there! My name is Joshua Schultz and I am an East Asian Language Studies major entering my third year. I love world history and culture, often struggle with language acquisition, but I’m always ready to learn about the world. I hope to be able to experience as much of what Japan has to offer as possible, and I’m willing to be beaten to a pulp at a kendo dojo if it helps me achieve this.

My first time to Japan was about a year ago, and it was a bit of a mess: I knew some Japanese but wasn’t practiced enough to get by in most situations and I could feel the frustrations of the people around me. It was a lot of fun to be sure (after all I am going again very soon) and I loved the sights, sounds and cultures I was surrounded by. However, I was ultimately left feeling that I was too much of an outsider, a 外人so I was more of a burden on the people in the area rather than someone to be welcomed into learning their culture. This was a monumentally disheartening moment for me. I had just spent two years learning language and culture, but I had so much further to go. And when would it end? There was no tangible ‘goal’ in sight, no straightforward path to achieve it. And that’s when it hit me: I was thinking like every other tourist who went there. I was thinking that the end was so far away that I wouldn’t reach it and I shouldn’t bother trying. And the Japanese had seen this time and time again and so they also stopped trying to include these idiot foreigners. This led me to a point of research to make on the issue of cultural understandings.

 The topic of my studies on my trip to Senshu University (in addition to studying Japanese language) is foreign tourism and the impact of foreign tourism in Japan. For example, the impact of so-called Moe Culture on understandings of traditional Japanese life of modern Japanese values and customs by foreigners, and the language barrier as a deterrent from these understandings. I remember having to deal with this misrepresentation of Japan when I was travelling through Hokkaido with several people who knew, as it would turn out, very little about Japanese life: they tried to tip waiters, haggle in shops, and caused more issues than I though was even possible in the short timespan I spent travelling alongside them. Most of them learned from their mistakes but some were so engrossed in a phantasy version of Japan they had constructed for themselves that it never happened. I really hope that I can come to understand this issue better and expand my own knowledge of the culture, language and traditions of Japan during this trip. Maybe by doing so I can help prevent this issue for others.

初めまして！ジョシュアと申します。私の専攻は日本語と中国語、三年生です。専修大学に住んでいながら、日本語と文化を勉強しています。例えば、日本の外人観光問題を研究します。たくさん物が習いたいけど、私もとても気後れです。専修大学に住んでいることが楽しいと希望しています。