I went out for some drinks with my friends, and in Japan it is customary to eat while drinking. One of the popular dishes to eat while drinking is 馬刺 (Basashi), or raw horse meat. Coming from Scotland where we don’t normally eat horse meat, let alone raw meat, this seems strange. So naturally I had to try it. And it was delicious, I can understand why it is popular here. It was a little like a high quality rare steak. So, if you can put your prejudices against it aside, I would really recommend trying it at least once.
It already been about 6 weeks since I arrived in Japan and I still feel like I am still getting used to the new lifestyle. Our teachers set us a lot of homework and the content of our lessons is quite difficult, so I tend to have little time with my new friends, which is a shame. It was only after I made Japanese friends here that I felt like I truly met Japanese culture. Along with my experiences in Japan, I can compare my way of thinking with that of a Japanese person.
In this report I want to introduce two aspects of Japanese culture which I have encountered during my stay. The first being the ‘Izakaya’. I have been to an Izakaya many times with my Japanese friends since my arrival in Japan. This place can be thought of as a Japanese style pub –there are many of Izakayas in Japan and there is a wide range of authentic Japanese dishes to choose from, which are usually served on small to be shared between a few people. I highly recommend going to an Izakaya!
The second aspect of Japanese culture I want to talk about is how Japan celebrates Halloween more than the UK. On 31st October I went to Shibuya to celebrate Halloween. When I told this to my friends, they all told me to ‘be careful’, however I could not think of anything to be cautious of or what they were referring to when they told me this. On that day, I went to Shibuya, arriving at around 7pm and immediately noticed the masses of people crowding the streets. Shibuya crossing, the crossing near the station at Shibuya is famous in Japan for being very busy with people. On Halloween, I noticed many police officers trying to control the pedestrian traffic. Shibuya was incredibly packed with people to the extent that I thought that someone could die – everyone was moving extremely slowly to get anywhere. I initially started off with 6 friends in Shibuya but shortly after crossing the famous crossing, to my shock I had lost all my friends. After about 5 minutes, to my relief I managed to find one friend and after several attempts to find the rest of our friends in the crowd, we decided to give up and explore Shibuya together.
On that day, the Japanese people we encountered were not like normal Japanese people – not because they were dressed in fancy costumes and wore lots of face paint, but their personalities seemed to be less Japanese and seemed to resemble UK university students. For example, I was asked by strangers to take pictures with them, quite a few of them were quite drunk, and lots of them enjoyed talking to my friend and I.
Walking along the streets of Shibuya on Halloween filled with interesting and expensive-looking cars and hearing exciting music drifting through the air produced a warm feeling inside me.
