By means of introduction

The first post in a new blog and I suppose some sort of introduction is necessary, especially since the idea of a man in his late 30s who’s "into" Japanese pop culture normally brings to mind images of a Morning Musume-adoring, upskirt photo-collecting, overgrown otaku. So this post is about me. I’ll keep it brief.

I was introduced to Japanese culture in the usual way – through videogames. I started learning the language so I could play new Japanese games without having to wait months for an official release. Ironically, though, the one game that made me want to learn Japanese was Animal Crossing on the Nintendo 64. When I finally got to play it (on the DS) I discovered I really didn’t enjoy it.

Anyway, after video games came music. At the time I was working for EMI in the archives, and noticed that we had all of Toshiba EMI’s releases too. I picked up a few CDs at random to listen to. I wasn’t expecting anything special: in fact my previous experience of modern Japanese music was amusing clips of salarymen trying to learn English by singing "My Way" very loudly. As it was, by happy chance, the first song I heard was "Vampire" by Tomoyasu Hotei. It absolutely blew me away, and turned my preconceived idea about Japan on its head.

Fast forward a few years, and now I plough through the internet, skirting the dangerous waters of the gory and the grotesque end of Japanese cinema, keeping a safe distance from Hello Project/Johnny’s Entertainment vapid girl/boy bands, in my search for the same shock of the new that I felt when I heard that song by Hotei. Sometimes, I find it: Bump of Chicken, Lost Time Life, and University of Laughs have all enriched my life, and I’m hopeful of finding more gems in the future.

Which is why this blog is called "If by Japan". Because if you were to ask me if I like Japan, I'd reply "If by Japan you mean extreme horror, manufactured pop, and anime about giant robots, then no. If by Japan you mean ghost stories, mysteries, honour and invention, then yes." Something like that, anyway.

Of course, people reading this blog may run away with the idea that my life is all about Japanese culture, when in fact it is just this blog which is about Japanese culture. I watch and listen to enough British/American/Italian stuff that I’m not going to start eating fish and chips with chopsticks and referring to myself as "gaijin".