Japan Trip

The University had an trip for five days to go to japan two would be spent traveling to and from japan leaving us with three days in Japan. First off. THE JET LAG WAS HORRIBLE. I'd return to the hotel in the evening and crash out in my clothes, waking up at times like 1 or 2 in the morning. However ignoring the exhaustion... JAPAN! excuse the fanboying, just releasing my inner weaboo teen self for a moment! I wanted to use this trip as an opportunity to see wether or not I wanted to go again or wether Manga and Anime had created an unrealistic image of the place. Anime and Manga didnt do it justice. When we arrived in Tokyo we were hit with so many sights that were familiar because of the media and incredibly new. We were based in Shinjuku I found myself looking at the area that was used for the Digimon Tamers anime a presentation of the accuracy of the tv show and how surreal the experience became. Going up the government we were able to see Mt Fuji which was incredible. Final piece of fanboying, studio ghibli museum. I god damned near cried when i sat on the cat bus inside! Studio Ghibli was with out a doubt the best part as we got to watch an animation that was only shown there in the world and the entire museum was interactive.

The Japan trip was a trip that for me was an opportunity to truly experience and see another culture, to see another perspective. Their treatment of animation is incredibly different to ours. While ours is normally used only for children, the japanese use characters, manga and anime in almost all their advertisement and graphics. Their culture in the way they treat the environment is starkly different to us as while we were in the city there was only a few instances where a street was messy and there were no cigarette butts or gum on the streets, they also built around the parks, temples and shrines, surrounding these ancient structures with towering skyscrapers.

Below are a few of my sketches from my time in Japan and i most certainly wish to return.