Impressions of Akita and Japan, part 1

I've been in Akita for a little over two weeks now, and a lot has happened in that time. So much, in fact, that it's hard to synthesize it all into one blog post. I started this blog with the goal of writing more about my personal experiences than about Japan itself, figuring that knowledge about everyday Japan is a completely oversaturated resource on the Internet. Yet I realize that, as I sit down to write this, it takes a whole lot of mental energy to write about all the thoughts and feelings I've had in Japan, about everything that I've done and chose not to do. I have time to write about personal thoughts and feelings; I'll be in Japan for a while. What's of personal interest to me, right now, is the sorts of places, people, and things I've encountered in Akita.

First, some background: Akita is located on Japan's largest island, Honshu. It sits up north, and though the past few days have seen natural disasters like typhoon Jebi that hit the Kansai region (southwest Honshu), and the earthquake that knocked out electricity for the whole of Hokkaido (Japan's northernmost island), Akita has proven to be quite safe. It's one of Japan's less populated prefectures, and is most known for being the birthplace of the Akita dog, its rice farms and rice farming, and having one of the most famous festivals in Japan. Quite possibly the greatest part of my study abroad experience so far has been experiencing the unique aspects of this prefecture--and, of course, aspects of Japan that I didn't truly understand in the States.

First, I have to give the nature of Akita its due. First, for comparison, here's some of the most beautiful shots of Japanese nature from the medium Americans like myself likely have seen the most: animation. Some are from Ghibli films, others are from my favorite Japanese animated movie, Wolf Children.

And here's what I've seen in Akita:

I'm not a professional photographer, but I think the comparisons speak for themselves. 

Oh who am I kidding; I love watching myself write, so I'll do some speaking too! I took a walk one weekend with a friend to visit a shrine nearby, and we found so much more than we had hoped for. I spent years of my life looking at these gorgeous landscapes in anime films, and it dawned on me that I was really here. I was seeing for myself what I'd seen in some of my favorite movies, and it was even better than I could have imagined. There's something about physically being in that country environment that no film can capture; I felt like I experienced for the first time, in the most unique way, what nature looks like. I'm so used to grass being cut, to trees being chopped down, to nature being reigned in so that humans can live. In Akita, I found an environment that was built around nature rather than over it. Every building and road felt like it was deliberately placed around the environment so as not to disturb it--and people there live not in spite of nature, but in harmony with it. Of course, that's not to say there aren't people who live in harmony with nature in the States; I've met some of them. But here, in Japan, I felt like I'd seen something unique, something that I could never hope to find in my small corner of the world. Whether or not my intuitions about how people live in Akita are completely accurate (I haven't been here long enough to know), that's how I felt. And anything that can create such a strong a feeling in me, I think, has some kernel of truth to it.

And, as you might have guessed from the title, I'll continue these observations in another post, since I want to try and keep these short!