Excited
Golden Gate Park is San Francisco is usually the place you take your out-of-town tourist friends; you got the DeYoung, the Academy of Sciences and it’s a short walk from the oldest Japanese tea garden in the United States. But many Japanese American city leaders are pissed that the garden’s tea and gift shop, owned by a Chinese American, isn’t culturally sensitive enough:
Dawkins [the great-great-grandson of landscape designer Makoto Hagiwara] and other would like to see more high-quality, traditional types of green tea offered, plus servers who are dressed appropriately and trained in traditional Japanese tea service.
That’s a fancy way of saying, “WE’RE PISSED THAT THE TEA SERVERS ARE CHINESE-AMERICAN AND NOT JAPANESE-AMERICAN AND WE’RE EVEN MORE PISSED THAT TOURISTS CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. ALSO WTF THIS ISN’T A RANCH 99.”
Let’s all be honest here: Japanese-Americans in the Bay Area are fairly assimilated in American culture. Japantown sells manga and delicious crepes and the stores around it cater to Korean immigrants. Hell, the the great-great-grandson of the park landscape designer has the last name of Dawkins. I’m all for cultural authenticity, but from what I understand, Japanese cultural authenticity in the Bay Area? You’re looking at it.
One of the challenges for the current operator has been balancing what’s traditional with what sells, said Vince Lo, whose family also holds the concession at Coit Tower.
“We now dedicate a whole section of the gift shop to selling books about Japanese gardens and origami, even though they don’t really make money,” he said.
YOU HEAR THAT? THEY SELL ORIGAMI! They also sell Gundam toys by the main gate. Schooled ya, muthafuckas.
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Krantzstone
Well, there is a certain snobbery associated with some Japanese who cannot stand to have their cultural traditions bastardized by non-Japanese Asians who are perpetuating incorrect or an otherwise inauthentic representation of Japanese culture. My mom and her friends can't stand to watch things like 'Memoirs of a Geisha' because it rankles them to see kimonos not worn correctly, or restaurants claiming to serve Japanese fare when really it's more of an Asian fusion menu. On the one hand, seeing as my mother and her family trained in the Japanese Tea Ceremony (one variant, at any rate) and as an art, it's unconscionably rude to get the details wrong because the details are kind of the whole point, so I understand why it bothers my mom, but on the other hand, picking nits about the local dime-a-dozen sushi restaurant staffed entirely of non-Japanese seemed to me to be a little much. I mean, it's not like the Japanese haven't been bastardizing Chinese and other Asian ethnic foods and creating their own versions (stuff like ramen and chanpon for example), and even Western foods are turned uniquely Japanese, whether it's pizza, burgers, even donuts are substantially different from their "authentic" recipe, but that's part of the charm. If I go to Japan and order at a restaurant, I'm not expecting an authentic French cuisine experience, I'm looking for the Japanified version of French cuisine.
In the same way, I would think that people like my mom and her friends would see these Asian fusion restaurants as a unique interpretation of Japanese cuisine filtered through the tastes and experiences of Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. immigrants to Canada (or the U.S., for you Asian Americans). My mom's friend used to run an authentic Japanese restaurant, so that could be one reason it really bugs her to see restaurants pop up everywhere capitalizing on the popularity of sushi and all things Japan by selling themselves as a "Japanese" restaurant even though none of the staff speak Japanese and the chef wasn't trained by a Japanese sushi chef. While I can understand that, I also can't blame Asian-Canadians looking to make a living capitalizing on the ignorance of non-Asians as to what exactly constitutes Japanese culture, and again, it's not just non-Asians who can't tell us apart, because non-Japanese come up to my sister and me all the time, asking us if we're <insert non-Japanese Asian ethnicity here>. Or even worse, they start randomly talking to me in their native tongue, blithely unaware that I don't understand a word they're saying. I don't get offended when a fellow Asian mistakes me for one of their own, but I always feel a little guilty having to explain that I'm Japanese: it's hard to hold one's head up high when faced with the particularly brutal war-like tendencies of one's own native country, especially in the presence of those who may have directly suffered under Japanese Imperial rule, never mind that I wasn't even born then yet, it still makes me feel guilty.
As well, what exactly constitutes a Japanese? My parents have Caucasian friends who are more culturally Japanese than I am, who can read, write and speak Japanese better than I can: I'd say they are more Japanese than I am. I met a guy the other day who was from Bangladesh, and he spoke Japanese to me and said he learned it when he was in Japan for a couple of years. He went on and on about how much he loved Japan and Japanese people, culture... it was really kind of embarrassing for me, because I really don't know a whole lot about what it actually means to be Japanese, despite having been born there. I grew up in North America, and I'm culturally more 'Canadian' (read Caucasian Canadian, I suppose) than anything else, that I just don't feel it. I have a Facebook friend who went off to Japan a couple of years ago and she's already able to read, write and probably speak it better than I can. She's definitely got a larger vocabulary in Japanese than I do. Those are the kinds of people I consider 'Japanese', not people like me. I'm only Japanese solely due to a random toss of the dice of life, whereas I consider the people who really love Japanese culture, who live it, who want to be it, are what I would call real 'Japanese'.
Maybe if they had Japanese Sea Lions?
Maybe if they had Japanese Sea Lions?
I'm not sure why they also don't go after the countless other establishments that bastardize Asian culture.
Oh, wait. I know. It's because the bollocks of Asian people grow when they're fighting other Asians.
I'm not sure why they also don't go after the countless other establishments that bastardize Asian culture.
Oh, wait. I know. It's because the bollocks of Asian people grow when they're fighting other Asians.
Ernie! It's not that tourists can't tell the difference between the servers, it's that they dont care. You know they all head out of the garden and grab Starbucks directly their cultural experience and wonder where they can find a clam chowder bread bowl and a sea lion.
Ernie! It's not that tourists can't tell the difference between the servers, it's that they dont care. You know they all head out of the garden and grab Starbucks directly their cultural experience and wonder where they can find a clam chowder bread bowl and a sea lion.
No no, not true. The sarcasm meter was at high this afternoon.
No no, not true. The sarcasm meter was at high this afternoon.
Wow. After reading this post, one would think that Ernie does not like Japanese people.
Wow. After reading this post, one would think that Ernie does not like Japanese people.
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