Greetings!
This faceless, WordPress-decapitated guy is Andy Henderson — a senior English and Literary & Cultural Studies double major. He enters this class wearing my LCST hat, and began this semester with nearly blank slate with respect to Japanese culture.
The material thus far has been fascinating. We live in a small world, and culture in one place can quickly take hold elsewhere. When this happens, the cultural expressions themselves rarely tell the whole story; a vast nexus of interrelated political and economic ties and influences are necessary to support any cultural exchange. For an LCST major who is used to looking at cultural texts within US borders, it has been great to change perspective for him a little bit and focus on the relationships between Japan and the US.
And then of course there’s Yatta! That’s the other reason he’s here.