Blond hair?

hey, I definitely underestimated you, but if you go back and read your original post to me you can see why I would respond so menacingly. I can see that you actually do have a nice brain. Honestly I don't really think that people see me as a god here, I know it's just the interest in something different. Also there is a rather large difference between Tokyo and where I have been as I have been very often in small villages where the people may have never seen a white person except on TV. as opposed to Beijing where they are everywhere. as far as my meaning when I said "American clothes" I didn't mean jeans and A t-shirt, but homer simposon and snoopy and betty boop is everwhere. also the trend of putting random English words, or sometimes just random letters on clothes, much like the American clothes or tattoos of Chinese characters that make no sense. as far as being a nerd, nerds here actually are idolized, doing well in school and reading books 24/7 and things like that are the most important things around here. I realize that japan and china are very different, but there are similarities. for instance I never thought I had anything in conman with Germans, but if I see them here in china they might as well be my own countrymen, and with china as a relative back drop I really see all the things our cultures have in common, it's the same with Asian cultures. there are tremendous similarities. Some of the most distinguishing features of japan originally came from china in one form or another, like the writing system, zen Buddhism, (though I admit they have been changed over time to truly Japanese cultural aspects.)

In China more than other places there have been some of the fastest cultural changes anyone has ever seen, and while parents are clinging to old china, the youth are launching forward to the new age of china which is tremendously westernized. And because this is something they are striving for, because there is, in my opinion a backwards view, that the west represents "modernity", and America is their idea of the epitome of the west, they do idolize me to an extent, but by no means as a god, and it's not even me, I'm a religious studies major who has no plan for the future. they are interested in the American business man, but they do see me as something to learn from, or at least the thing they expect me to be, which is an American entrepreneur, or at least some one with plans to someday get rich.

in that way it is like being a celebrity, everyone expects you to be the role you play, and want to talk to you and see you but they want you to be the American they know from TV, not the real you. people do want to be my friend just because I'm an American, and in that sense yes, I am an idol, a statue that represents something bigger than myself. Chinese people, especially Chinese college students, believe that there future lies in the modern age, and they don't see a role model for the modern age anywhere other than in the west, (this is largely because few Chinese would be caught dead looking to japan as a role model for anything, though I have seen a number of Koreans treated in similar ways to me, and some Chinese girls just go nuts for Korean men)

as far as japan goes though, it seems to have already gone along the path that china is now on. I'm not saying that all of japanese culture is from the west, thats absurd. but the Japaneses culture today is certainly a major product of the west, much more so than the influence that japan has had on western culture. (again though, japan has taken all of those influences and re-interpreted them in very japanese ways.) for this particular thread the manga is a good example, something that now is entirely Japanese, any one in the world could see it and say it is something japanese but would never have existed if American soldiers hadn't brought their comic books to japan in the second world war sparking the entire movement. Japanese pop music is another example, something that certainly sounds obviously different from other pop music in the world, but is tremendously influenced by western pop, especially things like boy bands and even before that the Beatles, who made a massive impact. and this leads back to my original comment so long ago. things like blond hair come from the original source, ie American comics, and after that it got run through the Japanese machines which saw blond hair just as crazy as blue or green, and so followed up in turn, after that it just continued evolving. (as an anthropological study you could conceivably say that every culture in the world is just a mutation of the earliest African culture)

basically I wanted to say from the beginning with my first post that, the influence of the west on Asian culture has been massive in this modern age (asian countries had there effects on the west much earlier in history), I don't mean to say that we are in any way gods to any one, I'm just saying that realistically speaking it makes sense to feature blond people in Japanese cartoons, as western culture and people are in the most basic and original DNA of the thing. I used china as an example of the way people are obsessed with the exotic things in the world that they don't understand and tend to focus on them, I suppose I could have just as easily used America as an example and sited the "Chinese brides" ad's that have been on the side bar of my gmail account ever since I started mentioning china in my emails. if you are looking for enlightenment, you go to India, if your looking for sex, you go to bangkok, and if your looking for money you go to the US, and since money seems to be the most important thing on anyones minds in china, and in many places in the world, we get a lot of interest. And greed is the thing that bridges all cultures.