Skateboarding in Japan is not as popular as I thought it would be, but it is still here and you can often see people skateboarding in certain places. Skateboarding in Japan is even more difficult than in America. There are too many people out in the day time and at night places are limited with good lighting. Because skateboading is loud it is also harder to do at night. Sound travels through the neighborhoods so people are more likely to call the police or come out themselves and ask you to stop making so much noise.
There are skateparks in Japan, but mostly in the bigger cities and they are mostly in wharehouses at least according to Steve Cave at http://skateboard.about.com/cs/boardscience/a/sk8inJapan.htm.
A real big problem with skateboarding becoming popular here is the price of the boards, shoes, and anything else you want for skating are extremely expensive. From the stores I have been to things are generally twice as much as in America. Some of the shoe prices are almost three times as much, which puts them around 160 dollars. Shoes don't last long skateboarding and most people can't afford to get new ones at that price as often as you would need them.
If you skateboard in Japan be careful and mind the other people. The best itme is really at night and near larger train stations. Trains will cover the noise and the area should be well lit.
Soccer is a very popular sport in Japan. It is a good sport because everyone can play and you can play all over. You are always able to find a park near where you are in Japan. It is not as popular as baseball, but more people are involved in playing soccer not just watching. From the people I have talked to it seems that women are only a little less interested than men in this sport. This is very different from America where NOBODY seems to be interested in soccer. In Japan they know American Soccer teams and players names. Of course they know other countries teams as well and their own teams.
2 comments:
Your photos don't make skateboarding or soccer seem popular. They are lonely photos - where are the people?
These are both good topics for visual anthropology and I believe you could get some great photos of Japanese skate punks and soccer matches (try Gamba Osaka...).
http://www.gamba-osaka.net/en/index.html
Maybe choosing one of these topics and giving more quality information would be a better strategy. Why did you choose these two sports to write about?
It kept raining and I couldn't go to take photos at the places I wanted to. I love skateboarding and have talked to about ten guys here that skate. I got the info I could from them for the little bit of time that I had to chat.
With soccer it was the same with time. I have not had much free time. I was originally going to write about a picture I had of a field. That was going to be about the any sport field but again the photo with that had no people also. It is hard to get photos sometimes of the stuff you want with a limited time to get them. I will work harder for the next ones though.
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