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A Day in the Life - Of a Japanese Student
A summer day with Mariko Okada in Tokyo
Original posting: December 2003 Issue
by NINA BASU, staff writer
We look at the Eastern world in awe, reveling in their wondrous culture. Oddly enough, Mariko Okada finds Japanese life to be very similar to our own lives here. Apparently, though each culture is unique, we are not so different after all! Mariko spent most of her life in Tokyo, Japan with her mother, father, and two dogs. She moved to the United States for high school, when she arrived in Michigan for art school. After high school graduation, Mariko came to us at UCLA as a Design Media Arts major, and hopefully, one day she will be a Bruin film undergrad. Fortunately, though she is so often away from her homeland, she is able to travel back home for all major breaks – winter, spring, and summer – to spend time with her beloved family and friends. Today, she describes to me one of the last days of her summer in Tokyo.
10 A.M – Mariko wakes up in her “little house”, as she describes it. She meets her mother, and takes her two dogs for a quick morning walk. They go to a “tiny” park in the middle of bustling Tokyo, where many children rambunctiously run and play all around them. Though Tokyo is so business and technology minded, Mariko finds this place to be carefree, void of all the stress of the city.11 A.M – She comes home with her mother, and they sit together for breakfast. I was imagining all the exotic food she must eat at breakfast and all the other meals. A passerby even asked if she ate sushi for breakfast. She gave us an incredulous look and told me how she ate the “usual” – eggs, toast, and orange juice. After all, “We’re so Americanized over there anyway! Everything we have here (in the U.S), we have in Japan.”
12 P.M. – After getting ready for a busy day, she leaves her house, and enters the chaos of the big city. Since it is a wonderful summer day, she has no responsibilities such as school or work to tend to. Rather, she is free to revel in all the glitter and glamour of the world’s most rapidly developing city.
2 P.M. – On this particular day, she takes her camera and takes pictures of this dynamic hometown of hers. She captures the chaos and liveliness of each and every person. I asked Mariko where she would go for a little “quiet time”. Once again, she gave me an odd look, and replied that there really was no quiet place in this wonderful city. Things are fast-paced, and it is virtually impossible to escape. Furthermore, by her expression, she didn’t seem to want that quiet. She wanted to ingest every wonder of Tokyo.
5 P.M. – Mariko finishes taking pictures, and goes to meet her friends to traipse through Japanese nightlife. First, though, they must eat.
6 P.M. - In the middle of a big city, you can get any type of food, from Chinese to American, from Indian to Japanese. On this particular day she felt the craving for sushi. After a wonderful meal of unagi, inari, and other types of sushi and sashimi, Mariko and her friends are ready for a night out on the town.
7 P.M. – With her infinite knowledge of music and movies, there is never a moment where Mariko Okada will find herself bored. Along with her friends, she goes to a concert, perhaps the 15th of the summer. Today she sees her all-time favorite, Adam Green! The concert scene is identical to ours. Screaming fans engulf the venue, with clusters of signs, this time in Japanese and English, littering the view of the stage.
12 P.M. - After the concert, Mariko visits with the band, and meets her idol, Mr. Green. Who could ask for more?
2 A.M. – The night winds down, and Mariko returns home, safe in her home, curled up in bed. Tomorrow will be another day – exotic to us in the United States, but completely normal to Mariko.Soon after, Mariko will board a plane from the Narita Airport, just outside of Tokyo, and she will join us here in Los Angeles. She will eat the same breakfast, take pictures of bustling Los Angeles in all its glory, spend time with her friends (maybe even eat sushi!), and see another band, except maybe this time it will be Coldplay. Sure, the environment is different, but in the end, the ways we enjoy ourselves here in the U.S. is very much the same as those of Mariko Okada in Japan!
Many thanks to Mariko Okada for illuminating upon her life in Japan.
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