This celebration throws everything you thought you knew about Japanese culture out the window.
Yankee
Every year all eyes are on the flashiest fashions at Kitakyushu, but there’s another side to the story.
Never get into pointless arguments on the Internet, especially if the other person is friends with a yakuza member.
Kimonos and gangsta flair to celebrate freedom and individuality before conforming to Japanese society.
Rather than some social program saying farming is good for “troubled youth,” Vegefru Farms says “troubled youth” are the answer to farming’s prayers.
Just because you’re an alpaca, doesn’t mean you can’t have the hair and the attitude of a Shibuya bad-boy. Meet Nagasaki’s “Yankee Alpaca.”
To most people around the world, the word ‘Yankee’ is used as a (sometimes derogatory) slang term for Americans in general. To most Americans, ‘Yankee’ refers to a person living in one of the six northeastern states of New England. To die-hard Red Sox fans, just hearing the phrase ‘New York Yankees’ is enough to make their blood boil. But that’s a different story…
Curiously enough, the word ‘yankee’ (ヤンキー) has also established itself within the Japanese lexicon, albeit with extremely different connotations. In Japan, a ‘yankee’ conjures up images of juvenile delinquents and biker gangs (more on that later). While this Japanese subculture may have died down considerably since its heyday in the 1980s, one museum in Hiroshima Prefecture has just opened a special exhibit titled ‘Yankee Anthropology’. This exhibit explores Yankee culture from a serious, academic perspective and includes various related realia. If you’ve always been fascinated by this aspect of Japanese subculture, now’s the perfect excuse to head over to Hiroshima!
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