Every year all eyes are on the flashiest fashions at Kitakyushu, but there’s another side to the story.
Yankee
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.”
Waiting in line to pay your highway toll while on a tight schedule can be one of the most frustrating experiences of any driver’s life. Waiting in line behind a chain of noisy motorcycles could be even worse–but you’d better not complain, because that line could be full of (law-abiding) juvenile delinquents!
Since the Japanese school year starts in April, graduation ceremonies usually happen around mid-March. There are tearful speeches, young adults dressing up in traditional graduation outfits, and of course only the most heartfelt thanks and gratitude given to teachers, parents, and everyone else in the community.
But not in Okayama City. For the past few years there’s been an unofficial tradition of the recent middle school graduates gathering outside Okayama Station and wearing *gasp!* long jackets. And not just that, but they’re wearing them in different colors! The horror was so much that police officers were immediately dispatched to keep an eye on all the horrible delinquents.
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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