Quiet Week

As i finish up my fourth week in Japan, i don't have much to say about my current affairs. Prof. Morokuma has been out of town all week, so there were no meetings. My trajectories are running in such a way that i won't have to actively work on them for at least a week or so. Really, not much has happened to me in the last week. So i decided i would discuss one of the things which has been bugging me about the immersion in Japanese culture.
As i mentioned before, i've seen a lot of Coca-cola products since i've been here. That was only the start. So much of what i see is either an attempt to copy western culture or direct infiltration of american culture. Whether its the clothing, the food, the language, the technology, or social behavior, it doesn't feel too much like being someplace much different from Atlanta. There's a French bakery right next to my hotel and a McDonald's less than a kilometer away. Perhaps the must upsetting thing to me is how much English has seemingly infected the streets. More often than not, a place of commerce will have itselfed labeled in English before Japanese, and frequently only in English. I worry so much about the complete atrification of traditional Japanese culture.
I've discussed this with some other people here, most of them americans themselves, and they agree with my observations and my concerns. One of them said that he had discussed the subject with native Japanese youths, who say "[they] don't know what it means to be Japanese anymore." I know that a big part of Japanese culture is xenophilia, that they love to learn about and incorporate other cultures into their own. Much of "traditional" Japanese culture is derived from Chinese, Korean, and other Southeast Asian cultures. I don't have a problem with that, I actually admire it. But i know it's not a two way street. America, which is supposed to be the melting pot, has take so little from Japanese culture over the last half-century, and most of that is limited to food, martial arts, and anime. I know that companys like McDonald's and Coca-cola don't care about sharing their culture with others, they just see the Japanese population as another market to make a profit on. And all the while, the traditional Japanese culture is in danger of falling by the wayside. I don't know if i'm overreacting, having been raised as a Jew who was constantly taught the dangers of assimilation and the loss of cultural identity. But i like to think that my intentions are good-natured and honestly out of concern for the preservation of an ancient culture.