This image reminds me of another detail that, for some time, has dominated my Japanese experience. The utter state of confusion.

After the first 2-3 days of perplexity, following my arrival in the “strange world of the Japan planet“, I was due to meet my professor, the head of the lab where I was going to work. I was in an extremely confused state … but now I find it interesting. It was a combination of amazement, contentment and joy, specific to any “discoverer of new things or places”. Everything seemed to be affected by a kind of “visual discomfort”. Almost everything around me was completely new and, to a large extent, incomprehensible. People didn’t look the way I knew, I didn’t understand anything that was written or spoken. Everywhere there were lots and lots of bicycles. It was also a kind of general order behind all of these, quite opposite to the chaos of the  Latin spirit in which I had grew up until my sudden landing  in the Japanese world. It was literally all of a sudden, because the transition between the two totally different worlds lasted practically only a few hours, about 18 hours for the flight plus another 7 hours of time lag, also part of the “charm” of the first meeting with the new civilization on the other side of the world.

…And that was my general vibe when I went to meet my supervisor there, in flesh and bones, for the first time.

Sendai, Japan – October 3rd, 2006: Portrait of a Japanese woman selling vegetables in a market in Sendai ,Japan.

The meeting itself is another story, but I want to point out to just one of the questions that initially stunned me a bit. He asked me if, from the amalgam of Asian faces I see on the street, I can figure out which are Japanese and which are not. Obviously, i had no clue whatsoever! To me, they were all completely different faces from what I have known for my entire life.

Later, I realized that the world I had almost teleported to had structure and organization, and discovering them can lead to completely new ideas and things. And, as for any overcame shock, the suffering you are going through to make it to the end, actually fuels your developmental step up. In retrospect, it is very possible that all these ideas contributed to my latter sympathy for the photographic discovery of Japan, through its streets.

And so, one day, while walking in a Sendai market, I have captured this portrait of the woman selling vegetables. It was about 4 years after the above-mentioned story with my professor, and, by then, I knew very well  how to recognize different types of Asian physiognomies (Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesians, Thais and others).

She was a Japanese woman with a face furrowed with life, sitting among her vegetables in the Sendai market.