Category Archives: Alan’s stories 2026

From Taboo to Trendy: What Happened to Japanese Culture?

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I wandered through the Rocket Fizz candy store today, looking for a Goo Goo Cluster. On the way out, a shelf packed with Japanese candy sidetracked me.

Matcha Kit Kats.

Pocky.

Gummies in flavors I can’t pronounce.

A few days ago, I read about a Japanese convenience store opening in Longmont, Kawaii Conbini.

Part of me smiles.

Another part of me wonders, “What happened?”

I’m Japanese American. Growing up, my Nisei parents did not celebrate being Japanese. They tried not to attract attention to it.

America had spent years teaching them that being visibly Japanese was dangerous.

My parents belonged to the generation shaped by World War II and its aftermath. The U.S. government code led Americans to believe that the Japanese should be viewed with suspicion.

More than 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry were forced from their homes and sent to incarceration camps.

The lesson my parents learned was straightforward.

Speak English.

Don’t make waves.

Don’t draw attention to yourself.

Don’t give anyone a reason to see you as different.

The result was cultural amnesia.

The Japanese language disappeared from my house. Traditional customs faded. My parents encouraged me to become as American as possible.

I remember a time when Japanese food was considered strange. Sushi was exotic. Anime was niche. Asian products occupied a tiny corner of specialty stores. I packed my lunch when I was in junior high school. I never included maki sushi or teriyaki chicken, two of my faves to this day.

Today, the situation is the reverse.

Sushi is sold in supermarkets. Anime fills Comic-Con events. Japanese video games dominate popular culture. Japanese cars became symbols of quality and reliability.

People seek out Japanese knives, Japanese whiskey, Japanese electronics, and Japanese candy.

What changed?

The generations that fought World War II are largely gone. For younger Americans, Japan is not associated with wartime enemies. It is associated with technology, design, food, entertainment, and innovation.

Another factor is globalization.

When I was growing up, culture moved slowly. Today, a teenager in Wyoming can watch the same anime series as a teenager in Tokyo. A TikTok video featuring a Japanese snack can reach millions of viewers overnight. The world has become smaller.

That’s how I learned about Goo Goo Clusters. When I was in Nashville for a cohousing conference, I tried the caramel-peanut-chocolate candy for the first time. Prior to 1912, candy consisted of one ingredient. A Goo Goo Cluster was the first to combine a variety of ingredients.

America has changed, too.

The old expectation was assimilation. The goal was to become indistinguishable from everyone else.

Today, there’s a greater appreciation for cultural diversity. Americans are curious about differences rather than fearful of them. Food, music, language, and traditions once viewed as foreign are now opportunities to learn something new.

That doesn’t mean prejudice has disappeared. It hasn’t.

There’s been a shift, and the irony is impossible to ignore.

My parents grew up in a world where being Japanese made you a target. Today, consumers seek out Japanese products.

The candy aisle at Rocket Fizz may seem trivial, but standing there, I couldn’t help thinking about the cultural journey.

Maybe that’s progress, or a reminder that cultures survive when people are pressured to set them aside and wait for a new generation to rediscover them.

As I looked at those shelves of Japanese candy, I thought about my parents.

They spent much of their lives trying not to stand out.

I wish they could have seen a day when the once suspicious stood in line because they wanted a taste of what being Japanese had to offer.

Rocket Fizz did carry Goo Goo Clusters, but it was an expensive gift pack. I’ll wait to get one the next time I’m near a Cracker Barrel.

The Papa Burger and Princess Leia

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Sorting through old myths, one cheeseburger at a time.

There’s a Swedish television show where three cheerful Scandinavians arrive at cluttered American homes and gently remind people of an inconvenient truth.

When you die, your relatives will either fight over your stuff, donate it to Goodwill, or haul it to the dumpster.

The Swedes call it “death cleaning.” Americans call it “my garage.”

I’ve been doing my own version lately. A few boxes at a time. Not because I’m planning an imminent departure from the planet, but because I’ve reached the age where I open a box and wonder why I thought it was important enough to move across three states.

This week’s excavation uncovered two sets of toys I once used as visual aids during gender-bias trainings when I worked in domestic violence prevention.

Leia and Luke over the years.

I’d pull out old Star Wars figures and Barbie dolls to make the point that popular culture starts socializing children early. Boys become dominant. Girls become decorative. By adulthood, everybody needs therapy.

The original 1977 Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker figures looked like underfed exchange students. Skinny. Plain. Awkward.

Over the years, both evolved into action heroes with toned abs and revealing wardrobes.

Ken especially transformed from suburban boyfriend into a plastic MMA fighter. Barbie’s proportions stayed pretty much the same, emphasizing that thin is better than otherwise.

Ken has bulked up over the years.

The toys worked well in trainings because every participant understood the point. You could physically see cultural expectations hardening in molded plastic.

Eventually, my teaching props became clutter.

So I sold the Star Wars collection to a collector in Berthoud. After an acupuncture appointment in Longmont, I drove over to make the delivery. One more box removed from the archive of my former lives.

Of course, no trip to Berthoud is complete without stopping at the A&W Restaurant.

The drive-in feels like a surviving artifact from “American Graffiti.” I pulled in, pushed a button and ordered through a two-way speaker, The curbhop brought out a tray that hooked onto the partially rolled-down car window.

Baby Boomers somehow managed to eat entire meals in their cars without permanently staining the upholstery, although now that I think about it, my old Ford Falcon may have always smelled faintly of french fries.

I ordered the Double Papa Burger combo: fries and a large root beer float, another stop on my ongoing cheeseburger field research project.

Double Papa Burger Combo

The Papa Burger today is wetter than I remember. Not worse. Just overcommitted to condiments.

The burger arrived dripping special sauce and sliced tomato fluid. I inhaled the monster with no evidence of chewing, which may explain indulgent health trends.

Compared to the other burgers I’ve sampled over the past few months, the Papa Burger holds up well.

There’s no brioche bun or truffle aioli. It’s a big, messy American cheeseburger served at a drive-in where you’re expected to eat like napkins are optional.

The afternoon felt connected in a strange way.

I sold toys that represented old ideas about masculinity and femininity. Then I celebrated by eating a burger large enough to challenge modern cardiology.

America remains a land of contradictions.

The trip would have been perfect if the kids meal had come with a Mandalorian toy.

Of course, that’s the domain of Burger King.

Swedish Death Cleaning II: The Violin Case

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Have you ever learned a skill, forgot it, then relearned it?

When letting go brings something back.

I was sorting through another box for my ongoing Swedish death cleaning project when I came across a stack of old violin chamber music.

Duets. Quartets. Quintets. Pages with penciled notes and dogears from another life.

I figured it was simple enough. Sell the music and two of my three violins. I’d keep the one my grandfather passed down to me, which he bought from a Sears catalog in the 1900s.

That box carried me back to Lander, Wyoming.

Years ago, when I worked at the newspaper there, I wrote a feature story about Becky, the local Suzuki violin teacher.

One Saturday morning my photographer friend Tom stopped by unexpectedly and told me I needed to see a violin he’d found at a garage sale.

We drove back across town. The violin looked worn but had character. The owner said it had once belonged to local fiddler Quentin Roberts. That mattered to me.

It had history.

Provenance.

A life before mine.

I bought it for something like twenty-five bucks.

After that, I contacted Becky and asked if she took adults. She mostly taught the parents of her younger students and people like me who woke up one day and realized they wanted to learn something difficult before it was too late.

So I learned.

Long story short, I got pretty decent.

Not concert hall decent. But good enough to play in a small local orchestra and enjoy myself.

Becky played viola and a second violinist, Lisa, played for tips at a local bar. The patrons there were more accustomed to Dylan than Mozart.

I started collecting music just because I wanted to try playing it someday.

Then life happened and I moved to Colorado.

I relocated to Boulder imagining there would be amateur groups everywhere. There were plenty of musicians, but even the “beginners” had conservatory backgrounds and college performance experience.

My violin disappeared into its case where it has sat for thirty years.

When the woman stopped over to pick up the sheet music, we talked. I asked her why she wanted it.

Turns out she and her husband were in the exact same predicament I was.

Former players. Rusty musicians. People who once loved playing but drifted away from it over time.

Except they had taken the next step. They had found a few other “hackers” like us to play together for fun.

Then came the best part.

She lives two blocks away.

I had been preparing myself emotionally to part with the music and the violins, thinking Swedish death cleaning meant dismantling old identities.

Instead, the process handed one back to me.

Now I’m thinking about restringing the fiddle.

Maybe the point of Swedish death cleaning is figuring out which possessions are still attached to joy, memory, possibility, and will find new homes when the time is right.

Who would have thought that lightening the load could also put something back into my hands?

The image at the bottom was taken at a fiddling workshop led by one of my high school classmates Bob Mathews.