Japan has been of great influence from western culture for a long time, even though few Japanese people travels abroad and few foreigners travels in to the country. A specific western culture activity is the Japanese university cheerleading teams. The girls in the teams have not found there inspiration from visiting American universities but from something much closer; their TV. In the project I have followed the Tokyo Universitys cheerleading Team.

This photograph shows the Japanese pasta dish Tarako. It is made from salted Alaskan pollock roe and seaweed. Q.P is one of the largest companies that offer this product and their mascot is the famous American Kewpie-doll. In a well known commercial for this dish, two girls with red hats looking like fish roe are doing a special Tarako-dance.

The French Statue of Liberty was placed at the artificial island Odaiba in Tokyo bay in commemoration of The French year in Japan 1998-1999. Because of its popularity, a replica was erected in the same place in 2000.

In high school movies the popular girl gets to wear the popular guys school team jacket. The jacket is a symbol that makes everybody else jealous. In this case Haruka has bought her own jacket at an ordinary store in Tokyo. Her jacket is a fashion sweater in soft material and a copy of a real baseball jacket.

The stores in Tokyo are often decorated with balloon arches just like in USA. One common place is the Pachinko game centre where you charge the machines with small metal balls instead of money. The atmosphere in these places is over whelming, with a deafening noise and an enormous amount of decorations.

This is a Hot dog masquerade costume that I have made from textile and foam. It was displayed on podium together with the photograph that I made with a model wearing the costume. I got this low budget feeling of the photograph from a catalogue that sells this kind of costumes. I like to think of the costume as a story telling ingredient, wearing this you will be walking and acting in a scene some how.