Taking stock of a generation of changes

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Taking stock of a generation of changes

Michael Hassett turns and faces the strange as he looks back at the way Japan was when he arrived here in 1990

Girls look at parts of the Berlin Wall at an exhibition in Tokyo in 1990. Germany was reunified two months before Hassett arrived in Japan but the Soviet Union still existed. COURTESY OF MICHAEL HASSETT, AP | ROBBIE SWINNERTON PHOTOS

By Michael Hassett

Jan 11, 2011

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Pretty soon now, you’re gonna get older

Rolling Stone suggested that the lyrics to “Changes” by David Bowie could be “construed as a young man’s attempt to reckon how he’ll react when it’s his time to be on the maligned side of the generation schism.”

A generation is often marked by the passing of 20 years, and as we begin the second decade of the new millennium and complete my own personal “generation” in Japan, journey back with me to the way things were when I first arrived in this country on Nov. 14, 1990.