Ｊａｍｅｓ　Ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ　Ｈｏｕｓｅ

It is said that it is very hard to see another culture without seeing it though the lens of your own and whenever I wear my old hockey jersey I think I prove this.

My old jersey has a shoulder patch that is a bear's face and every time I wear it someone will always say something like "That is a nice tiger," or "Why are you wearing a Hanshin Tigers symbol?"

I realize that the stripes in the bear face might at first confuse people, but it is hard for me to see any resemblance to a tiger because of the long nose it has. And I don't think that it looks anything like the Japanese baseball team's mascot character.

There are bears in Japan so why do people easily confuse the two? I think it has to be a cultural response, that the Hanshin Tiger is engrained into the Japanese cultural psyche and they immediately react to what they have experienced in their own culture without closely looking at it.

To quote the famous culturalist Edward Said:

“Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.”
(Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism)

So I think reactions to my old hockey jersey are about the geographical struggle between "forms, images and imaginings."