Last night, I was harassing my brother with the question “Why aren’t there more anime songs in Spanish?” I mean, there are songs in French, Latin, Italian and there’s one Japanese singer who could sing in Portuguese (along with Japanese, French and English), so why none for Spanish? Eventually, after much bantering, we came to an agreement that the Japanese liked the sound of the languages mentioned above.

And in that same night, I happened to come across El Fotopakismo’s Mexicana Flickr set. All photos here are about anything Mexican-related (“Mexican-looking, Mexicanesque, pseudo-Mexican, Mexicanish, pretending to be Mexican, related to Mexico and/or actually Mexican… around the world”), mostly taken in Japan. The one that really caught my eye was the one of the Mexican woman holding the Japanese flag. :O I didn’t know they celebrated the Mexican Independence Day in Japan. So cooool!

And some other info that show how the Spanish language (and Hispanic culture in general) appeared in Japan:

• El Cazador de la Bruja (“The Hunter of the Witch”) – an anime series that ran last year. Not only is the title in Spanish, the action insert song, El Cazador (mostly) in Spanish. :O (More on that later.)
• From Keiiii’s LJ:
  

  “The complex Japanese language and its writing system are inventions of the devil, designed to prevent the spreaad of Gospel.”

  –Attributed to Francis Xavier, Spanish Jesuit missionary in Japan

• On a more personal note, we used to host students from Japan at one time. One of them wasn’t too sure about learning Spanish, since she found it too difficult (while according to my mom, it’s easier for us as English speakers). I guess this shows that Japanese and Spanish really are languages different from each other (when you think about the point mention above this one).
• From Kakure Kirishitan: “The prayers were adapted to sound like Buddhist and Shinto prayers, yet retained many untranslated words from Latin, Portuguese and Spanish.”
• Also from El Fotopakismo on El Torito:
  

  Mexican food in Japan is still seen as “ethnic” or “exotic” and… well… sadly, Japanese don’t find it appealing in the beginning. The reason is that Japanese and Mexican food are complete opposites:

  -one has a subtle and delicate taste, the other is bold (hot and spicy)
  -one is very light, the other is heavy (in other words, you feel full)
  -one uses mostly fish and vegetables, the other uses meat, chicken, corn and… sour cream

  Almost the complete opposite of what my mom said. When we hosted our Japanese students, they loooooved Mexican food, since it’s different from Japanese food. Wut.