Today has been a long day! It began with our Portuguese class refreshing the subjunctive for our test tomorrow then reading and discussing another satirical short story by a Brazilian author critiquing society and a composition. When class finally finished we had a quick lunch in the cafeteria then walked to the closest metro station to head down to the Praça da Se where we were meeting our professors to walk around one of the famous immigrant neighborhoods in São Paulo, Liberdade. Our first stop was the fictive ‘foundation’ of the city at one of the oldest monasteries which we were not able to see on our last trip down town. From there we walked back up past the cathedral to see another important space of power in the city, its first law school. It was actually on of the first two schools in the country and has had many distinguished graduates that have influenced Brazilian history. In fact, the law school played a major role in the revolution of 1932 in which the state of São Paulo (richer and more populous than most other states in Brazil) rebelled against the government of Vargas which had excluded important São Paulo politicians from his government. We actually have next Monday and Tuesday off of school in memory of these events.
After the law school, we walked down toward Liberdade which is an old Japanese ethnic neighborhood. On the walk we saw signs of everything we have been talking about in class regarding identity, immigrants and Brazilianess; there were signs written both in Portuguese and English, businesses that have begun to capitalize on the idea of a little Japan though the construction of their buildings (mostly banks, stands, and the MacDonalds). We stopped in the main square of Liberdade to hear from a grad student from USP, the university of São Paulo, talk about how the Japanese Okinawa minority population, which is the majority of immigrants, created a specific type of Japanese identity in Brazil. From the square we walked to a small colonial church that is important in the Afro-Brazilian tradition of syncretic Catholicism (Catholicism mixed with African religions that the slaves brought over). Almost all of the saints and Virgins inside are black and there is a store next to the church where practitioners can buy both catholic and syncretic worship items (candles or effigies).
As we were walking to the next stop on our tour we passed back through the plaza where we witnessed the most Brazilian scene, a bagpiper was playing music as we walked past a southwestern restaurant in a Japanese neighborhood in Brazil…Like the in the US, Brazil is a land of mixed peoples! Our third stop was another early church, but this one was an example of how the city has taken over spaces which were once central and sacred. The small church used to be part of a plaza but today is at the end of an ally directly surrounded on three sides by newer buildings. On our way to our fourth stop we crossed an overpass which gave us our first really good view of how large the city really is. Since it is mostly flat in São Paulo it is pretty hard to see how far the buildings go and to really grasp the enormity of the metropolis. Our fourth stop was an active Japanese cultural center where they had a Japanese reading library, offices for the prefecture (state) associations of the immigrants, and classes in traditional Japanese arts (tea, flower arranging..). We also saw the center of Japanese Shinto-Buddhism in South America. One thing that is ironic about the temple (which looks straight out of an ad to travel to Japan) is that most of the worshippers are not actually Japanese. We saw more people of Japanese descent in the two catholic churches than around the temple. Our final stop was one of the seven historic Japanese movie houses which played a major role in the development of the neighborhood. Brazil was the largest market for Japanese cinema outside of japan and the streets around the theaters would be regularly closed off as huge crowds would gather to see the latest starlets at the premiers. The Japanese movie houses were extremely productive and the Japanese New Wave style inspired young Brazilian filmmakers to make films that were more political in nature. These movies also tended to be rather raunchy, as films in Brazil under the military dictatorship were heavily censured, but there were two boards of censorship; political and sexual. Many of the directors figured out that if they got their movie sent to the sex censorship board they could get away with saying almost anything.
After our final stop, Allison and I went back to our apartment to rest (there was a lot of walking!) before meeting back up with the group for dinner. Our second group dinner was at a restaurant called Sushi Masa and it is an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. We continued our day of looking at the mixing of cultures by ordering a sake caipirinhas and ordered Brazilianized sushi. The sushi was amazing! It was mostly sashimi but we got to try some of everything! I had salmon, ‘California,’ a white fish, tempura veggies, and one of those sushi cones. Everything was so fun to try! I have really been enjoying these program organized dinners because we get to go to little tucked away restaurants, try everything and then the program pays! After our dinner finally ended several of us decided to walk back along Rua Agusta and stop in at a few bars to see if we could find some music or dancing. It was a bit of a bust since Thursdays are not a big night out here in Brazil so we all ended up going home.
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