Transnational cultural flows made a very local consumption and appropriation of other cultures possible. In relation to the spread of Japanese culture, however, it is not fully studied how local people represent Japan through it, especially in the Western non-central regions.

This paper aims to examine the representations of Japan constructed by Portuguese university students, based on the theories from Cultural Studies and Social Psychology. We conducted 7 focus group discussions: 5 groups consisted of Japanese as a Foreign Language (JFL) students and 2 groups consisted of non-JFL students. A short sequence of Japanese animation film was used as an instrument for the discussion. The collected data were submitted to a thematic analysis.

The results allowed us to discuss: (re)production of one of the powerful essentialist views of the world, a dichotomy of the West and the East, which was characterized by not only a reflection of Orientalism but also a center-periphery relation within the West; diversity in the degree of homogenization of outgroup (Japan) within ingroup (JFL and non-JFL); and more detailed information associated with the images about the Japanese people in comparison with the results from our preceding questionnaire survey.