Title : So you want to live in Japan? - Japanese Culture and You
So you want to live in Japan? You want to teach English? You want to study abroad? You want to emigrate? You want to make a pilgrimage? There are so many people whose view of Japan and living there is unrealistic or overly optimistic, and so many people who can use a reality check. I hope to provide some realistic information and insight into living in Japan as someone who's done it for a couple years.
Yes, this makes me biased, because clearly I am not you, and my views, beliefs, and notions about Japan have been shaped by my residence and my perceptions before I came.
To help you understand what that bias is, I'll explain first why I'm here.
I have always loved languages. I studied French in elementary school at a bilingual French/English school in the US. I studied Spanish in middle school as well as high school. I have been interested in Japan since the Ninja Turtles and the Karate boom of the 80's, and was egged along through high school with exposure to Japanese games and cartoons, which I had been previously exposed to but didn't realize them as Japanese products.
When I got to college, I floundered around searching for something that would grab my interest, and took a smattering of courses in all subjects, from anthropology, to logic, to higher level math (linear algebra), to Constitutional law and religion. I took Japanese my second year along with some science and more math, to round out the base of politics and science. My second year of college, my Japanese professor changed, and what had been a fun course turned into a boring review of Kanji, and didn't aid me in my goal of conversational ability. I failed and gave up on Japanese. I ended up graduating with a degree in religion and political science.
My first year Japanese professor ended up at Harvard, which was where my house and my job where I was post-graduation. We met up for drinks and dinner now and then, didn't practice conversation that much, but kept in touch because we got along well. I hated my job at the time, working at a tech company doing quality assurance testing for printer software. I bitched to my professor about the job, and she kept suggesting I teach in Japan. Eventually she brought an application for the JET programme, and told me to get it done or else.
I applied, got into the program, quit my job, and left for Kyoto prefecture in August of 2003. I was placed in the same prefecture as Az, and rode down on the shinkansen together from Tokyo, impressed with his Japanese and wondering how the **** I was going to function with my minimal grasp of Japanese.
I could read kana without much of a problem, maybe about 50 kanji with any competence, and knew a smattering of phrases with relatively poor hearing.
I had very little concept of what to expect, as I knew very few Japanese people, and as I was soon to find out, Japanese people living abroad are quite different from Japanese people still living in Japan. Incredibly different.
I think I'm a rather middle-of-the-road participant in the JET program. Many people come because they have a large interest in Japanese language and/or culture. Many others come because they stumbled upon the program and figured that it was a good way to travel around Asia. Most applicants have very little job experience in the 'real world' post-college. I was neither ambivalent towards Japanese culture, nor drooling over the chance to experience it. I had been once during college and enjoyed it, but lost most motivation with the change to a crappy professor.
So in short, my bias is that I applied neither as a Japanese fanatic, nor as a freeloader looking for an easy job with decent money.
As I said, most of the people on JET fall into one of those two categories -- those who think it's an easy job that will allow them to put off real work for a while and do something fun, and those who have this image of Japan as a focus of their studies and interests and want a chance to experience it first hand.
The former group tends to not do so well in Japan. Most of the people I know who had no interest in Japan, and couldn't speak the language, got out of the country quickly. The job they thought was easy turned out to be relatively boring, and the life outside of their job generally included a boatload of alcohol, and a constant feeling of isolation. That is a generalization, but one that is based on observation rather than assumption.
The latter group tends to divide into several different types depending on where their interest in Japan stems from. The anime/manga/whatever fanatics tend to do the worst, realizing quickly that Japan is not a mecca for nerds and geeks, and that most Japanese people have seen far less anime than they have. They start to realize that reading the manga and watching it here isn't much different that doing the same in the US using their computer.
The people who have an interest in a martial art, cultural property, the religion, the cooking, or some other aspect tend to do well or poorly depending on their placement. Some find that their area has the cultural things that interest them, and let the hobby occupy much of their free time, and find that it gives them a focus for their stay. Those who get placed far away from someplace they can actively pursue their interest tend to leave quicker, or find another job and relocate to some or no success.
The most successful group is probably the people who study the language extensively beforehand, and view fluency and improvement in their language/translation skills to be a worthwhile goal to pursue, and actively pursue it. They are the ones who most often go on to adapt to the Japanese lifestyle best, and the ones who tend to turn into long-term residents. An understanding of Japanese is critical in understanding the society, cultural quirks, and other miscellany in this country without going entirely batty.
People like me, who don't quite fit into either group, tend to end up viewing this as just another place to live. It's just another job. It has its good and bad points, just like the job that came before it, and depending on how rewarding our job is we will stay or go as we please. Some of us study more than others, most of us end up with at least communicative Japanese, and I feel like we tend to adjust better than many other people because of our view of Japan through our own eyes without the heavy tint of perception and expectation to warp what we see.
There are, of course, exceptions to all groups. There are the people like me who blow off the job because they realize that it's not as demanding as their previous job, and end up turning towards alcohol or travel to enjoy their time here before taking off as soon as contractually possible. There are those who come by chance to delay entrance into the real world who find the job rewarding, or their experiences rewarding, and stay longer term than they expected to. There are those who are into a certain cultural property, and find out that the way it's done in Japan doesn't live up to their expectations.
So many martial artists complain that the Japanese give out ranks too arbitrarily and easily, making it meaningless and easier than what they were used to.
And some of the language people discover that Japanese isn't going to net them a high-paying job quickly and easily, and that the effort required to get a job with it is quite a bit more than what they expected, as they realize how different their book learning was from the real deal.
The JET motto is 'ESID' (every situation is different), and while there are broad categories to fit people into as I just did, there will always be outliers. I am not a predictive genius of how someone will cope in Japan, but I can suggest the trends that I've seen.
So now comes the advice, now that I've given some background and information on what I've seen. Since people tend to be piss-poor about judging why they came here, and incredibly dishonest with themselves a lot of the time about what they want or expect, I sincerely doubt that the prior descriptions will be enough to figure out what type of experience you're likely to have. Here is a list of questions I think you should ask yourself before coming, and answer honestly, as well as explanations about why they're important...
What do you want to come of your stay here?
The concept of living abroad and gaining experience with it is a wonderful one which I wholly support. And I believe that everyone who has the opportunity should try to live abroad at least once in their life to see what it's like and to experience being an outsider. It will develop skills quickly that most people will never learn.
However, why Japan? Why here? There are so many countries in the world where you can visit and enjoy. Japan is one that is VERY hard for people from the West to live in, because of the difficult language, the wholly different culture, and the difficulty of fitting in and adapting. While people may talk **** about the French, it is possible to be accepted into French culture and not stick out like a sore thumb after living there for a while. Chances are that you will not be able to manage the same feat in Japan on appearance alone.
So why Japan? As yourself why you want to come here rather than somewhere else in the world. And be honest with yourself, because we're moving on to the next question...
If your image of Japan turns out to be false, how disappointing will it be?
As I said, I support people travelling abroad to learn about a different culture. However, if your entire stay hinges on the perception of the country you have, and whether or not the reality lives up to that image, you are less interested in experiencing the culture, rather than exploring something you think you already know. And whereas that can be fun, it can also explode in your face when the reality doesn't compare to the image you had.
There are many a miserable person who gets to Japan and thinks it's the land of easy women, awesome gadgets, forward thinking efficiency, and then sees the reality not matching up, and finding that everything they were looking forward to receiving without effort isn't going to happen.
For instance, I came to Japan with my contact with Japanese people being solely immigrants to the US from Japan. I spoke to these intelligent open-minded individuals who I obviously liked the company of enough to spend time around. I expected Japan to have a good portion of individuals like this, so that I could have similar friends around me in Japan as the Japanese I knew in the States. My enjoyment of Japan wasn't dependent on that fact, but I figured that it would be a nice bonus.
I was entirely wrong. The intelligent, the motivated, the driven, the tolerant, the exceptional -- those are the people I met in the US. And the average, well, the average is the same everywhere. It took me a long time to meet people here that I was expecting to be quite prevalent. It didn't crush me, but it did change my perception of my first several months when I had few Japanese acquaintances that I could count on as anything more than drinking buddies...
Can you swallow your pride?
This has got to be one of the most important questions for anyone living in Japan. Japanese culture is focused around preserving the 和【わ】 (wa, social harmony), and that means that sometimes you have to swallow your pride and apologize when you did no wrong, or hold your tongue when someone says something stupid, or tone down your argument against a wrong to prevent a friendly meeting from turning into something a little more hostile or uncomfortable.
And it's a hard lesson to learn.
I am a bull-headed piece of **** ******* a lot of the time, and I know it. It's REALLY hard for me to concede that I'm wrong when I can see it as clearly as day. It's REALLY hard to look into somebody taunting me, and lording their correctness over me, and conceding. So when I have to do the same to somebody who isn't even right, it's a real ******* struggle. Swallowing my pride, bowing my head, apologizing for an inconvenience that is not my personal fault is humiliating -- but necessary.
In Japan, so much depends on your social relations and social network. No matter how great your job is, the **** that surrounds your job will occupy a large portion of your time, and most of your time is outside the classroom. There have been so many people who have left due to problems with their supervisor, with their schools, with the expectations of the people above them, and because of their inability to swallow their pride. The people who are the most timid tend to be given a LOT more slack, because they are going to assimilate to the system a lot quicker, or at least not fly in the face of the system.
You have to be able to swallow your pride. If you honestly can't do that, then you are going to run into a brick wall in Japan going full-speed, and it's going to hurt.
How tolerant are you?
This ties in with swallowing your pride in some senses, but in a different way. Japan is an entirely different culture. Entirely different. There are going to be things that you cannot change. You are going to want to change them. You are going to want to take your view of the world and try to shape Japan to it, but Japan is not going to budge if even every foreigner in Japan took that view (and there's not even a chance of that happening anyway).
So you're going to have to be tolerant of people who don't think like you. You're going to have to be tolerant of viewpoints that you disagree with. You're going to have to be tolerant of **** that's said to you without malice but that hurts. You're going to have to grow a thick skin and learn to turn the other cheek. And it's going to suck sometimes. Which is another reason you need tolerance.
You cannot explain so much of this to Japanese people. They are just not going to understand. They are going to take your passionate cries against the system and view them as an affront to them, their identity, and their country. They may be internationalized, have lived abroad, and have experienced some discrimination of their own, but they are still going to have trouble relating to what you're saying. They're still going to shut their ears when you start to rant.
And that's what the foreign community is so good for. That's what foreign friends do best -- let you ***** about a shared experience.
But the foreign community is small. Very small. And unlike home where you can pick and choose your mates based on personality, especially in the middle of nowhere in Japan, proximity more than anything will dominate choices of people you will be around a lot. Tolerance of people you may not even give the time of day to in your home country is of critical importance, because you don't want to drive away your support group.
Sometimes you just need another foreigner to talk to.
What's your goal?
What do you want to do with your time in Japan? The more specific you can be, the more you can pursue an interest, a hobby, or a further career path or study, the more content you will be. Idle time tends to be in abundance when you come to Japan, especially at the beginning. You will find that the flurry of activity when you first come here dies down, and you will be sitting in your apartment wondering what the **** you just got yourself into.
Finding a hobby -- no matter how inane -- is going to help a bunch. Alcohol tends to be the replacement for a hobby, and causes serious serious problems with many many people here (myself probably included). Without somewhere to direct your energy, you will turn to not-so-healthy behaviour. So find a gym, find a sport, find a hobby, find a group, and get out and DO SOMETHING with your time here.
Study, take correspondence courses, work on becoming a world-class cyclist, get in shape, learn a traditional Japanese art, ANYTHING, but have a goal.
All of the advice given in response to the previous questions culminates in one last question which is of utter and complete importance. If the answer to the following question is no, then you should never ever ever come to Japan for more than a trip, because if you get unlucky...
Can you ask for help when you need it?
No man is an island, standing independently. You will suffer culture shock when you get here. If you have proclivity towards depression or mental illness, you may see it flare up. Every year on the JET program, at least one participant seems to commit suicide. There are safety nets. There are solutions. There are ways out. But sometimes everything just catches up with you, and you think you can handle it but couldn't.
You need to have the balls to say, "I can't do this alone, I need help" and go to counselling, or go home, or do something hard like cancelling your contract and going home early.
Yes, this can be true anywhere you live, but Japan truly is a harsh mistress for many people. The stress of living in a different country, a different culture, constantly being stared at, being talked about in front of your face without understanding, being pissed on at work, feeling incapable at your job, the short winter days, the lack of sun, the lack of people around you that you trust, the distance from home, the loneliness, the feeling of being stuck -- most of us feel many of these, not necessarily that strongly, or all at once, but they are different for every person, and some can't handle it.
Everything is just so different here that a swing of highs and lows makes you feel like a manic depressive without their lithium much of the time. You have a wonderful day where you feel like the best damned foreigner who ever set foot in Japan, when you managed to succeed at a hard task through effort and determination, and days where everything is falling apart and you can't find anyone around you to keep you from falling to your knees and sobbing.
And that is going to weigh on you. And it can continue. For days. For weeks. And some people let that get to them. They believe they don't need help. And then they believe there's no one who can help. And then they kill themselves.
So you need to be willing to ask for help. You need to be able to suck up your pride and say, "I can't handle this." You need to be able to make tough decisions on your own, or ask for the help of someone who can help you make them. You need to be able to realize when you're at wits end and get out of a bad situation. And that means you need to realize that you may have to ask for help. Don't bullshit yourself on this point. One out of 5,000 a year is a lot bigger chance than winning the lottery. It can happen to you. Don't **** with your life because you have this view of visiting Japan as a life's ambition which is all that matters.
Realize that help is there if you need it and have the ability to ask.
I think Japan is a wonderful country, and I have been living here for over two years because I enjoy it. But it also isn't all roses and amusing anecdotes about cultural mishaps. It takes a huge strain on your mind and on your body if you're not careful, and sometimes even if you are careful. It can be a wonderful experience, but it isn't perfect, and it probably won't meet your perceptions/expectations of it. I can't tell you what living in Japan is like, because I'm still learning more every day. I just want to offer guidance to people who may not look before they leap. The ground is not solid and paved with gold off that edge, and expecting it to be will only cause you get hurt worse.
Don't let me discourage you from coming or let me colour your perception of Japan as a place that drives even the most stable men mad. Please, take some words of advice and ask yourself those hard questions before you make such a huge decision. And take a day at a time. Because life is too short to waste being dishonest to yourself and miserable.
Good luck.
http://www.outpostnine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1396 <- original text.
I find that the post is a good reference and provide some answers to stuff that I've been wondering about all this times. So what are your opinion on the post?
It's the same with companies. It's almost impossible to get fired from a salaried position in Japan. They will try to force you to resign yourself, by passing you over for promotions, giving you grunt work to do all day, ignoring you in the office, but it is VERY rare that you will simply be told to pack up your desk because you're fired.
Japan is nothing like the perception of 'nose to the grindstone' workers we have. Sure they work more hours, but in comparison to the US, it's a cakewalk in the average office.
C'mon, man. Missed?!
I've been to Japan twice over the last few years and during that time spent a year there. Great country but not a place you'd want to live.
I work in IT/finance and gained some good skills which are now benefitting me in my own country.
Despite being another regular country, Japan has got itself a reputation as being the home of 'cool'. Geisha, robots, vending machines.....etc. The Japan I and most foreigners lived in was none of the above, apart from vending machines! And as for all this bowing and 'arigato gozaimasu' - not cool. Just how they do things there.
There's another website visited by foreigners that is jam-packed with threads asking 'how can I come to Japan', 'what are my chances of getting a job'. Get a life, people.
I've only ever met one guy who was honest enough to say the reason to be in Japan was for the women!
I've been to Japan twice over the last few years and during that time spent a year there. Great country but not a place you'd want to live.
Thanks for the heads up.
The Japan I and most foreigners lived in...
I never knew that there were any two foreigners who lived in the same Japan.
There's another website visited by foreigners that is jam-packed with threads asking 'how can I come to Japan', 'what are my chances of getting a job'. Get a life, people.
Those of us for whom life entails living and working in Japan appreciate the candor, if not the content, of your opinion.
Many view Japan as some utopian society, but like any other country it will have its own share of problems. I would expect it to be even more so for a "foreigner" living in Japan. Japan is still a relatively ethnically homogenous country and that coupled with it's strict work culture with low tolerance for failure can put huge pressure on the individual.
I've never been to Japan myself, so I guess my opinion here doesn't count as much weight, but for the time being I would refrain from moving to Japan. That is until one gets a good grasp of the language, culture and norms in their society. Diving headfirst into a new surrounding without proper preparation is foolhardy regardless of what country it is.
And what countries do you take among "developed western countries" for comparison ? Just the UK, or maybe also the US ? In how many "developed western countries" have you lived and worked, and how long have you lived and worked in Japan ?
I have never once encountered such behavior in Japan. Even when I didn't know much Japanese, I never found such behavior.
At the time, I did sometimes encounter weird Japanese men who for some reason thought it fun to talk to me. I think they wanted something, but I was always wary and lucky enough to avoid any trouble. Even so, this happened only a few times.
I think it does. After living there for quite a while and then moving to a place where people often don't show up for work, and merchants don't make any verbal communication to customers, it's a very easy conclusion to draw.
I'll be in Osaka for at least year. Thanks for the advice Maciamo. I definitely plan on using JREF as often as I can while im there.
:-)
Posts # 18 and 19 : http://tinyurl.com/dnk27
But I'm glad to see that much like just 'bout every other Japan-related board on the internet, mistakes are taken in stride. Rather than, y'know, shooting off a dozen sarcastic comments. Thanks for that. Really.
1. I've seen at least a half dozen Japanese coworkers fired.
2. Long-standing foreign conceptions to the contrary, not everybody in this country works behind a desk.
I'm new here. I want to live in Japan once in 3 years. I want to be an English-teacher in Japan. But first I want to just visit the country to know how is the life there. :wave:
To my credit, I never referred to two years as 'long-term,' it's certainly long enough to have lived here, seen much of what life is, and have the pendulum swings of culture shock get smaller and smaller to give me a relatively balanced perspective.
I cannot see myself as an expat or any sort of 'true' long-termer, because it just doesn't mesh with me. I don't really like the Japanese system, not in a bitter 'it is horrible!' way, but in a 'this isn't the place for me' sort of way. I wear a medium long shirt, and in Japan I have to get at least a large so it's long enough. I'm sure it works for lots of people, but it just doesn't fit me quite right.
As far as the people who need to read this being likely to ignore it, you're quite possibly right, but if it changes even one person's mind and prevents them from diving in over their head, then it was worth the time, eh? And if it gets us folk already living here to give our experiences here another thought, that's an added bonus. And considering the amount of thought (read: 10-15 minutes of typing) that I put into writing it, it helped me flesh out my ideas of what Japan is and isn't to me.
And that's good too.
God only knows where the next 5 years will take me...
To me, the majority of the older people still have the "6 faced, 3 hearted" stereotype going. They will lie to cover their asses and do it knowing you don't know Japanese or can't defend yourself if your not there routine. Again this applies to work or family. However, the majority of younger people are just like us from the U.S. Things are changing from what I see. Learning Japanese will help eliminate many many problems here so I highly recommend it.
I beg to differ about manual laborers "generally" being part-time workers. And about them being "hourly" labor either, for that matter.
There are exceptions, but in general, desk-jobs are the norm for the majority of the salaried populace. Be it in a company in the private sector, or a bureaucrat, most folk over 30 are employed behind a desk.
And you base that assertion on what, exactly? It sounds like the sort of misinformation one would pick up from an orientation manual or something.
And what jobs have you seen these coworkers fired from?
Truck driving.
What kind of company is it?
I'll let you guess.
And what reason were they fired for?
Incompetence. Being unreliable. Bad attitude. Stuff like that.
Thanks for explaining something I had realised but couldn't put into words better myself (including your examples). :cool: I often teach in offices around Nihombashi-Otemachi-Marunouchi (the Wall Street of Japan) and I have been able to observe the same, even in this holy shrine of the big Japanese corporations. When I ask how was their day, some of my student do not even attempt to conceal that as they had little to do, they just pretended to be busy, doing things like surfing the Internet. These are people who have a 9am to 5pm job, but are forced to stay in the office until 8pm or 10pm, because some of their coworkers or the CEO are still in the office.
So the stereotype of the hard working Japanese salaryman is only partially true. Some do work hard, but many just pretend. In the same companies, I have students who have to stay all night to finish their work from time to time. They are not in the same department as those who pretend to work hard, though.
Another student of mine who works for a major American company and has worked in the US too, compared the ways of working between the two countries as follow : "In the US, people try to work quickly so that they can go home early. Those who are left in the office after 6pm are considered 'slow-workers' and are probably looked down as incompetent. In Japan, one must arrive at work before one's boss/supervisor, and not leave before them, otherwise they are seen as lazy, even if they have nothing left to do. So, it is better to work slowly or pretend to be working just for appearances' sake".
:cool:
EDIT: Should maybe go in the "culture shock" section? :?
I understand as much. I was simply being realistic about my endeavors. I think any kind of cultural change won't be picture-perfect, and that I ought to be aware of what I'm getting into, just as I would if I were to try any other culture. Also, from the passage I quoted, I was drawing more along the lines of the viability of any long-term prospects, not something that is a year or so long as in the JET Programme.
Perhaps, I came off too strongly when I said "wouldn't be able to handle certain differences." Yes, it annoys me whenever I read about foreigners being discriminated against in Japan, and no change coming about to fix that. Yes, it annoys me when there are some politicians propogandizing to the people and influencing their opinions. Those were in fact what I was referring to (not that these are found only in Japan, of course- only in a different way). But as a prospective short-term resident, my goal is not to push some political or social reform agenda (not that I'd be able to do it in the long-term, anyway). Certainly, these things may affect me, and I should be aware of them, but I'm in it for the experience.
I guess we'll see, though. After all, as the mantra goes, ESID.
To me, the majority of the older people still have the "6 faced, 3 hearted" stereotype going. They will lie to cover their asses and do it knowing you don't know Japanese or can't defend yourself if your not there routine. Again this applies to work or family. However, the majority of younger people are just like us from the U.S. Things are changing from what I see. Learning Japanese will help eliminate many many problems here so I highly recommend it.
I have to say I don't think this is fair. Perhaps you've had a different experience from mine, but I don't recall having ever been lied to by older people while I was in Japan, and I certainly didn't get the feeling that younger people were any more or less trustworthy.
On the other hand, I only had a couple of bosses who were older (over 50) and they were both really nice, and the rest of my relations with older people weren't such as to necessitate them lying to me to cover their asses, so maybe my experience is more limited.
Just out of curiosity, what situations did old people lie to you in?
I'm not talking about the actual value of the work (or lack thereof) the average Japanese does at a job, but the dedication (even if it's b/c they have no choice) is much higher, and in customer-based businesses the service is leaps and bounds above anything here.
As a JET applicant, I've done some research on the programme. I've realized that the programme is not the best and that there are still lots of problems with it, like the bureaucratic nature of some of the higher-ups and the inability to speak out against things you wouldn't like. Still, I, too, have an interest in the language. I've only taken one year of the language, but I've already discovered that I love actually learning new grammar points and new ways to make sentences (of course, I'll probably change my mind once I get to the Politeness Level and Colloquialisms parts!). Besides the language (since JETs aren't allowed to speak in Japanese in the classrooms anyway), I'd also love to be able to teach the kids, since I'd like to be seen as a role model of sorts, if possible. And then there's being able to experience another culture (a vague statement, I know), and to meet new people.
Of course, being just an applicant, my mind's been more on the selection process than the culture shock.
I cannot see myself as an expat or any sort of 'true' long-termer, because it just doesn't mesh with me. I don't really like the Japanese system, not in a bitter 'it is horrible!' way, but in a 'this isn't the place for me' sort of way. I wear a medium long shirt, and in Japan I have to get at least a large so it's long enough. I'm sure it works for lots of people, but it just doesn't fit me quite right.
I can see that myself. While I am outwardly able to swallow my pride, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to handle certain differences, such as the emphasis on "social harmony," and the lack of legal or social progress, as Maciamo pointed out. The JET programme to me, if I get in, isn't intended as a goal in itself, but just a means to enrich my experiences.
Many people seem to have some impression of Japan as some special mythical place, but naturally the truth is different. Especially if you join the JET Programme and are sent to some little community in the middle of nowhere.
Japan is a difficult place to live in as a foreigner. It's much better than it was even just 6 years ago, but it's still not easy. If you want to fit in, it's even harder.
So I give kudos to the author and the poster. I hope that many of the younger members here take the time to read it seriously.
When I first came to Japan, I stayed with my wife's family for a while. Her grand-mother would always assume that I was the "culprit" everytime something was not done her way in the house, that one kind of rubbish was in the wrong rubbish bin, or that the fridge was not properly closed. Most of the time it wasn't me, but my wife of her mother. When it was me, I couldn't understand what I had done "wrong". For example, the dishcloth was folded the wrong way, or the towel was placed back on the "wrong" towel holder, or something stupid like that. Of course that was mostly caprices of grandma, but I did feel that she was trying all she could to accuse me of something just because I was a foreigner. She never doubted that it could have be her own daughter or grand-daugher who could have done one of the "misdeeds". My wife said that when her former boyfriend visited the house, she never behaved like that. Indeed, whenever another Japanese visited the house, she was always much more polite and friendly than with me. It hasn't changed in 4 years. Nevertheless, unlike the grandma, my wife's mother has always been very kind (and visibly sympathetic toward me in the face of her mother's uncompromising fussiness and over-suspiciousness).
I cannot judge a whole age segment on this personal experience, but this combined with other negative experiences with older women in my neighbourhood, certainly helped give me a very bad image of elderly Japanese women.
Out of curiosity....I wonder how many people on JREF lived in Japan before personal computers proliferated and when the internet (for common folks, anyway) didn't yet exist.
I wouldn't say "like any other country". A Westerner in Japan is much more likely to encounter "problems", such as lasting culture shock, difficulty to be accepted, etc. than in any Western country (Latin America included). I have never had so many things to disagree with when I was living in Italy, Spain, Germany or Britain. In fact, I hardly feel like I am abroad in these countries, apart from the language, food, architecture and a few different customs. In Japan, the differences run much deeper than that.
Japan is still a relatively ethnically homogenous country and that coupled with it's strict work culture with low tolerance for failure can put huge pressure on the individual.
The "strict work culture with low tolerance for failure", I think, is a false stereotype. I also had this image of Japan before coming and quickly realised that it the work culture and tolerance to failure were in fact much more relaxed than what I had been used to. The working pace is slower and more relaxed in Japan, which is why they manage to work longer hours. Many people just "wait" for the boss to finish as it is good manners not to let the boss be the last to work (alone) in the office.
As for tolerance to failure, it is so high that people do not fail at school (i.e. almost nobody ever repeats a year, even with very poor results), and people do not get fired, even when their work performance are poor ("job for life" mentality oblige, but also because the law makes it very difficult to fire someone due to performance). Regarding school, that is why people who have learnt English for 6 years and still cannot make an easy sentence manage to graduate. Likewise, I have met many people who do not know many of the "basic" 1945 joyo (daily use) kanji, even among college graduates.
I've been to Japan twice over the last few years and during that time spent a year there. Great country but not a place you'd want to live.
I work in IT/finance and gained some good skills which are now benefitting me in my own country.
Really? I spent five years living in Japan and would gladly go back to live anytime. Its not without faults but I found they were more than outweighed by the positives.
Despite being another regular country, Japan has got itself a reputation as being the home of 'cool'. Geisha, robots, vending machines.....etc. The Japan I and most foreigners lived in was none of the above, apart from vending machines! And as for all this bowing and 'arigato gozaimasu' - not cool. Just how they do things there.
Vending machines
I think everything is in relation to each other, Japan may not have the strict work ethic that we have imagined but I would say with a certain degree of confidence that the work attitude and attitude to education in Japan is much better than a lot of developed western countries.
And what jobs have you seen these coworkers fired from? What kind of company is it? And what reason were they fired for?
I'm glad to hear that you had a good experience and joined the underground racing culture! I'd love to hear more about that! :cool:
I, too, have had what you could call a "good experience", although I sincerely hope that it has only just begun. I find a lot of problems, being a minority resident, but I expect no less. I'm actually constantly amazed at how egalitarian the vast majority of Japanese people I meet are, and how they react to us foreigners often in the exact same way they react to each other when they behave in the same way as "we" do. Of course there are exeptions, but ALL of us are only human, right?
*Here's your extra ten characters, sucka!*
The only thing that I would even come close to consider blatant lying would be when people give me bad directions because they don't know how to get there but don't want to look like they have no clue, or things of that nature -- they mean well, I s'pose, even if the end product isn't so good.
Most of the older people I have met in my time here have been spectacularly kind to me. Far more kind than many of the middle-aged and younger people. I think part of that is because they are retired, have little to do, and I am a source of endless entertainment beyond what's usually offered at the local kominkan (public hall).
If you come as a tourist, there is no need to worry. This list of advice (with which I wholly agree) is mainly for people going to live in Japan and work there for a Japanese company, and possibly far away in the countryside (where other foreigners are few and far between, and the risk of depression greater). Anyway, people who know JREF and have Internet at home in Japan have little chance of getting depressed. I think all JET program participants should be given an Internet connection with JREF as their homepage. :p Whenever there is a problem (culture shock or else), we are here to talk about it !
I keep meaning to actually read it one of these days....maybe this weekend.
I don't mean to play naysayer, but anyone ambivilant about social harmony and conventional behavior may want to look for another language and culture to fulfill those interests. Getting to a competent level of fluency before going will absorb the unpleasant or difficult parts of the system to a very large extent....but most people who pursue the language to that level are in it for a very specific reason. As everyone so far has mentioned, Japanese life for foreigners is a never ending project and an awful lot of time and effort to put into something 'for the experience' or 'personal growth' without being sure of what you'll ever get in return.
I guess the comment about it being difficult to get fired was referring only to desk-based jobs. Incidentally, it would be interesting to know the proportion of people in Japan who work mainly behind a desk as opposed to "other". (I have no idea of that statistic. :clueless: ) And, this would be higher in the cities, too.
I know of one guy who got fired for inflating his sales numbers.
I have long said that the JET program would be better off if they would raise the age requirements and drop the need for a degree. You would end up with more mature people who really want to be here, and have the drive and desire to do a good job. (for the most part) Then again...you would occasionally get some old pervert who is only interested in teenage girls (or boys)...but the system will weed those guys out and they will get what they deserve!
*(sits back and waits to see how many people I pissed off!)
Upon close inspection of the thread, I find that you didn't directly do so. But I'm sure you can see how "It's scary for me to think about sometimes, only in the sense that a lot changes daily that you don't see happening until you look at it in the long-term." led to that impression.
As far as the people who need to read this being likely to ignore it, you're quite possibly right
I can't possibly be right about that; I never said it.
Speaking of plumbing, my host father in Japan was a plumber. (Just like my real father, which was an interesting coincidence :p ) Most other people's host fathers didn't seem to be around at home a lot, but mine was there more often. It was good :cool:
Uh.. sorry for this pointless comment, I guess... But I guess it made me realise "Of course, they have jobs like this everywhere!"
Most employees will show up 15-20 minutes early for work, even if they don't have extra work to do, because showing up early gives the image of being a hard worker. Most employees will stay late until the boss leaves, even if they don't have any work, this gives the image of being a hard worker. This applies mostly to office jobs, as it's not as easy to feign effort when it comes to manual labour.
Let me give some examples. When making my schedule at the city office, my coworker was trying to distribute my time evenly across schools according to how many classes they had within that school versus days of the month. The math really isn't that complicated, and in the West, someone would just make an Excel spreadsheet to do it automatically if you punched in how many days of work there were in a month, semester, or whatever.
But my coworker was grueling over this simple math for about 1.5 hours, constantly talking to herself, and making it seem like it was an impossible job, because she had nothing else to do, and had to be there for 10 hours, so she wanted to keep looking busy as long as possible, even if the effort wasn't legitimate. She demanded that she'd have to recheck my work after I did it for her in 5 minutes.
This is the source of 独り言 (hitorigoto -- self-talking). This is why you get people shouting よっし (yossh!) after they finish a task. It's not any source of personal satisfaction most of the time, but rather the indication to everyone else that they put some effort in. Same thing behind the people who talk to themselves mid-task.
This is why you see teachers taking 20 minutes to get themselves tea or coffee, while doing the fake feet-shuffling run. Because it makes them look busy, even if they're just getting coffee.
There's nothing efficient about that. There's no real work ethic about that. It's an ethic about looking like you're working more than anything. At the company I was employed at before Japan (a printer software company), the hours were very flexible, and people would work 6 hour days sometimes. But for those 6 hour days they wouldn't take lunch, they wouldn't take breaks, and they wouldn't screw around on the internet like the rest of us mere mortal employees. So while it may look crappy that they're getting into work at 11am, it certainly didn't affect their work ethic or productivity. It only hurt their chances for promotion (because while that works for an engineer, managers need to work longer hours to deal with problems that come up with their projects).
I guess it depends on the type of work. The effort put into the service industry is far more genuine than the effort put into the office/salaried-worker fields. The former is far harder to fake (though you'll see people in the service industry wiping down random services at the supermarket, or standing at a random counter with no customers when the registers have 20 minute lines at them). It seems busy in an office until you actually pay attention to what people are doing, then you realize that the long hours are just a front for extreme slackerdom otherwise.
And a buncha buncha other sectors, too. But we're the invisible people; we without neckties don't count.
But I'm glad to see that much like just 'bout every other Japan-related board on the internet, mistakes are taken in stride. Rather than, y'know, shooting off a dozen sarcastic comments. Thanks for that. Really.
You needed a little air let out of you, and we did it for you. I like to think we performed a service and it is great to have it appreciated. Really.
I haven't been back 'home' for over two years now. I am going to go through severe reverse culture shock when I do visit home this winter. I have been seriously changed by my experience here, some for the better, and some for the worse. I have gained probably a bit of a drinking problem, but also a different perspective from which to view the world, and a Hell of a lot more patience.
It's scary for me to think about sometimes, only in the sense that a lot changes daily that you don't see happening until you look at it in the long-term.
Hanging half-in and half-out of the receptacle; naturally the only gaijin on the premises gets the blame.
When I got to college, I floundered around searching for something that would grab my interest, and took a smattering of courses in all subjects, from anthropology, to logic, to higher level math (linear algebra), to Constitutional law and religion. I took Japanese my second year along with some science and more math, to round out the base of politics and science.
It seems that we share quite a lot in common.
As I said, most of the people on JET fall into one of those two categories -- those who think it's an easy job that will allow them to put off real work for a while and do something fun, and those who have this image of Japan as a focus of their studies and interests and want a chance to experience it first hand.
I didn't come on the JET programme, but I also teach English (and French and Italian). Like you, I am neither in the Japan-fanatic group nor in the "easy-job" one. I just came because of my wife, because I like experiencing life in different countries, and because I had various childhood or adolescence interests in Japan (martial arts, anime, video games...). Like you I like learning languages. So our position was quite similar from the start. My hobbies in Japan were mostly to learn everything related to traditional and modern Japanese culture, the language, the economy, politics, or whatever there was to learn. I kill my freetime managing this website, which is also a great way to release one's stress and discuss about culture shock or anything on your mind. Would have been much harder without the internet as I am not a party kind of guy, and don't even drink much alcohol (almost exclusively during meals out with friends).
I also had my share of disappointment about Japan. It was not as beautiful or as developed (legally and socially, especially) as I thought. Then :
I was entirely wrong. The intelligent, the motivated, the driven, the tolerant, the exceptional -- those are the people I met in the US. And the average, well, the average is the same everywhere.
I had the same experience. My image of the Japanese people I had met abroad was much better than in Japan itself, with a few exceptions. The Japanese with whom I get on the best are those who have lived abroad and are somehow disatisfied with Japanese society as it is now.
Can you swallow your pride?
This has got to be one of the most important questions for anyone living in Japan. Japanese culture is focused around preserving the 和【わ】 (wa, social harmony), and that means that sometimes you have to swallow your pride and apologize when you did no wrong, or hold your tongue when someone says something stupid, or tone down your argument against a wrong to prevent a friendly meeting from turning into something a little more hostile or uncomfortable.
I can't swallow my pride in the way you said. But that's not so bad for my job, as I don't have a boss or supervisor (I teach individual or small group lessons in companies or cafes). Social harmony is something very artificial based on rigid social conventions, flattery and hypocritical politeness. It not necessarily good for society as it creates a lot of stress even for the Japanese who grew up knowing only this system. My wife's main reason to want to live outside Japan is the huge pressure that this system puts on everyone's shoulders. I usually find many (Japanese) people who agree about that, so I don't care too much about it. Anyway, as everybody says, a foreigner in Japan will always be considered as an outsider ("gaijin") to the system, and is not supposed or expected to do like the Japanese. It's of course easier to say when one doesn't have to fear being fired by a Japanese boss. :blush:
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