A Difference of Culture
Things I learned about Japanese culture living in Japan. Especially how it differs from U.S. culture.
- The lack of a car culture is transformative and its effects cannot be understated.
- Trains have their own culture and urban fabric.
- Train stations become nexuses of community, culture, and place.
- The "last train" of the night is its own framing device of timelines, culture, and community.
- You walk a lot in Japan.
- When you walk, you perceive places differently.
- Walking is fundamentally more human.
- When you walk, you interact with passers-by and your environment. They interact with you. It's bidirectional.
- People almost always appear exceptionally polite.
- That politeness is sometimes genuinely held.
- Saying goodbye in Japan is very different to saying goodbye in the U.S.
- A group going their separate ways at the end of a night is a complicated dance.
- Separation is delayed and rejected until physics intervenes.
- In the U.S., we'd say "see you next time", walk away and not look back. It's 3 seconds.
- In Japan, it's drawn out. Many goodbyes are said, many bows are exchanged. You're meant to look back on the escalator and keep waving until they're out of sight.
- The Japanese life is a very scheduled one; adhoc meetings are rarely a thing.
- In the U.S., "let's grab coffee sometime" without scheduling anything is genuine in 90% of cases.
- In Japan, a commitment without a date is a polite way of saying "no" in 80% of cases.
- The hardest "no" you'll hear in Japan is "that's a little difficult."
- Most experiences in Japan are highly polarized, inherently extremist.
- You'll often get the best experience in a category, or the worst.
- Most of the time, it's the best experience.
- Japanese women have got to be some of the toughest women I've met.
- Excellence is the norm; deviation is hammered like the nail that sticks out.
- Tokyo's hustle and bustle is somehow self-fulfilling; even if you're not in a hurry, you begin to feel as though you ought to be.
- I was never as good at Japanese as I thought I was.
- I will never be as good at Japanese as I wanted to be.
- No matter how good at Japanese I become, I will always be a foreigner first and foremost.
- Therefore, the diminishing returns on becoming an expert in Japanese arrive posthaste.
- Therefore, I do not want to be as good at Japanese as I once wanted to become.
- The above items are not an excuse to neglect becoming conversationally fluent.
- The culture of a love confession is important in Japanese relationships.