As one can probably guess, there is a different culture in Japan than the one in the United States. Despite the culture seeming completely different due to Anime and its traditional culture with yukata, kimono, temples, and shines, it is not as different to ours as I previously thought. The United States is a relatively new country, only being round for 241 years (242 in a couple weeks) so there isn't too much proud traditional culture that comes with our country. With Japan, the traditional culture plays a major role in the culture and attitude of the people. There is high respect for class, the elderly, and teachers, who they call sensei. There is also an importance on elegance and grace for the women, who are required to wear black heels in most office jobs. These are just a few ways that the traditional culture plays into today's culture in Japan, but with the students and the growing generation of people, their culture isn't too different from ours.
Most of my time was spent with students either in the classroom or in the Chat Room. I got to learn their tendencies pretty fast. The most noticeable was their lack of willingness to stand out in any meaning of the word: "The nail that stands up is hammered down." This proverb embodies a whole culture of students. In class, they are sitting and listening to the professor without asking questions and without getting asked questions from the professor. Also, the professors like to use their power. I heard from a professor that someone he knew would make their students meet with them in the middle of the night just as a power move. When they speak out they are punished, supposedly. I never really experienced this as much because I was shadowing the English classes which are taught by foreign teachers from around the world. Also, in any foreign language classroom it is important and required for the students to interact. I can tell you as a fact that it looked like it pained the students to do so. They would talk very quietly and when asked to repeat or clarify the question they would shut down and act like they never said anything. When being corrected on something wrong in their writing, they would never make eye contact or ask clarifying questions. This transitioned into the Chat Room. This bothered the Chat Room leaders because the whole point of the Chat room is to talk and to practice! We had to break the ice every time for the new comers and for the beginner level English speakers. Games with high time pressure which made everyone mess up was good because if they saw us and everyone else mess up without any judgement, then it showed them that it's a safe space. A game that I liked to play was just a simple word association game. Say, if the topic was travel then I would ask them to list off as many countries as they could. We'd go around in a circle and each person would have four seconds to say a country or they'd miss their chance. Another activity I used to warm them up was partnering them up. If it was a question that required a little bit more thought, then I would partner them up for them to get their thoughts in order before speaking to the whole group. This also would allow them to be able to see the other persons level of English which usually wasn't to different from their own. The United States is decently similar when it comes to learning and practicing a second language, but this extends beyond that.
Even though that's a difference, there is still a major similarity. Once you are able to break down the walls, they have the same worries as most of the students in the United States do. For them life in University is the clam in the storm of life. Junior High is stressful because they are studying to get into a good High School, then High School is stressful because you need to get into a good University. There are also uniforms all the way up until university. In university they don't have uniforms and they have so much more freedom because they don't have to stay on campus and they have a lot more time due to how college classes are. When talking to the students, some of them don't study very much at all and outside of class they only hang with friends, except for the spare paper they have to do once in a while. Other students, especially the STEM and law majors, still have a lot of studying to do, but the air around them is a lot more relaxed. From this and from what I hear from teachers, college is seen as the calm in the storm. When they go to work, they have to go back to a sort of uniform, the black suit and heels for the women.
In the United States, college may not be seen as the calm in the storm, but it is still a favorite point for a lot of people. College football and other college sports have a huge following. People always come down for home coming and college friends can be friends for life. The major similarity between the college students though is the fear of a future. Students both from Japan and the United States have dreams for what careers they want, but more likely than not, they never think that they are going to come true. Most students are just praying and hoping for a job just to be able to make money. When asking students random questions for would you rather and the like, a lot of them would be stopped by the fact that they don't and feel like they won't have a lot of money in the future. A common question I would ask would be if they would like to live in another country anywhere in the world. A majority of students would say I won't have enough money. Other questions on the same level had similar answers. I had to clarify that money played no part in the question!
There were also different social issue view points. In the United States, the views on immigration are far and in between. When talking to the older generation living in Japan, they don't like President Trump, but at the beginning of the conversation they agreed with his stance and policy on immigration. Japan is a very isolated country when it comes to different types of people. Throughout history, being a island nation made it easy for them to defend against foreign enemies. Today, that mindset is still seen. Although there are a lot of foreigners as tourist, you won't see a lot as citizens. Christianity makes up less than one percent of the population and there are no mosques in the country. The residents were saying that getting rid of the undocumented citizens and the illegal immigrants was an important issue in the United States and the the wall was understandable. When they asked for my opinion, I had to describe why it was so difficult for immigrants to become citizens. I also had to describe and elaborate on the current situation in the United States for the undocumented citizens. After explaining for a little bit, they began to understand. They weren't closed off to the idea, but more curious about the view point of someone who lives in the United States. Another issue that was brought up from one of the interns was Feminism. I would like to cover the more broad topic of gender. When it comes to Feminism, they don't really understand the term or its importance. In the United States it's a well known word, whether it has a positive or negative connotation. With it not being a big issue in Japan, a lot of the issues aren't discussed or brought to the attention of the public. This is seen when talking to the students. Some professors at the university level asked us to discuss bigger topics with the students. One topic that we tried was talking the wage gap between men and women for the same job. Most students didn't know or didn't want to talk about it in the slightest. When playing would you rather, a female student asked if you would rather be a boy or girl in the next life. One guy said that he would rather be a guy again in the next life because men are smarter and learn faster than women. In the United States, you would not expect someone to say that. In Japan, nobody said anything. I looked at the girls and asked if they had thoughts on what he said, but they didn't look to bothered.
This plays into the final aspect I noticed while in Japan, and something I knew a little bit about before going into the internship. A common trait of Asian culture in general is respect, hospitality, and humility. This plays into the way the think and judge people for lack of a better word. They will never tell you when you do something wrong or when you do something disrespectful in their culture, they'll just let you keep doing it wrong. They see it as rude to correct someone. Being half Filipino, I noticed and knew this when I was with my half of the family and with other Asian families. Only when you ask if you are doing something correctly will they correct you or tell you, but that's only sometimes. For example, when sitting for the tea ceremony they didn't care how we sat, but sitting traditionally is very important. When being loud in the train or being pushy in the train, nobody said anything, but everyone I talked to always thought it was rude. When ordering food, if you got water instead of buying a drink it was seen as rude. It was often subtly seen in the facial expression rather than through spoken word.
These are just a few examples of different and similar social culture from the United States and Japan. On the surface, there are a few differences you see right away. One is how everyone keeps to themselves and rarely talks to strangers. Another is the incredibly polite and hospitable convenient store workers and anyone in a service job. When you dig deeper and interact with the local people for a longish time, you are able to slowly pick up on other tendencies, unspoken rules, and social tendencies.
Caleb Hansen
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