During my JET Programme interview, I remember emphasizing how I assumed, were I to land myself a spot on the plane to Tokyo that summer, it would be the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I’m not sure it has been, to be honest. Japan is a great place to live, and especially in the early days there is a lot of hand-holding for us n00bs. We are indeed like children when we arrive jet-lagged and dehydrated.
Anyway, I wanted to highlight the potentially challenging side of the experience in the interview because I’d read so much about gaijinsama experiencing culture shock, and thought it a good idea to show I was mentally prepared for it should it arise. One reads about ALTs bailing after just a few months, or even weeks, for the pettiest of reasons. I was not going to go all the way to Japan, at great expense to the Japanese taxpayer, just to have a few sakes and duck out.
Luckily, I can safely say I’ve avoided culture shock… at least that’s what I always tell people! I may actually have had a brief taste, which I’ll mention at the end.
Culture Respect
As anyone with a shred of perspective is, I was immediately impressed at the vastness, organisation and industry of Tokyo. The cleanliness, the helpfulness of strangers, the order… what everybody always says, it’s all true.
Sure, now I may view the place as a dirty, rat-infested (not to mention the rodents!) money sink, but those were more innocent days.
Coming from Ireland, where “2pm” means, “anytime after 2pm, hopefully before 2:45pm”, this was shockingly decent.
‘Culties
Of course, there have been difficulties and bumps in the road. My time in Iwakuni was more like a road in the bumps! Going from “inaka” Yonago to Iwakuni with its US Marine Corps base and associated… issues… was a change that had me pretty close to culture shock. However, that wasn’t going from my native culture to a foreign one and it deserves its own post so I won’t talk about that here.
A cultural difference that has taken a long time to get accustomed to is the lack of directness when addressing issues. In the beginning I was not confident in my lesson planning due to my lack of training, and I was hoping for clear advice from my JTE (who was fantastically patient).
Her English was great, but she hadn’t adopted an English style of communication. We spoke in English, but I initially interpreted her way of telling me my lesson idea was a confusing and overly difficult sack of shit as, “Let’s try it! It looks interesting!”
When expectation of a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ dissolves into a blur of second guessing, there is potential for serious misunderstanding. I count myself lucky to have not fallen too far foul of this as of yet.
A word on Those Times…
For the most part, prioritising politeness and copying natives renders most faux pas insignificant.
You used the wrong register at the work meeting? No problem. You’re foreign, your Japanese sucks and you shouldn’t be in the meeting in the first place.
Wrong slippers in the P.E. Hall? Fine. Notice, and do correctly next time.
It won’t be long before the very second a sock even threatens to form a hole it’ll find itself in the bin (“Already?! Again?!”).
Pretty minor stuff.
That was until a certain something that happened around 2020. I can’t quite remember what it was, but everyone was wearing masks. This was largely enforced for a couple of years and being foreign was no excuse for trying to get away without one. There’s a bit of a myth about the scale of mask-wearing pre-2020 (in the first school I worked at, it was about 1 in 150 pupils), but since The Viral Years it has largely remained in junior high schools and can be quite depressing if dwelt upon. Half the teachers don’t wear them, but where I work about 80% of the kids do. With this one I have little choice but to embrace the power of しょうがない.
Cultural Buoyancy
One reason I feel as though I haven’t suffered the bane of culture shock is that I haven’t been fully immersed in the culture (I didn’t say my reasons would be inspiring or pretty!). Being in the country isn’t necessarily a precursor to cultural immersion. You can merely interface transactionally with the culture if you so choose, or just fall into the habit of doing so via the path of least resistance to a social life early on, as in my case.
The ‘foreigner trap’ of only hanging out with fellow expats is famous the world over, and as my initial plan was to be here for two years, I didn’t mind essentially being provided with a social group from the get-go due to the way the JET Programme is set up.
They were great times, and I had a good fill of cultural activities as well, but I was definitely not experiencing All Japanese All the Time. [Isn’t that a trademark?! – Ed.]
Were I to start a business locally, ditch all my foreign friends or be in a job that wasn’t teaching English I’m sure this would be otherwise.
Without downplaying any difficulties others have had, it wasn’t the culture that shocked me.
It was the nature.
The birds and the lethal hornets
As different as Japanese culture is from Ireland’s, at least it’s another human culture. I’d had some soft power exposure to some of its trappings thanks to th’internet and so on too.
It was the flora and fauna that really made me feel truly far from home.
The first memory that springs to mind is the sound of cicadas. We don’t have them in Ireland, and they seemed impossibly machine-like, and combined with the searing heat, it was an instant attack on the senses.
Staying with insectoid being encounters, I also nearly accidentally violated someone’s privacy trying to get a picture of the biggest butterfly I’d ever seen (the magnificent カラスアゲハ).
It seemed to get dark earlier in summer that it did in Ireland, too. This possibly counts as a cultural point due to Ireland’s artificial and silly changing of the clocks, but it was very noticeable.
The mountains? Straight outta Pokemon. That spider? That’s from Ocarina of Time. Or the other way around. Whatever.
The grass was even a different hue to what I’d known back home.
In the shimmer of misty evenings, I saw that traditional art styles are far more literal depictions than I’d previously thought.
All lovely stuff showcasing the great diversity of life on this splendid Earth.
Then one day the ground started shaking.
Nobody was killed, but there were plenty of damaged buildings near the epicenter. A warning of what this land has in its arsenal.
The Quibbles
Spring came around and, for the first time in my life, hay fever filled my nose and scratched at my eyes. The dreaded Yellow Sand tore at my throat as I felt the spite from the desert across the sea.
That first summer felt so hot I was going through a shirt an hour. I went outside one day and couldn’t physically see because of the brightness of the sun! In November, I still got burnt to a crisp when not standing in the shade. I was chased out of a park by a serial killer murder death hornet.
This wasn’t culture shock.
This was bioshock. [That’s another trademark – Ed.]
Adaptation
While my constitution will never be of this place, I’ve never considered leaving due to anything like this. With a few wardrobe changes and a bit of copying the natives, this bodily shocking has largely passed.
I was considering all this one day in the staff room of the medium-large school where I worked. It must have been nearly a year by that point. While there were, and continue to be, misunderstandings and challenges rooted in me being from a totally different place, all things considered, the enterprise didn’t appear to be going too badly.
“What is this culture shock people speak of?”, I mused haughtily.
“Ah, it must be lunch time”, I thought to myself, as a lone teacher at the back of the staff room had himself an enthusiastic slurp.
Then another began, to my left. A little closer this time.
ずるずる!!! ずるずる!!!
“I’ve never really understood that slurping… Don’t they know it’s considered childish and downright bad manners in my country?”
ずるずる!!! ずるずる!!! ズルズルズルズル!!!!ずるずる!!! ずるずる!!! ズルズルずるずる!!!!
Akin to the morning chorus, what began as a single sipping sound at the other end of the office rapidly unfolded into a surround-sound orchestra of mastication and other food-mouth interactions.
The fuguing slurps were punctuated with occasional mouth-full-of-food coughs, and one teacher inevitably began mildly choking as he inhaled his noodles.
An older teacher appeared to be sucking full solids off a spoon. One of my JTEs chimed in with a few snorts for good measure, unrelated to eating.
Sitting in the midst of this auditory assault, I was left questioning my sanity, and after a few minutes, my humanity.
Maybe this was the hardest thing I’d ever done, after all…
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