Squintox Wrote:FutureBlues Wrote:@Squintox: Well you and I obviously have very different backgrounds. I was raised to believe that rules without reason shouldn't be rules at all and that you know, people could get together and change those rules for the benefit of everyone. While I personally don't really feel like this is a cultural value, specifically, I am from America, so I guess that if you wanted to chisel down my personal values to the multi-cultural American stump, you could potentially do that.
When I talk about Japanese culture, believe me, I know. I've lived here for 4 years. I work, everyday in the very environment that creates and teaches those rules. I have, for at least 6 years, been looking at this culture with a critical eye, exploring it from within and taking the values I believe in and applying them to my own life. That is where I differ from the typical Japanese citizen. When I go back to the U.S. I can integrate those values into my life and succeed. They don't have that choice, because their culture is so deafening. You can't be your own person here and expect to succeed-- most Japanese people have no choice but to be Japanese, whether they like it or not.
The fact that you've never asked for a substitution in a restaurant or told them to hold the sauce on a burger just blows my ***** mind though. I mean, I guess you have a choice to be a drone no matter where you live in the world. I feel like I should say something like "no offence!" here, but are you honestly trying to tell me that you've never asked for a salad instead of french fries, or broken the speed limit on the highway? Sorry, I just don't believe it. (People do this in Japan too, I've seen it, but the chances of success here are dismal, while in the USA, I can't think of a single restaurant off the top of my head that wouldn't at least try and accommodate you.)
Okay, small modifications I've asked for (albeit, rarely, but I don't think that has anything to do with culture), but a substitution that isn't logical (french fries -> salad) I have never done before.
Also, what do you mean by people can't be their own person? Sure, you probably can't snap at your boss. But surely you can do things that isn't going to really affect other people. Like eating certain foods with a spoon instead of chopsticks (though your peers may make fun of you for it, it's not going to damage your reputation). And the same can be said for the US. I doubt you would go around giving 90 degree bows.
You may assume that the average Japanese person can do these things, but really, in reality?
No.
Take, for instance, the fact that I've been speaking Japanese to my kids and teachers for 3 years now and people still are surprised, on a daily basis, even, that Japanese words come out of my mouth sometimes. These are the same people who've been watching me study Japanese at my desk for three years now. I can accept that they maybe deep down they want it to be different, but many of them are quite literally so surprised that I can speak Japanese that they frequently say it, "Wait, Future can speak Japanese? What? Really?"
I don't think you realize what sort of mindfuckery there is at play here.
I grew up in the States in a predominately Mexican neighborhood-- I've talked about this before so I won't dwell on the details, but in a sense, I grew up in a cultural void. I was transplanted as a kid, taken away from the heart of Texas and thrust into a new locale that I didn't really mesh with and as a result of that, many of the values that I grew up with, I forged myself. I read a lot. By myself. I grew up with my Mom, who was single and usually quite busy. I wasn't exactly in the barrio, but every single one of my friends was Mexican-American. I was the only "whitey" in the group. So I don't really associate with any one group in particular. I'm a faceless representative of middle America with a few hidden loyalties-- I have no accent, and every city I've lived in for any good amount of time I consider a home of sorts.
Maybe my viewpoints are unique (I doubt it), but culture is an a mechanism that changes you and crafts you into the person you are, whether you like it or not. I know how easy it is to sit in your chair and think to yourself, "Man, Japan is a first-world industrial power, a rich country with a lot of clout in the world. Sure, they eat fish and take off their shoes and love manga, but they way they think and the opportunities they have can't be all that different from my own."
This is a fallacy.
(I'm going to use the USA as the example here, because it's really the only other country I'm intimately familiar with.)
In the US, if you hate your boss, you can go into work, take a poop on his desk, be escorted out, and then move on with your life. In Japan, your failures follow you, no matter where you go. Say you get arrested for marijuana possession. In Japan, you go to jail and you'll be lucky if you can get a job in a convenience store afterward. In the USA, depending on the state, you'll face a few fines or some jail time, but you won't be shamed on national television, and even if you have trouble getting a job where you were when you were convicted, you can easily pack up and move to a more lenient state with a different sort of people who might not immediately and irreparably judge you. Furthermore, losing your job in your 30s or 40s here in Japan is a death sentence. Have you watched any of the documentaries on homeless people in Tokyo? These people are living in capsule hotels-- the Diet had to pass a law specifically allowing you to register a hotel as your permanent address just so these people could have a CHANCE at finding work. Before that, nobody would even send them offers. That's in Tokyo. If you lose your job here in the countryside when you're that age, well, I hope your parents are still alive. Maybe you'll find a job directing traffic in a grocery store parking lot if you're really lucky.
In the USA, you hear this sort of success story all the time: so and so went into business for himself because he hated his boss and now he owns his own business and is doing fine. Every other day I read a success story about someone making a living from Adsense, or by leveraging their IP (The Oatmeal, etc.) and using the power of social media to get somewhere in the world. There are vibrant communities of people doing web design in NA and the EU, supporting themselves and sometimes really hitting it big (Digg, etc.). Do you hear any of this about Japan? I don't. I mean, Mixi is popular I guess, but they've done pretty much everything they can to keep anyone but Japanese people out and their site isn't exactly a paragon of modern web design. Are they making any money?
One of the most popular Japanese websites in the world (2chan) is a freaking nightmare to navigate (so much so that I'm not even sure if I've ever actually been on 2chan itself) and it isn't even hosted on Japanese soil because the price and the legal liability is far too risky for the people who run it. And I understand! Just last week I listened to a former lawyer who basically seeds start-up companies in Japan talking about how it's so difficult to start companies in Japan without ruining your life and destroying your family that foreigners actually have a better chance of becoming profitable. Not to mention that foreign companies have a greater chance of success simply because they don't feel the need to make all the backwards promises and/or bend over backwards when their products and/or services can speak for themselves.
Which leads me to caution you: When I talk about rules and Japanese infantilism I'm not talking about foreigners or their opportunities here. Foreigners exist in a vacuum where the rules don't really apply to them. We are, from the start, wildcards. I don't run into a lick of trouble refusing to bus to the work party because I don't want to drink. Or declining the party entirely because my hours are different and I don't get the next day off like everyone else. I don't have to go to the nijikai to impress the boss or the older guys just to have a chance at eventually moving up the ladder someday. In fact, sometimes, when I have absolutely nothing to do at work, instead of sitting at my desk and pretending to do work, I smile and say, "See you later, everyone." And I leave.
Imagine, if you will, rush hour traffic in a major metropolitan area. Now, imagine if someone built a freeway going over all that right to your house. You'd think that taking the freeway to work would make all the traffic problems on the streets below sort of fade from your attention, right? In Japan, the situation is magnified. As a foreigner, you're driving around in a freaking glass-bottomed flying car. You can't help but leer at all the roadblocks normal people run into constantly as you bypass it all, but if you take a minute to really consider the implications, it's maddening (all the hoops a normal Japanese person has to jump through to do a lot of the stuff we Westerners take for granted.)
All the personal anecdotes in the world are unlikely to convince anyone of anything, so I recommend reading this piece from the Far Eastern Economic Review written by a Japanese native who lives in Yokohama and is a senior member of the World Policy Institute. (
http://www.feer.com/essays/2009/july/wil...er-grow-up)
Quote:This is, after all, a country that is largely content to exist under the wing of a foreign protector, and one in which Tokyo University-trained bureaucrats have long enjoyed unquestioned authority. It's also a country where initiative is stifled in the workplace, and a worrying number of children never leave home or have the chance to compete with other children.
Let me be clear-- when I talk about Japanese culture; when I say negative things-- I'm not insulting you (the proverbial you) because you idolize some aspects of the culture. Nor am I insulting the people or the race as a whole. Culture is a formless monstrosity that creates and destroys indiscriminately. Sure, people are ultimately responsible for the way a culture eventually manifests itself, but the gears and cogs in the machine are far more complex than I'd ever claim to understand and I know that it's irresponsible to blame any specific group for the shortcomings of a culture that simultaneously shelters and imprisons them.
That said, I can tell you what I think and what I see, but that doesn't mean I have any answers for you. Why is it like that? How can it be? I don't know what to tell you. Sit there on your armchair and take my observations with a grain of salt, but I'm not talking out of my ass here. I have a B.A. in Japanese Language & Literature from a prestigious university, have been studying Japan for over six years, and I've lived, worked, and gone to college abroad here for four of those. I speak the language and my significant other (right now) is Japanese. I'm by no means a penultimate voice in the matter, but I'm not completely clueless either.
Edit: And, as far as my dish on IceCream (and/or others) earlier in the thread (har har, that's a pun!), I stand by what I said. I think it's pretty clear that I give everybody their fair shake here, but I don't like to give people a pass who really don't have anything worthwhile to say on the topic at hand. What we're discussing in this thread doesn't disappear when you make some arbitrary decision to change your perspective and take a more rosy outlook on life. And, in fact, I think that its easier as a foreigner to simply ignore or dismiss all of Japan's problems out of hand because you'll never experience most of the stuff I've been talking about. (See the glass-bottomed car paragraph above.) I wouldn't even care so much about it if I didn't have so many years and so much emotion invested into this country and this culture.
