カルチャーショック: Culture Shock

I was instructed to write the following as a response for my online intercultural communication course.  We were told to address the four stages of culture shock.  Here you go:

Eager Anticipation Stage: This being my second foray into the Far East, I bypassed the majority of this anticipatory stage in culture shock development. Thinking back to last November and December, I recall the sheer uncertainty of it all. Japan remains unrivaled on the world stage in its otherworldly nature. I was going to the place that invented anime and for which, being physically pushed onto a train is a daily occurrence of the morning commute. The sheer lack of knowledge of what actually goes on here lends so much to the mind’s conceptions and misconceptions of what is about to be encounter encountered. The first arrival in Japan encourages only more questions in the same way as progressing in the language only serves to remind the student of how little he or she really knows. In a previous post, I mentioned the staggering number of convenience stores that line the streets of Tokyo. The sliding glass doors to each place of business are portals to rooms of things never before encountered. What is that vat of broth and floating brown meat or ball of amorphous white goo are questions asked in expectation of the most wondrous answers. Everything is new and clean waiting to be discovered by the open foreign mind.

OMG What a Cool Cemetery

Everything is Beautiful Stage: At this point, Japanese television will still be the most interesting thing the newcomer has ever witnessed compared to programs of home. The endless array of cooking shows or comedic lookalike contests evoke laughter in the midst of a complete inability to understand what is actually happening. All that matters is that these people are absolutely insane in their hundred meter bowling competitions and escapades to the Japanese mountains and countryside to discover the most delicious of foods. Venturing out at night, the skyline of neon karaoke parlors and clubs beckon, inviting the casual stranger to come and partake in the most widespread of Japanese nightlife activities. The tourist spots around the city are places the gaijin has heard tales of from friends who have already made the trip or sank themselves deep into the world of cartoon representations of Tokyo. Visiting those mysterious locations finishes with cameras filled with hundreds if not thousands of snapshot memories to be later be reminisced over with circles of friends. The places themselves are again permeated by shops selling both the most Japanese and souvenir worthy trinkets. One shop will sell the samurais’ katana next to the golden kitten waving for customers to come into the store in front of a row of plastic umbrellas which for some reason are astounding. Nothing is simply what it is at this point in time. The umbrella is not just an umbrella, it is an umbrella in Japan!

A Tired Godzilla

Everything is Awful Stage: The stage from which I am currently clawing my way out. Japanese food, while still healthy and delicious, has lost its luster as I recall the steaks and melted cheeses I thoroughly enjoyed in the West. The fact that everyone is Japanese is also no longer as amazing as it once was with some of their customs shifting to nuisances as they lose their novelty. I want to wear my shoes inside; it is easier that way. I hate having to carry several day’s worth of currency on me at all times; credit cards are all but useless moving from store to market here. Where is the space I left behind; I do not enjoy having to stand on the step behind and in front of people on an escalator. If I end up sneezing the person in front will get a nasty shower, and as for the person behind, he or she will get a face full of something with which they would rather not become acquainted. Everything is more expensive than it should be with the American economy faltering and the Japanese economy surging forward (and hurting itself in its success). The seeming technological illiteracy of so many institutions is evidence of the traditional Japanese refusal to progress with the times. Yes, Japan is technologically backwards with a thousand paper forms for the most mundane of record keeping tasks, and there is no way to work around Japanese deadlines. I have had enough headaches brought on by having to be at a certain place at a certain time even though I may have class or a previous obligations put on by the same organization. (/rant)

Just Some Regular Dudes

 Everything is OK Stage: Despite this dissatisfaction that I’m sure came across above, I assure you Japan is not all cramps and unhappiness. Once I got passed the desire to make everything more than what it was, I experienced a backlash in my missing everything I had in America that is not to be found here. The trick, I believe is to stop embellishing everything in my mind. What I have before me is not the magical Japanese culture, it is just the Japanese culture. In this mental change I am not taking anything away from Japan, rather I am giving back to it the humanity with which all cultures are imbibed. There is no mythical existence here, nothing fantastic. What takes place in daily life here is merely the other side of the coin, practices that we of the West cannot fathom because for the vast majority of us, Japan remains a fairy tale carried by those who made the flights here and back long ago. To force any more than the reality of what Japan is onto this already overcrowded set of islands is to lose one’s self in what the mind believes should be happening. A person who only dwells on the future will lose sight of the present. Similarly, travelers coming to Japan searching for anything more than an experience of another culture will be sorely disappointed because they won’t be able to see the culture that is already here. And what a culture it is.  

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