On of my coworkers is a fellow Canadian who used to teach English at a high school in Quebec. While Quebec is obviously part of Canada, she said that there were a lot of cultural differences between Montreal and her hometown in Saskatchewan. She told me that before she left she knew that she would really start missing Montreal, and so to alleviate the pain of separation she wrote out a list of things she knew she wouldn’t miss. That way, if she ever started to romanticize her experiences there or regret her decision to leave, she could consult the list and remember that there were hard moments as well.
I think this is a pretty good idea. Leaving a place you’ve lived in for a long time is always a painful and confusing endeavor, and as humans we tend to look back at the past with something of a selective memory. Often we remember a lot of the good times without stopping to remember the difficult circumstances that accompanied them.
I’ve experienced this myself quite recently. This last spring I thought a lot about my last year in Canada before coming to Japan and wondered how I ever could have let such a wonderful situation slip through my fingers. I was comfortable, I had my own place in a great part of town, I was near friends and family, and all seemed right with the world. Fortunately I had the good sense to stop myself and think, “wait a minute, wasn’t I constantly broke and stressing about money? And didn’t my bathroom have silverfish? And didn’t the guy above me always blast horrible party music at two in the morning? And doesn’t the public transportation system completely suck in my hometown?” (It does.)
So, to cope with leaving Japan, I’ve decided to follow in my friend’s footsteps and make a list of things I am definitely NOT going to miss. This is a no holds barred summary of my worst experiences and pet peeves.
10. Clothes shopping. This is always an ordeal. The average cup size for bras in Japan is A, and the women tend to be rail-thin, so the fashions are mostly design to drape flatteringly over such frames. If, like me, you’re a buxom lass with vivacious curves, you tend to look like you’re walking around wearing a sheet that you cut a neck hole into. The best place for most foreigners to shop in Japan is UNIQLO, which, although pretty great, isn’t that exemplary of my personal style. I’m looking forward to being in a land where the fashions are a little more diverse. I’ve actually heard Japanese women complain about the lack of diversity in fashion, too.
9. Weak medicine. Japan as a culture is not very enthusiastic about strong (or as I like to say, “effective”) medicine. The pills, teas, and syrups you find at the drug stores here don’t really do anything for a cold, and there is no over-the-counter medication for things like migraines. Pretty much, if you want to get effective medicine you have to go to the doctor, which means you have to miss work, and if you’re a foreigner it means you might have to inconvenience a friend or coworker to help you. A friend of mine broke his collarbone this spring and when I asked him if he was taking any medication he just shook his head bitterly and said, “the stuff they gave me does nothing.” I understand it’s important not to overdose on medication or make really strong stuff available to those who might abuse it, but I think it’s kind of ridiculous to withhold painkillers from people who are genuinely suffering. Just because I want some extra strength Advil doesn’t mean I’m going to try to cook up some meth with it, geez.
8. No online banking, and no credit cards. This one is a huge adjustment. Okay, so the bigger store chains will take credit cards, but Japan is a cash society, so you have to get used to walking around with hundreds of dollars in your wallet. Is this a bad thing? Well, no. It’s just different. But since I’m personally used to a different system, it’s still hard to get used to carrying that much on me. The credit card thing isn’t as bad as not being able to do banking online, though. Maybe some banks offer this service, but a lot of them give you a little booklet instead that you’re supposed to feed into the ATM, and it’ll print out all of your electronic transactions. It’s kind of like a bank statement, only you have to go to your bank or an ATM every time you want to glance at your current balance. It’s just kind of inconvenient.
7. No books! This isn’t so bad since I got my Kindle, and Amazon definitely helps, but bookstores typically have a minuscule English section, if they have one at all. Again, this isn’t objectively bad: it’s Japan, and Japanese is the language that’s spoken, so you shouldn’t expect loads of English books. But one of my favorite pastimes in my hometown was dropping into Mosaic Books and browsing for a while, or hitting up Chapters or a used bookstore. If you love to read, there’s nothing better than being surrounded by shelves upon shelves of books. And if you can’t understand any of them, it’s almost physically painful. “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink…”
6. Silence on the trains. This is a pretty big adjustment for a Canadian. When I was living in Canada I relied on the bus system, and it’s a noisy place. You get not only the roar of the bus engine, but usually several loud conversations between fellow passengers. You can hear interesting conversations (yes, I’ll admit I eavesdropped constantly), and quite often you can get into conversations with complete strangers. You meet people from all walks of life, some of whom you might otherwise never have come across. I’ve talked with people about plays they’re involved in, popular movies or books, even Methuselah at one point. It was great. But here in Japan it’s considered extremely rude to talk to anyone on the train, which is the primary method of public transportation. Even if you’re riding with your best friend, it’s polite to remain silent until you reach your stop. I really miss the opportunity to socialize during my commute.
5. No public trash disposal. Let’s say you get a bottle of water from a vending machine when you’re out with your friends. You drink it over the course of about an hour, and afterwards you have an empty plastic bottle. How do you dispose of it? In Japan, that’s a very good question. A very, very good question. See, in Canada, there are a lot of trash disposal areas in malls or on the street, so you don’t generally have to carry garbage around with you. Here in Japan, garbage cans exist inside restaurants, right beside vending machines, and outside of convenience stores. That’s about it. So if you wind up with trash during the day, be prepared to hang on to it until your get home—or until you happen upon a convenience store. This is really not the end of the world, but I’m definitely looking forward to ample opportunities to ditch my trash.
4. Summer styles. Before coming to Japan I would never think to describe Canada as “beachy” in any way. But after having lived in Japan, it now seems to me that Canadians have a very beachy attitude toward summer fashions and general behavior. Here in Japan there’s no differentiation between the concept of a suntan and a sunburn, and most people are terrified of both. Most women walk around in heavy layers, often with wide-brimmed hats, gloves, and parasols. Before coming here I had never seen anyone bundle up to go outside in the summer. (Interestingly, there’s a social stigma surrounding sunglasses—people associate them with gangsters, so very few people wear them.)
When I started looking into this, I realized that in terms of skin cancer prevention, this is a pretty good idea. Sunlight can cause cancer, and that’s what a lot of people are trying to avoid. On the other hand, a lot of people consider pale skin to be stylish, and I’m pretty that’s actually the main driving force behind all of this. But whatever the reason, I just can’t seem to get on board with it. To me summer is associated with fun and freedom, with shedding layers and soaking up the sunlight. I can never quite bring myself to fear the sun, and I don’t particularly want to, either.
3. The racism/nationalism. Let me be clear: wherever you live, there is going to be racism and/or nationalism. If you’re in the ethnic majority you may not notice it as much, but it certainly does exist. So when I talk about racism and nationalism in Japan, please understand that I know this is not a societal ill that’s exclusive to Japan. In fact, I’m pretty sure that being Caucasian in Japan is much easier than, say, being African American in Canada. But just because it’s not exclusive to one culture or not as difficult for one racial group in a more global context does not mean it’s okay when it does occur.
Racism here comes in many forms. Often when I try to speak to people in Japanese, they insist on speaking English, assuming that I won’t understand things in any other language. Once I went out to a Japanese-owned Korean restaurant here in town and the owner started making fun of my friends and I, in Japanese, to the people sitting at the table beside ours. I’ve also had people who have known me for a year and a half say things like, “you’re so good at using chopsticks!” It’s like no matter how long I’ve been here, some people have this idea that it’s impossible for me to adjust to even the most miniscule aspects of Japanese life. One time I said “konnichiwa” to a friend I’d known for over a year, and she freaked out over how good my Japanese language ability was. Like, seriously? You’re impressed that I know how to say “hello” in the local language? How thick do you honestly think I am?
You’ll also hear a lot (and I mean A LOT) about how healthy Japanese food is compared to Western food, and about how “Japan is a peaceful country”. I’m not going to respond to these here, because my opinions on these matters can get pretty politically-charged, but the point is that there’s a general opinion that Japan is just better than everywhere else. There’s nothing wrong with being patriotic, but when your statements start to imply that there’s something wrong with foreigners or their cultures just because they’re different, it gets pretty hard to swallow.
However, I’m going to qualify all of this by saying that, of course, not everyone thinks or acts this way. The younger generation here is especially open-minded compared to the elder, and some of my best friends here are people who resist that kind of thinking. And since living in Japan the racism and nationalism in my own culture has become a lot more apparent to me. The best way to handle this kind of experience, I think, is to learn from it and help it to make you a more sensitive and understanding person. I hope that’s something I can take from this experience.
2. The work culture. I’ve complained about this before, but it’s one of the main reasons I’ve decided not to continue my time here in Japan. Living in North America, I couldn’t even imagine how restrictive it is, and having spent two years here it’s gotten no easier to deal with. I’m not saying this to judge the culture or it’s people—quite the opposite. It really pains me to see people I respect and care about being worn down so drastically by the demands of their employers and their government. Last December a friend of mine asked me if I was getting any holiday time. I told him I was getting two weeks off, and he said that in the entire month he was getting only one day off of work.
I had a similar conversation with one of my ex-coworkers who got transferred to a government position this spring. We met last weekend for dinner, and she told me that she had been hoping a recent health check-up would reveal some kind of medical problem so that she could be transferred to a different position. She said that the people who work at the government office do so much overtime that, in order to leave work at 6:00 p.m., they would have to take a full vacation day. That means they’re working eight full hours of overtime every day. She even said that recently when she takes her dog for a walk, she starts getting panic attacks whenever she thinks of work. Hearing stuff like this just makes my hackles rise. I’m not opposed to overtime at all, but I think people should be free to have families and friends and to develop hobbies and to pursue spirituality if they so choose. I don’t think an employer or the government should have the right to tell a person they have to sell their soul to their job.
1. No insulation. This has to be the one negative topic that I bring up more than anything else on this blog. So, I’m sorry if I harp on it more than you’d like, but if you’ve ever experienced this you know how difficult it makes your life. Being exposed to serious heat and cold is something like chronic pain; it’s impossible to ignore, and it’s exhausting.
If you work in a high school in Japan, you’re going to get maybe four comfortable months out of the year, if you’re lucky. The rest of the time you’ll be either sweltering or shivering your way through your life here. And the dress code at work only exacerbates the situation. Sleeveless shirts are absolutely not allowed in the summer, nor are shorts in most cases, and of course skirts should be knee-length. To return to my friend who works in the government building, she told me that they actually turn the air conditioning off at five o’clock and open the windows instead to save money. Let me tell you, when it’s 30 degrees Celsius and 94% humidity, opening a window does not help you cool off in the slightest. And since we’re in the countryside, there’s the added bonus of giant bugs that are attracted to the lights in the office. Good times, I’m sure.
But the winter, in my opinion, is worse. You are always, always, always cold, whether you’re outside, at work, or at home. This last winter I was huddling in my tatami room and I noticed there was actually a breeze coming in through the crack in the door leading to the kitchen. Needless to say, it made me pretty angry. At school your classroom might have a heater, but often the teachers will open the windows, because kerosene can be dangerous in enclosed spaces, and the general idea here is that opening the window will reduce colds. Yes, you read that correctly. People open the windows in the middle of winter because they think that will cut back on colds. I’m still waiting to see any kind of peer-reviewed study that would support this theory.
And again the dress code comes up to bite you: this last winter we had a two-hour assembly in the unheated gym when it was about 2 degrees out. Our breaths were clouding around us as we huddled in our coats. I was wearing gloves and a scarf, but of course I was sitting still on the gym floor, so they didn’t do much to help. After the assembly was over, one of my coworkers came up to me and said, “Just so you know, wearing gloves and a scarf indoors is not the Japanese way.”
I’ve probably gone on about this insulation thing way too long already, but the point here is that it’s more than just being a little uncomfortable for a while. When temperatures this extreme are your everyday reality, it quickly begins to affect you psychologically as well. I remember in May when the air started cooling down I was stunned by easy life became. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well—I realized that my body’s physical stress from constantly staving off the cold had bled into my thoughts and feelings as well.
Alright, so not a very fun update. I’m not meaning to be down on Japan, just relating some of my honest experiences. If you’re planning to come to Japan—or even if you’re not—don’t let this color your idea of the country too much. Remember, it’s just my personal opinion, and your experiences might be totally different. Also, while there are some negative aspects to living here, there are definitely some positive ones as well. That’s what I’ll discuss in my next update, which will be my last post on Nihonglish: 10 Things I will ALWAYS miss about Japan.
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