Surprises in Japan

Today I gave a presentation to an English class about Washington DC, and at the end I allowed the students to ask me questions.

A student asked me what the biggest surprise was when I came to Japan, and as always when I’m put on the spot, I came up with a dumb answer. This time it was that everything is in kanji. I explained that it wasn’t really a surprise, but upon thinking about it later, it was. Not so much that things were in kanji – duh, this is Japan – but the surprise was more my feeling about it. I feel so helpless being unable to read anything. Sure, there is lots of English around, but I would say that only about 30% of things are in both Japanese and English. That’s a lot of words I can read – but a lot more words I can’t, and that is what is strange to me. With Western European languages, I can make some sense of things, even if I don’t speak the specific language. My background in French means that I can get by very well in Italian and Spanish. By “get by” I mean daily existence, not conversation – I can identify where the toilets are, food in the grocery store, etc. I don’t have that here, and that was a big surprise. I just don’t know what most things say, so I walk through life here 60% clueless. I’m okay with that, really, but I wasn’t expecting the feeling.

Another thing which surprised me, but which I didn’t mention in class, is that there are a lot of Japanese people here. Duh, right? But…no really. A lot of Japanese people, and virtually no foreigners. I stick out like a sore thumb like you wouldn’t believe. At least…I do in my own head. When I was walking through the mall this weekend, I wasn’t so much aware that everybody else was Japanese as much as I was aware that I wasn’t. I have heard that Japanese people will stare at foreigners – in my experience, they don’t, except the children. So they probably aren’t looking at me, don’t care about me, and might not even realize I’m there…but I feel the difference very strongly. And that surprised me too. Of course, now I have some sense of how people of other races feel in America…not the same experience, but a sense of it. In fact, I stopped reading White Like Me while here because my head is on a little backwards about race right now. I’ll finish it when I get home.

And here’s one more thing that surprised me. According to a blog post I read: “In Japan, drunkenness is perfectly acceptable. And what happens in the party, stays in the party.” I guess this explains why my supervisor, while talking to his ASL class about his weekend, said that after a day of meetings they all went out and got rip-roaring drunk. That is not something an American teacher would say to American students. I will have to experience this for myself before I believe it…and I certainly hope I get the chance somewhere!