Random Thoughts: Leaving as a solid citizen

Foreigners are often roundly criticized for coming to Japan and not acting as "good citizens". This means that they don't pay their city taxes, health insurance, etc. nor do they sort trash according to the strict rules and guidelines of their areas. Unlike small cultural issues like cooking smelly food or being too loud, these things are more about government regulations than simply irksome

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Won't Miss #433 - no 3-day weekends

When I first started working in Japan, I had Sundays and Mondays off. Even though I worked in an office for 12 years, I still worked an odd schedule because I was a foreigner and my services needed to be applied differently. This was okay in terms of national holidays for some time as they fell wherever during the week, but one day the Japanese government decided that it had to move almost

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Will Miss #432 - no apocalyptic mumbo jumbo

Even the demons are cute in Japan.


All of my life, I have been hearing stories of the end of the world. When I was a little kid, my maternal grandmother liked to talk about the signs of the Rapture and how they were starting to manifest. She did so with a little smile which made it seem as though this was good news, but it scared the hell out of me when I was young. Similarly, I heard about

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Won't Miss #432 - reassuring people about their English

Everyone knows the loaded question that women supposedly ask their husband's about a dress making them look fat. The idea is that whatever the man answers, he loses. If he says she does, she will be angry that he is saying she's fat and doesn't look good. If he says she doesn't, she'll say he's lying to make her feel better. The equivalent of that in Japan is the oft-made assertion, "my

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Will Miss #431 - intuiting what you mean

Japanese have a culture of "reading the air". It's a skill that not only is one encouraged to develop, but those who lack it find themselves derided and labeled as "kuuki wo yomenai hito" (people who can't read the air). While this sort of thing can be maddening if you aren't skilled in decrypting what people are trying to say to you (and I have not been for the vast majority of my time in

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Won't Miss #431 - "reading the air" expectation

Part of what hinders communication between foreign folks and Japanese is that it is common in Japanese culture to "read the air" or to intuit what is meant rather that attending to what is actually said. At higher levels of communication, this goes beyond "it's difficult" (muzukashii) meaning "no way!" It can often mean very involved or sophisticated things, but without experience with the

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Will Miss #430 - constant personal challenge

One aspect of being in a foreign culture with very different values than yours is that your are either in a near constant state of frustration and anger, or you learn to cope. It may seem based on my talking every other posts about things that annoy me that I run around mad all of the time, but that's an illusion that comes from the simple act of talking about such things. My awareness of them

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Won't Miss #430 - backwards names insistence

Ethnocentrism is sometimes reflected in big actions, but sometimes in the tiniest things. At the root of it all on the benign side is an inability to see that "familiar" does not mean "better". On the less appealing side is the notion that all that originates from ones own culture is inherently superior to that which comes from others. The latter comes from cultural insecurity. 



One of

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Will Miss #429 - Kamakura

I've got a beautiful, desktop-wallpaper-quality picture of the big Buddha statue in Kamakura, but so does everyone else out there. Therefore, I am giving you this cheesy souvenir shop item instead. 

Kamakura is the home of the "daibutsu" or "great Buddha" statue. While it isn't the biggest one in Japan, it is one of the most appealing. It's serene countenance is one reason. Another is that

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Won't Miss #429 - cell phone earthquake alarms

There was a psychology study done on a boy dubbed "little Albert" in which a loud noise was played each time he was shown a white rat. After awhile, he started to turn away and scream when he saw the rat. Later, he generalized his fear of the rat (which was generated by the loud noise) to all white things. If I had remained in Japan long enough, there is a good chance that I'd have my own "

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Will Miss #428 - impetus to develop culinary skills

A lot of people think that a foreigner wanting to eat foods from home is a tacit rejection of Japanese cuisine. It's not. You can enjoy all of the lovely food around you in Japan as an addition to what you knew and loved back home. It doesn't have to be a wholesale replacement one way or another. That being said, you really can't easily get things here that you can back home, like whole wheat

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Won't Miss #428 - Japanese sports figures worship

I hate to watch the Olympics and the biggest reason for that is I dislike the blatant favoritism of athletes based on shared nationality. I have always disliked the way medal counts are tallied up according to country with the underlying idea that those with the most medals represent a country with somehow superior people and those with smaller numbers are inferior. I felt this long before I

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Will Miss #427 - warabi mochi

Many people write about the stages that foreigners go through when they come to Japan. Generally, they capture the flavor of what people go through, but are overly simplified and a generalization. Still, generalizations do have their place in helping provide a framework from which we can understand a situation better. For me, the food in Japan has followed a very odd pattern of approach. At

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Won't Miss #427 - "Wao"

This lovely lady at a local festival did not say "wao", but she did have the right expression to convey the idea. Please do not believe I am lumping her in with the rude people I describe below. I'm sure she's a model of politeness and grace.

Let me begin by saying that "wao" (wah-oh) is what the Japanese see the English exclamation "wow" as. You see it written as "wao", but sometimes "wow",

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Will Miss #426 - perspective on thinness

I'm going to let you in on two secrets. First, this is a personal blog. The presentation may obscure that fact, but it is about me, my experiences, and my feelings as much as it is about Japan. Second, I have had an eating disorder for most of my life. Part of that disorder is the distorted notion that having the right body (i.e., a thin one) will cure all of life's problems. If you are thin

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Won't Miss #426- Japanese education system

I'm sure these three school girls with the Mickey Mouse hairdos are an exception to the non-critical-thinking rule.

All education systems are means to an end. The culture decides what that end is. I'm going to admit to being ethnocentric in this post and say that I believe the goals of education are to produce people who are literate, generally knowledgeable, and capable of critical thinking.

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Will Miss #425 - "sojourning"

One of the things my husband and I love to do is pick an area of Tokyo or the surrounding cities (Yokohama, Saitama, Chiba, etc.) and just explore it. Sometimes, it's one of the major areas that is attractive to tourists or locals, but at others, it's just some minor stop which isn't particularly well-known or famous. Taking a day and spending hours (sometimes as many as 6 or 8) just walking

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Won't Miss #425 - guided tours in Japan

Actual tour guide with flag followed by actual tourists, but I wasn't a part of the group. 



When it comes to taking guided tours in Japan, I've gone on two. The first was when I first arrived in Japan in 1988 for a vacation and went to Nikko. It was a whirlwind of dashing from place to place with little time to see much of anything and they insisted that my husband and I not touch each

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Will Miss #424 - language school advertisements

Shane? He's a little on the quiet side, and he keeps a big knife under his pillow, but I'm sure he's really a stand-up guy. 


All advertising is misleading and an attempt to use your psychological tendencies against you. If you're an insider at a business or have a lot of experience with it, the ways in which ads attempt to manipulate potential customers is far more transparent. Language

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Won't Miss #424 - being treated like a dictionary

My husband and I have played a certain video game for well over a decade. Part of this game is facing stacks of creatures with ambiguous descriptions of their size like "lots", "several", and "pack". There's a guide online that tells you the number each one of those represents and my husband learned what they meant long ago. As for me, I just ask him every time and never learned for myself. I

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Random Thoughts: A Moment of Ethnocentrism, An Hour of Analysis

When you deal with various cultures, the word "ethnocentrism" gets tossed around more as an accusation than an observation of a quite reasonable reaction as a result of the interactions of individuals from different backgrounds. It is offered as a finger stabbing at someone in judgment for their ignorance and lack of understanding. I want it to be clear that I'm not using the word in a

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Will Miss #423 - naivete about crime

I was discussing crime with one of my students and asked her if she had ever been a victim of it. She said that someone had attempted to break into her house, but failed when they couldn't breach her window screens. They broke the glass and gave up. One of her friends, however, was robbed twice, by a couple of sisters, no less. She said that friend was now afraid to ever take a vacation. I

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