How not to hate the natives

When I said it was a quiet news day yesterday, of course I was forgetting the daily litany of stories about the Japanese ruling classes ripping off the general public for all they can while telling the average Jo Tanaka in the street to tighten their belts and do their best for their country. There’s one story about yet another embezzlement scandal in Shinzo Abe’s cabinet and one about bones of Japanese troops still lying on beaches in SE Asia while Japanese politicians score cheap political points by turning up as Yasukuni Jinja shrine to “honour our boys”.

The fact that the Japanese ruling classes are such an unmitigated bunch of scum suckers has helped me come up with one theory of how to cope with a symptom of culture shock. If you are not careful, there will be times when little frustrations in a country will make the words “bloody (Spanish), why can’t they just (do their jobs properly)?” or such like pop up in your head or even out of your mouth. It might be because you are having a bad day, it might be because you are just in the wrong country, but it is very unlikely that you have come out with a comment which is true for 100% of the people in said country. As people do seem to need to focus their frustration on someone, though, and taking it out on your partner or your boss is probably even less helpful, it is a natural reaction- all it needs is tweaking a little. Instead of blaming your whole life on (Catalans), choose as small and specific a group as you can to shoot imaginary flames from your eyes at.

For example, if you are a driver Turkey is probably not the best place to be unless you want to develop fatalism, but focusing your attention on one or more groups of dolmus (shared taxi) drivers, lorry drivers and bus drivers will save you bursting a blood vessel everytime you turn the ignition key. In Thailand we decided all our problems came down to men wearing grey shirts. It no doubt wasn’t true, but as it stopped all negative feelings towards people in any other coloured clothes it certainly served a purpose and got me through the year. A blunt tool, but it can work. The better option, of course, is to become a saint who has no negative thoughts about anyone. Tips on this planned for 2025.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 12:03 amand is filed under TESOL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.