Universal Japan Part one

As endless fascinating as it is to find more and more differences between Japan and everywhere else I’ve been and then try and explain them, there is a danger involved in always thinking about things that are not the same of coming to the conclusion, like many foreigners and also Japanese do, that the Japanese are so unlike everyone else they are like a different species. In a similar way, when pointing out to students the differences between the language they speak and the language they are learning there is a danger of the overall impression being that the task is impossible or at least that they have to change everything they first think of saying.

So, here is my list of things that seem to be the same everywhere I go:

Universal Japan Part One

Anywhere you will go in the world, including Japan, you will find that:

1. The worst drivers are, in order, white van drivers, taxi drivers and Mercedes drivers.
2. The nouveaux riches have a “certain taste” in clothes and furnishings
3. Older ladies start wearing brighter and brighter colours
4. Older ladies (and some older men) are both the most likely to complain about others’ bad manners and the most likely to have a conversation over the stranger sitting between them, elbow you in the ribs pushing their way onto the train, have a loud and annoying ring tone etc. etc.
5. The posh sometimes like to slum it. In France that meant “rustic cottages” in the grounds of Versailles, and in Japan that meant tea ceremony “huts”
6. Pictures of cats cannot be art
7. Upper class art is complete self-indulgent tosh (e.g. “Why do the cherry blossoms/ So restlessly scatter down?”- part of a Heian era poem, to which I reply poetically, Tales of Genji-style, ”Why don’t you/ Do something useful and get a job”)
8. Religion attracts the best (Kobo Daishi/ Dalai Lama) and the worst (Nichiren/ Pope John Paul II)
9. Most people have always done pilgrimages just for fun
10. Everyone wants democracy, and everyone feels cynical about it once they get it
11. Sometimes having your freedom is a pain in the arse

More coming up in Part Two…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 6:08 amand is filed under Japanese etiquette and manners, 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.