Konichiha. Mina ha ogenki desuka. Boku ha genki desu. Kyo Nihon to Amerika no bunko wo hikaku shitemasu. Takusan warui chakuso ha arimasu. Ichi nen kan Nihon ni sundemashita. Asoko de Nihongo wo benkyo shitemashita. Nihon ni totemo tanoshikata. (Hello. How is everyone? I am doing well. Today, I am going to talk about the differences in Japanese and American culture. There are many misconceptions. I lived in Japan for a year where I learned the language and had a very enjoyable time.)
Many of you may be wondering what I just said, or in what language I just spoke. As a freshman, I studied abroad in Japan. While I was in Japan I learned many things about myself; I gained a working knowledge of the language, and I learned many things about their culture. In learning about the Japanese culture, I came to realize that it is very misunderstood or better yet, misinterpreted by the American people.
Take a moment to think. What do the Japanese eat? What do the Japanese do? What do the Japanese look like? Many of you probably answered in the following way: the Japanese eat sushi, rice, and seafood all the time; the Japanese are short with dark hair; and the Japanese go to school all the time. In a way, this is correct, but for the most part, it is wrong.
First, let us glimpse at their height. It is known that on a whole the Japanese are a little shorter than we Americans are. More recently, however, the Japanese have become taller and stronger. This is due, in part, to better nutrition. Before, during, and shortly after WWII many Japanese were, unfortunately, malnourished. This led to smaller people, but as their quality of life has risen, so has their height. Look at me. I am 189cm or 6'3" as we measure ourselves in America, and I wasn't even the tallest one in my class. You do have tall people in Japan
O-sushi to gohan, or shall I say sushi and rice. Why do Americans believe this is the only thing the Japanese eat? The Japanese are humans just like us. The Japanese eat all types of food like us. It's like saying that we as Americans only eat steak and fries everyday. To them rice is eaten as often as fries are here. Instead of cheeseburgers or hotdogs with fries, you have tendon or tonkatsu with rice. Sushi, however, is not eaten nearly as often. First, Americans do not even know what sushi is. They think that it just raw fish. Sushi is not just raw fish, but it is raw fish wrapped in rice and nori, seaweed. Plain, raw fish is actually called sashimi. Second, sushi is like steak in that it is a delicious delicacy, but expensive. Sushi is mainly eaten at formal events, or times of celebration.
Speaking of celebration. We just celebrated our first and last holidays of the year, Christmas and New Year's. Many people have asked me about how the Japanese celebrated Christmas in Japan. Let us look at the first six letters in Christmas. C-h-r-i-s-t. The same as in Christian. They also spell Christ. Christmas is a Christian holiday. Japan is Shinto and Buddhist country; therefore, the Japanese do not celebrate Christmas the same way as we do here. Recently, the Japanese have become more aware of Christmas because many of our gifts are produced in Japan. In a way, it has turned into a Hallmark holiday in Japan. Couples will exchange gifts and eat KFC chicken. "Why eat KFC chicken?" KFC ran an add campaign a couple of years ago stating that all Americans eat chicken on Christmas. It worked very well.
Now, let us move onto New Years. New Years is a very important holiday in Japan. The Japanese do not party as we do. For them, it is a very religious holiday. When the clock strikes twelve, all the shrines ring their bells 108 times to rid the land of evil spirits. The next morning you have a special meal of sushi. Then, within the first three days of the New Year you are expected to make a pilgrimage to a nearby shrine where you will pray for a prosperous year.
Now let us move from a more traditional facet of life, to a more common everyday one, Gakko, or school as we call it. Japan is notorious for year round schooling. The phrase "year round schooling" is misleading. For summer break, I had six weeks off. I had the same winter break as I would have had here. Then, in the spring I had a month off. It was nice. To me the way the Japanese have school breaks set up makes sense. You are not attending for any longer than six months straight. Here we go for nine months, and then have three off. I do not know about you, but I become burned out by the end of the year.
Another thing the Japanese schools are notorious for is the six-day school week. The school that I attended did conduct classes on Saturday, but it was for only half of the day, which was not too bad. Increasingly, Japanese schools have been moving away from this practice. Already all public schools have two Saturdays off a month, and to my knowledge, within the next ten years all schools will no longer be going to school on Saturdays. I know my school already has plans to abolish school on Saturday.
The school day itself was not very bad. It started about 8:30/9:00 o'clock. Then you had only six classes. Each class ran about fifty minutes with a five-minute break in between. The Japanese did trust their students a lot more. One class I took was tech. In there, we built radios. In doing this, we had to sodder parts together. How many of you would trust everyone in your homeroom with soddering irons? The thing I liked the most about their schooling was the substitute teacher, or the lack there of. Yes, if the teacher was absent you had none. It was just a study hall and if it happened to be the last class of the day, you just went home.
How could you just leave? You did not have to worry about the buses because you did not take them. Japan is an urban area all over. This makes mass transit very important. It also allows you to many more things. Due to this, it was much easier to go out and get around after school.
While the Japanese are out, they are not just studying - well, the books at least. You know that when you go to the mall you are checking out other guys or girls. Well the Japanese do the same thing. You are asking yourself, "don't the Japanese all look the same though?" Wrong there too. The Japanese are all individuals. You have you good looking people, your nice people, your mean people, your skinny people, your fat people, etc? It is just like America. Some things are common to the culture like dark hair. Some people dye it to distinguish themselves. Some girls even go a little further and tan themselves, get all types of accessories, and hike up their skirts. These girls are called Ko Giaaru or schoolgirl. They usually hung out near the train stations to pick up guys.
The final aspect of Japanese culture I would like to touch on is their language. Many of you believe that it is a hard to learn, however, you are just thrown by the way it looks and sounds so different from English. If you break it down it is fairly simple. The Japanese use symbols for writing making that part of the language a puzzle. The more important, and easier half, is the spoken language because you do not have to learn new sounds; in addition, the language follows a simple pattern in comparison to French or Spanish. Japanese just does not have the familiarity of the sounds and characters of the European language that we are mostly exposed to.
The other part of the language, the funky symbols called kanji, is a little more complex. Some can be very intricate. While I was there in Japan, I learned between two hundred and three hundred of their symbols. However, some people expect me to know every one of them and are very disappointed when I cannot read one. There are over forty thousand of these symbols. The Japanese cannot even write them all. It is like asking one of us to spell every word in the English language.
I hope this has erased some of your misconceptions about Japanese culture. Remember misconceptions are just that, misconceptions. Misconceptions are not based upon fact, but upon hearsay. Kore kara ki wo tsukette daiyo. Domo arigatou gozaimashita. (Take care and thank you very much.)
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Misconceptions