By request...Culture Shock

Be warned. This is the culture shock I experienced when I came back the United States. This is a candid account and not meant to offend anyone. Every shock that I had I have also been a part of, so please do not think I am trying to exclude myself in any of these things. If anything, I feel that culture shock can be the mirror of our selves to help us change.

My first experience with culture shock, happened before I left Tokyo. I was at the gate. The flight attendants had told us to please remain seated, but everyone was in line, so I thought I should get in line. Our flight was delayed, but it was raining. Flights typically get delayed for safety. Not wanting to experience the scary, painful death of a plane crash, I am ok with this. We are standing in what is not really a line and the flight attendants begin to board the plane, and, as often the case, they start to board the plane from back to front. All the Americans were complaining because they had been standing in line and they wanted to get on the plane. Not only were they complaining, they were rude to the flight attendants. They were frustrated with the worker's English.
Observations from this experience:

• We were in Japan. Japanese people speak Japanese. We should not complain when their English is much better than our Japanese is.
• No one told us to get in line to board, we did that on our own. Had we been sitting down like they asked us to, the whole process would have been easier.
• Americans are impatient and rude.

Other observations from the Minnesota airport.

• Americans are big people. The norm in America is to be too big. I knew this, but being in a place where most people aren't big this really surprised me. I'm a big person too, but this is one of those mirror things.
• We are sloppy dressers. Wow, Japanese have so much style. There I am in my hooded sweatshirt. If we dressed better do you think that we would want to take better care of our bodies. I'm not saying we should spend a whole lot of money on clothes. I think the Japanese have less but spend more in the clothes department. I think I would rather have a few nicer things than a lot of not so nice things.
• EVERYONE is on the CELL PHONE! Talk, talk, talk, talk. Noise. Wow. In Japan, people are on the phone a lot, but most of the time people are using email on their cell phone, no noise. It's a totally different environment. Normal is quiet. You notice when it is noisy. In America, noisy is normal. You notice when it is quiet.

The other night I had severe culture shock. I think this was the most I have experienced it since I came back. My former roommate and I had gone to watch a TV show with a group of people. After the show, we started talking about a topic that was brought up during one of the commercial breaks. One person had an opinion that was different than the majority of the group. Instead of giving her the chance to defend or explain herself, they just bombarded her with questions. Mind you, they did not really want to know the answers to those questions, or they would have allowed her to answer them. They speak the same language, and they weren't even listening to each other. Everyone just wanted to be heard, so the volume rose and rose and rose to the point where people were yelling and I felt like I needed ear plugs. No one else seemed to notice. Everyone was talking at a volume so they could be heard, but no one was taking the time to listen to the other people also speaking at a high volume so they could be heard.

The topic was changed to something that doesn't even matter, but the intensity was just as high. IT DID NOT MATTER. Still no one was listening, just talking. Everybody wants to be heard, but no one wants to hear anyone else.

I don't have it all figured out. I want to be heard as much as anyone else (if you think about it, a blog is a way to talk without being interrupted or having to listen to what anyone else has to say), but I do think that I have learned the value of conversation in Japan. The people that I talked with and I barely shared a language, but we were able to have deeper conversations than I have had in a long time. Why is that? I noticed they were listening. I started to do that myself. I still like to talk, but you learn so much more when your mouth is shut.