The Girl With the Playboy Jacket…

… who was 8 years old.

This story just came to mind as I sat here watching the show W.I.T.C.H. with some friends. The show is for kids, and it  my memory toward the visit that I paid to a local elementary school a few weeks back.

I was visiting Meirin Elementary, here in Hirakata a few weeks ago. One of the college students with me was a Japanese girl wearing a playboy Jacket. At first, I thought her selection of clothes was a little… inappropriate for visiting such young children. I expected the school administrators to ask her to take the coat off before interacting with the students. They didn’t, and as I became engrossed with hanging out with the kids, I forgot about her Playboy Jacket.

At one point, the college student and I were put in a group together to play with some of the kids. While we did this, one of the children noticed her Playboy jacket and went running off to her home room. When she returned she was carrying her Playboy jacket. She was so excited to show it off!

I was really confused by the experience. When I returned to my seminar house, one of my friends who I told the story to said that Japanese don’t usually associate Playboy with anything racy. To most, it is just another western brand that looks hip to wear.

That was really interesting to learn. I could imagine what my reaction would have been were I conservative at all. Good thing I’m not. Instead of this instance being one of those instances where I learn about the deep-seated elements of culture, it was one where I got to learn a bit about branding in Japan. There’s still always something to learn form every situation.

Art Museum Etiquette

Today I took a trip to the Osaka Municipal Art Museum today. Like at my trip to the Kaiyukan, I had to stop myself from making attributions about the behavior of the other visitors.

The biggest instance of this dealt with my concept of museum etiquette and how often these norms were violated when viewing the exhibits. Often, the Japanese would crowd around the art and make it very difficult for others (including me) to see them. This is very diferent from what I am used to in the United States. There, people often kept a ‘respectful’ distace from the exhibits. I have been taught that this is the norm for visiting cultural sites such as museums or aquariums.

I realize that I can’t judge the other visitors as being rude based on my own cultural expectations. But I have to say that their approach doesn’t seem very practical. If everyone were to stand a little ways back, more people could see the exhibits, and movement through the hall would be easier. It reminded me so much of the Kaiyukan and helps to answer my questions from that day. Apparently, close up and with intensity is how Japanese choose to get their learning done.

Besides viewing the Buddhist art, today’s trip was also a good cultural learning experience. Often I think of myself as pretty open minded about most differences in behavior between myself and Japanese. However, when I kept thinking of myself as an adult watching overeager children, I received an excellent illustration of how hard it is to escape our deep-seated cultural expectations. Two men holding hands would not bother me, but god-forbid someone act rude at an art museum or slurp their noodles when eating. Again, this experience was very enlightening in regard to my own biases an expectations.

Bureaucracy

I want to take a little time to post about my experience with Japanese Bureaucracy. I’ve spent the last several weeks dedicating small portions of my days to finishing my application for the JET (Japan Exchange Teaching) Program. While I believed that my semi-isolated existence at the University prevented me from such frustrated run-ins with monolithic bureaucracies, I’ve been intimately involved with the one that controls this program.

Paying Your Dues:

There is a lot of conventional wisdom out there which affirms the need for a person to pay ‘their dues’ or spend a lot of energy to get where they want to get. This entire application process is terribly complex and even contradictory at times. I hope this shows that I really want the opportunity to return to Japan and teach English.

What’s it Worth:

I hope that all of this work ends up being what many people refer to as ‘an exercise in building character’. This experience has had a lot of setbacks but it will feel so good when it is complete. I still have to wonder though, if there are better uses of people’s time and energies than the complex formalities represented by this application process. In Intercultural Communications class, we are constantly reminded of the importance of hierarchies, rules, and order play in Japanese society. I wonder how many more times I will experience such things once I am working in this country. Even though this is mostly taking place on the internet, I feel like I am learning a lot about the Japanese way of doing things.

Kyoto National Art Museum and Fish in the Fountain

Today I went with some friends to visit the Kyoto National Art Museum.  After finally finding it after 20 minutes of wandering around the vicinity of Shichijo station until we found it finally. It is a large, European-style building from the late Meji era.

The Fountain:

The area directly inside of the main entrance had a beautiful fountain surrounded by trees with red and yellow leaves because of the season. The fountain looked like any other generic ‘reflecting pool with center jets of water’ which can be seen in front of major civic attractions anywhere (Bijitsukans, city offices, libraries and so on). Little did I know that it would be filled with Koi. That was certainly unexpected. I’ve never seen fish in that type of fountain. I hesitate to call it ‘so Asian,’ but the fact that we are in Japan lent less surprise to the situation. The fish were pretty cool and brought a certain liveliness to the otherwise austere surroundings of the museum complex.

Tourist Stamps:

On my way out of viewing the exhibits, I noticed the ubiquitous tourists stamp booth which every major site along my travels here has had. I had my travel journal with me and went to stamp it. My friend Jane looked at me with this confused expression which I successfully guessed at. She never said it, but I was apparently doing quite the ‘old fart’ compulsive activity. I find this sort of thing very interesting. I see a lot of collecting going on here in Japan, whether it is pokemon, gachapon figurines or these sort of stamps. Its interesting to see such behavior in the general population. Collecting in the USA tends to be a more private activity which isn’t catered to in everyday life outside of very specialized circles. Anyway, I stamped my journal and wrote about my day around the stamps. It may not be cool, but what can I say, I was raised by my grandfather.

A SeaQuarium Adventure With a Dash of “Rudeness”

Today I had a wonderful experience at Osaka’s Kaiyukan Aquarium. While I could go on and on about how good of a time I had at the very expansive aquarium, I will focus for now on a cultural incident that came-up many times during my visit.

Crowds and Expectations

When Entering the aquarium, I was struck by the number of visitors. While it was crowded, I had no reason to believe that my exploration through the facility would be anything but smooth. At the most, I expected only a few momentary bottlenecks at certain popular exhibits. I’ve visited large zoos, aquariums and museums in the United States and generally, this was my experience. What I encountered was much different.

“Rudeness”

I can only use the word rude to describe my impression of many of the Japanese tourists at the aquarium. Many times I could never successfully move forward, even a few feet, to see an exhibit. Either the person standing in front of me would not move for many minutes, or someone would cut in front of me as soon as the person moved. I was also surprised to see that many children were running around, cutting lines before other guests, elbowing their way through crowds and generally acting in ways which I would consider rude. Often the parents were close to their children, and this behavior was not reprimanded.

Staying Objective

Although my first impressions of the behavior of the Japanese tourists was that they were rude, inconsiderate and their children were not well-mannered, I had to ask myself why this would be. I have to assume that there is a reason for this independent of the ethnocentric assumption that Japanese are simply rude.

And so, I tried to let-go of my assumptions about what the other patrons must act like during an aquarium adventure. I began to think about my psychology classes which I am taking this semester and I was able to come up with a few ideas to why this behavior occurred.

Collectivism and Rudeness

Although I had the preconception that the collectivist ethos stressed ‘consideration for others,’ I believe that the pushy behavior I experienced illustrates the importance of social harmony over consideration. It is likely that for an individual, going along with group norms, even if this is not pleasant (such as pushing and being pushed), it is more favorable than causing tension within the group by speaking-out against it.

It is also possible that the Japanese are simply accustomed to this behavior, having grown up around it, and in the specific context of the aquarium visit, it is not rude.

What About the Children?!

The children are a special consideration while analyzing this situation. Children are often rude, for lack of knowing-better. It was the parents condoning this behavior and not providing much guidance or boundaries in-regard to it which struck me as weird. If the behavior is simply condoned because of the context (as mentioned above), than the children’s behavior may not be much to ponder over. However, I believe that this situation illustrated a very interesting topic from my Cross-Cultural Psychology class.

In the class, we briefly studied the development of children from a collectivist perspective. Apparently, collectivist parents do not encourage their children to develop strong personal agency in the world at an early age. This means that, the children are not encouraged to set limits on themselves, or regulate their behavior according to manners or social expectancies until at least beginning elementary school. Until this time, the parents will distract the child from their impulses, rather than contradict them. The school system, not the parents are responsible for this ‘superego’ development. So, unlike children in the US, who begin this process much earlier, the Japanese children were only acting as they have been raised. There is also a chance that the uncontrolled behavior of the older children stems from this same situation because the schools, not the parents are responsible for this stage of a child’s development, and so the parents would be unconcerned if their child elbowed me in the kidney to get a better view of the Giant Salamander.

Growth

While my explanations are only a few of the multitude which may successfully explain what I encountered, the real story of today lies in the deconstruction of my own assumptions. Every day that I spend in Japan, my comfortable views about the way things should be – whether it is a trip to a restaurant or an aquarium – are challenged. I cannot be too attached to these expectations that I have grown accustomed to.

While at the aquarium, I felt as if I were truly engaged with life, as I used my intellect to try and understand the situation around me, not just evaluate it in-regard to how comfortable it felt. I think this represents a shift taking place within me. I am learning to allow each moment to unfold as it will and to better utilize my objectivity to explore the situation intellectually. Slowly during my time here, this is becoming more and more automatic. I’m beginning to see myself as a participant in the world, not just someone being exposed to it.

Choice and Personal Competence

The importance of choice to westerners like myself is something that I had never contemplated until it came up in a cross Cultural-Psychology class. According to psychological theory, people from individualistic cultures (US, Canada, UK etc.) place so much importance on choice and freedom to act that it is a key component of our sense of self and ability to feel good about ourselves. Because of this, when making decisions, individualists feel that their ‘competency is on the line’ when making even insignificant choices.

Theoretically, collective cultures place less importance on decision making. Because of the prevelance of group dynamics, individuals do not feel preasure to make such choices since the group will usually come to a concensus on what action to take.

With this in mind, I was recently watching a TED conference talk given by Tony Robbins which illustrates just how important decision making is to individualistic cultures. In his speech, titled Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better, he essentially says that ‘decisions shape destiny’ and that our willingness and capacity to make decisions is the strongest force in the life of individuals.

The speech is about a half hour, but I encourage you to make the decision to watch it. It not only illustrates these points about how decision making is valued, but its an interesting dialogue about how to find your passions and act on them.

Tipping Your Hat

I came accross the following article in Japanzine, the English language newspaper which can be found in the Center for International Education. It may be tongue-in-cheek, or even fake, but I found it quite interesting.

The article is titled “Gaijin Activist Successful in Obtaining a Ban on Racial Slur” and details how the activist was able to convince the Japanese Diet (Parliment) to pass a bill banning the offensive word “Gaijin.” They instead upgraded the proper term to “gaikokukarakitekuretajin” which means ‘person who has blessed us with his/her presence from an outside land.’ However, following the ‘widespread Japanese tradition of abbreviating long clumsy words, the Diet included a sub-section of the bill that indicated the term will be used in its shortened for, “Gai-Jin“.”

Whether this is real or not, it still got me thinking. And of all the things to ponder, I found myself thinking of Mr. Baseball. Specifically, the scene when Magnum P.I. is hit with the ball by the Japanese pitcher. In the film, Tom Selleck is told that, even if the pitcher meant to hit him, if he tips his hat to indicate that it was unintentional, then the offense must be forgiven. It is the appearance of things which matters most. The same is true with regard to the use of Gaijin. Even if the racial slur is what is meant, claiming the use of an abreviation to disguise the intention is possible. Social harmony is more important.

This ties-into the psychological studies which I have been undertaking in my courses at Kansai Gaidai. The importance of socail appearance and maintaining harmony in relationships is very important to cultures influenced by Confucianism. Even being wronged, it is considered strong to take it, rather than risk group cohesion with a violent outburst or physical conflict.

A Taste of Home… Sort Of

Tonight my friends and I, after seeing that our favorite Izakaiya place was filled-up, decided to try a restaurant called Tomato Onion. Some of our group had been there before and said that it was like a Denny’s back in the states and that it served American-style food. It certainly looked like a Denny’s, right down to the unusually large dining room with booth seating and the wood paneling on almost everything.

The food made me think of what Chinese – or Japanese for that matter – must think when they visit ethnic restaurants in the US. It was similar to home, but completely different. The hamburgers were called hamburgs, tasted like breakfast sausage, and weren’t served with bread. There was plenty of unhealthy-looking fare that was close enough to what most restaurants serve back home to make me fear for the arteries of my friends and family back in the US. Even when I eat like a pig here in Japan, I don’t feel quite as gross (theoretically or physically) from the food. I can say, for once now, that I have gotten sick to my stomach from food in Japan; it only took me eating American food to do it. Even though I know that a lot of the food in Japan is packed with sodium and refined carbs and transfats, and a lot of it is fried, I still do not get sick to my stomach. Only at the American restaurant. What a world!

An Efficient (and Beautiful) Office

My work space here at Kansai Gaidai’s Seminar House is probably one of the best ones that I’ve ever been blessed with. While I recognize that I can manipulate my surroundings, it is nice to just walk into a new place and be given a space that works. Even after being here a month, I am also surprised by the room’s beauty.

An efficient office

Unlike my dormitory rooms in the States, this one has built-in shelves and a backboard designed to place thumb tacks in. These two features are enough to make the study space very functional. In the US, I’ve always had to keep my books in a milk crate, or stacked haphazardly wherever they would fit. Here, they fit perfectly with room to spare. Likewise, I would often have to buy a bulletin board to use at my desk and truck it around with me year after year. Often, the walls of a US dormitory would be made of  , and so if I wanted to hang the board, I was out of luck. The best I could hope for was always to lean it against something and hope that it didn’t fall down (which it of course, always did.)

My efficient and uncluttered room at Kansai

Aesthetically Pleasing

The room is styled after a traditional Japanese room. It has Tatami Mats on the floor and more wood and fibrous wallboard than I’ve seen used in a room. It is just enough room not to be cramped, but not too large to be cavernous. It looks beautiful unadorned. I don’t have an urge to hang posters to cover up the previously mentioned cinder blocks which characterize western dorm rooms.

The Shoji sliding door which separates the sleeping area from the study area is also wonderful. It efficiently, and elegantly creates a partition in the room. If I want more privacy while typing at my computer, I can close the screen. If I am staying up late at night, it also serves to block the light of my computer from disturbing my roommate. However, it is just a nice thing to look at. It is directly to the right of me, and its beautiful construction makes me feel as if I only have to look to my right to see a sculpture. Its functional art and that is something that I greatly value

Japanese Ideals

I could go on about the nuances of my room for hours. The functionality and aesthetic sense of my room here at Kansai is something that surpasses anything that I have experienced back in the U.S. While this may not be characteristic of all student residence’s in Japan, it certainly has made a great impression on me.

The Vice Presidential Debate: High vs. Low Context Communication

While this is not related to my experience with Japan, it did happen to me while I was in Japan.

Tonight I viewed a screening of last Thursday’s Vice Presidential Debate. During the debate, I was continually struck by Gov. Palin’s public speaking style. In my opinion it was inarticulate and imprecise. She often reiterated the same vague messages about ‘winning’ the war in Iraq and lowering taxes. It did not connect with me personally, as an objective viewer trying to size up the candidate’s policies or character. I found Joe Biden to be a very direct, articulate speaker. He evaded questions at times, but even when doing this, was sure to deliver a well-structured point on a relevant topic. He was very clear.

It hardly felt like a debate. That’s probably because it wasn’t. At least not on the grounds of what I conceptualized a debate as: two parties of equal standing trading point and counterpoint in a nuanced battle to  both precisely communicate their positions and exploit each other’s weaknesses.

As far as I can tell, Biden and Palin were not even communicating on the same ‘wavelength.’ It could have something to do with their audience, and as I contemplated this after the debate, it came to me:

Sarah Palin relied on a high context communication style while Biden was quite low context. They were essentialy speaking to two different audiences. Palin used what I found to be vague ideas to (presumeably) connect with ideologically-minded voters who respond better to broad themes with which they already see the world. The worldview and prior feelings of this audience ‘filled-in’ the gap between what words spoke – what particulars she utilized- and what she actually communicated.

Biden, on the other hand, generally was very pointed and specific in his use of citations and well-structured points to deliver a message which would communicate to an audience which was being objective and (presumably) taking the debate on face value, independent of preconceived notions.

Vague versus specific was the theme that I saw expressed in this debate. But, as my time in Japan has shown, vague can sometimes be very specific, depending on who is involved.