Culture shock makes me feel like the bald guy with the hairy butt.
It does.
Really.
Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte and her lawyer boyfriend, Harry, start living together?
He’s the bald guy who is a bit rough around the edges.
While she lives in the lush New York apartment over looking Central Park and everything inside is white and gleaming and perfect.
She loves him and loves how different they are.
He feels the same.
He gets comfortable and starts to strut around the house completely naked, like he has always done in his own home – his squishy ‘man-butt’ smooshed into expensive white sofa cushions.
Charlotte is freaking out on the inside but it takes her a while to broach the white chair-hair bottom issues with her partner.
He is horrified.
He thought he was simply showing her that he adores their new home and felt completely loved and settled.
He’d tried his best to get it right. Because that was the ‘right’ he’d been used to up until now.
But he hadn’t gotten it right.
He didn’t do anything nasty and nobody died.
But it did not feel good for this poor naked man. He was horrified that he had gotten it so wrong.
*The fact that she couldn’t tell him directly, right away, is also very ‘reading the air’/Japan but that’s another discussion for another day.
It was your text book “cultural blunder”, if you may – and these two people were from the same country.
Anthropologist Oberg (1960) ‘unpacks’ the definition of culture shock in 6 points ( you can read all of them here if you like to geek out on this stuff, just like I do.)
And these two definitive points hit it right on the mark for me:
Cultural Shock:
Confusion in role, role expectations, values.
Surprise, anxiety, even disgust and indignation after becoming aware of cultural differences
And that brings me back to ‘why culture shocks makes me the bald guy with the hairy butt.’ ( Stay tuned for my anthropological novel of the same title ….coming to book stores (never) near you.
I know what it’s like to be Harry.
No, not the naked bum on the couch thing, you perv! (Although sometimes… after I have dropped the kids at school and there is some good music playing…..well….)
No, but seriously…
I first moved to Japan in high school as an exchange student and, well I’m the kid who got the scholarship and I’ve always loved a rule to follow and, pretty much always, following that rule is what I did.
But …suddenly… so, so many new rules!!! And most of those I worked out right away I embraced instantly!
With open arms!
Don’t gesture wildly while storytelling with my chopsticks ? Oopsie! Got it!!
The toilet slippers are only for use in the toilets? Bahhaaaa … Got it!!
Use honorific Japanese for those older than I was and for people of authority? Yep.. was warned about that one.
I was determined to be an international woman of the world …..at the ripe old age of sixteen….
But those sneaky little rules that I had to work out as I went were trickier for me – mainly because I was so determined to get it right.
Without trying, I sometimes didn’t come across as being very polite ….which isn’t really going to cause thunder and flames in the grand scheme of the world…but it actually hurt the most when being polite and kind was actually trying my hardest to do so.
If this was a cartoon version of my life, the culture shock feeling is depicted by a fog of green, thick fumes – and it sneaks around the corner and sometimes it dissipates almost instantly and other days it lingers.
But you know what? It really is worth it.
And now, here I am, in the next ‘season’ of my life in Japan. The married woman with two small children ‘season.’
And for those friends – and also as a little tap on the shoulder reminder from me to me… I wanted to share what I’ve learnt along the way with culture shock (and a bit of homesickness) along the way. And how I know like to think that these tricky green feelings and bouts of self doubt are, I like to think, also blending together to become a bit of an international life super power.
Be so much nicer to myself
I’ve learnt to generally be a whole lot nicer to myself when culture shock strikes (sorry- thats a bit dramatic… we saw Incredibles 2 yesterday and I think I’ve let it get to my head.)
At the start, it was all new to me.
I wasn’t meant to ‘get’ it and make it work in my own way immediately.
Did I know how many people wouldn’t even have even considered getting on a plane and living in a completely new environment?
It’s so cheesy but I kind of needed to be my own best friend sometimes.
I was doing a good job.
I was adventurous.
I was going to be ready for so much more of the world once I had jumped that prickly, tricky hurdle.
To never never downplay these feelings when my friends are at that tricky stage too
I have friends here who are currently in trenches of culture shock and homesickness.
Friends, I’ll never, ever, ever dismiss those feelings.
They are real and they are like a rite of passage.
A rite of passage that deserves a lovely, hard punch in the face and then a strong, loving cuddle as it swings on by.
If this was a cartoon version of my life, the culture shock feeling is depicted by a fog of green, thick fumes – and it sneaks around the corner and sometimes it dissipates almost instantly and other days it lingers.
That fog is sometimes lingering on the others around me and I need to remember when I was in the midst of that too.
Write it down
I know a journal is so clique and I’ve only ever used journals to keep note of hard times – which has usually resulted in pages and pages of sadness that I don’t think I ever want to read.
But (here is where I age myself) I was first in Japan before the internet was a ‘thing’ and I honestly think good old letters helped me a lot – and now emails and messenger messages also do the job.
Also, for me, writing to someone else helps me vent but also keeps me in check for being realistic and seeing the upside of things too because I knew that there was an audience at the other end.
It’s also good to look back on older emails later and see how far I’ve come.
Recognizing that I’m actually meant to get it “wrong”
I’m from Culture A and you don’t know the rules for Culture B, because you were brought up in Culture A, silly!!
Duh!!
I say ‘Duh!’ but this took me at least 4 years to work out for myself. Honestly.
Like I said above, I was an exchange student of my second last year of high school in a little countryside town called Kurashiki.
I was desperate to fit in. I copied every girl in my all-girl school class – because surely if I mirrored everyone else, I would be doing it right then, yes?
And all the cool girls talked in their cute teenage way.
I took it on board and pat myself on the back for starting to sound like them so quickly.
It wasn’t until I had a routine check in meeting with the school vice principal that I realized that I was also copying bad teenage habits. I had replied the equivalent of ‘yup’ instead of ‘Yes.’ And I was scolded loudly in the teachers classroom.
I was devastated.
I honestly had no idea that wasn’t the right thing to do say at that time.
But in hindsight? Of course I didn’t know that then! And was it really a bit deal that
And it was a lesson in copying for me too. Every scenario has its place and… even in English I wouldn’t speak in the same way I would at say… McDonalds as I would in a job interview….
(I still mimic the other Mums in the line at school pick up and the lady in the dentist’s office answering the phone by the way. I find it a really good way to learn)
But the moral of this story is…I was meant to get it wrong.
And thats why I was later going to kick butt when I had learned to take of it what I could and get on with my day.
I feel like culture shock can be especially tricky for women , like me, who just want to be polite. We just want to follow the rules. So afraid of offending.
I remember wanting to scream “but I don’t know the RULES! Just please tell me the rules!!”
Remembering that Japanese people don’t always know what the cultural norm is either!
When I was in the ‘thick’ of culture shock – it felt really lonely.
It feels like everyone knows what to do… except for you.
One of my most refreshing moments was my induction training when I started working for a Japanese hotel chain. I was the only international staff member at front of house and, although I was in my mid-20s, I did my induction training with all of the new university graduates.
It was with pure delight that they were also learning some basic hospitality etiquette and also had to learn honorifics. We were also in the Kansai region of Japan but were encouraged to speak hyojungo (kind of like Japan’s answer to the neutral ‘Queen’s Japanese’ like people speak in Tokyo. We were all on the same wave length. It was super-dooper. I loved it.
They had no idea what they were doing either!
And then, in my early 20s, we had a farewell party for a team leader at fitness club I worked at. One of the Japanese women wrote the wrong (not as polite as normally required, I mean) words for wishing a more senior member of staff best of luck and we all helped her cover it up with cute stickers because… well…. There isn’t much a cute sticker can’t fix in this country, right?
These kinds of experiences really give me perspective and helped me a lot with my next point…
Recognizing that it’s okay to have crappy days and have my own ‘cheer up’ practices in place
When I was working and a student here in my late twenties, I didn’t have much extra cash to play with but I always kept a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ stash – I think it was in a mint tin, shoved under my spare futon…if I remember correctly.
It never had more than 2000 yen in there but it was my ‘take myself out for something yummy’ or ‘shout my friend a drink’ or ‘buy cheap earrings at the accessory stores near the subway station’ fund. It really helped.
Now that I’m an actual grown up, my husband and I have our own versions of this now too.
If we want to spend money on a massively overpriced imported item (for us, its good old baked beans! Posh, right?) just because it’s comfort food for us?
We do it ! It’s worth it to make us happy and its certainly cheaper than buying a plane ticket to Australia or Scotland to get what we would like.
We have also made our house our happy place. Our house doesn’t belong to any country. It is without nationality. It’s just our family’s space to just…be.
Laugh at myself yourself
This took me lots of practice actually as I’m a complete control freak but I’m now really good at it.
Even the most educated, senior, talented people in the world look like idiots sometimes – and that’s just normal daily life! How do you think they’d go with a new language and a new culture?
I still laugh when I think back to the time I asked for an ude tamago (an arm egg instead of yudetamago ( a boiled egg) at a restaurant.
Or the time I was farewelled by colleagues on the bullet train platform (it was in the morning so I promise there was no alcohol involved) but I was so careful to bow beautifully to each and every person that I then proceeded to also bow politely to the train door as it slid open for me.
Or that other time I accidentally hit the short end of the resting chopsticks on the little chopstick holder thingies at a wedding and stabbed myself in the eye …..and everybody saw.
I think its especially important to laugh at myself- or make a friend point out how to laugh at myself. Especially during a particularly angry or bitter stage of my cultural adjustment journey.
Those feelings feel oh so real at the time but later I need to have a giggle because I had a mini-tantrum , as an adult, because the cheese tasted slightly different to what I was used to? (*Based on a true story….)
The littlest things will be actual end up being the funniest and most random memories.
I take a social media break or heavy tailor my instagram to my needs
If I’m having moments of homesickness I often find that social media isn’t always my friend.
I just stick to email or face to face contact with the true people who support and love me.
I also have tailored my instagram feed too. I got rid of the people who made me feel bad about myself or just complain about life in Japan when I’m all about having the most positive experience I can.
I learned to be culturally appropriate but also started to recognize that don’t have to completely assimilate either
This is quite a raw life lesson for me.
I used to think that I needed to speak and behave entirely Japanese all the time to truly fit in here.
This was particularly the case when in countryside Japan, for me… and especially when I lived with host families in their homes for one year in high school.
I took it as a compliment when Japanese buddies would comment on just how I was more Japanese than they were. I loved this compliment.
It was an easy role for me to slip into because, and without being too toasty here… Japanese intonation is my thing. I’ve always been pretty good at matching the tone of my friends and it really helped me with the whole ‘fake it to you make it’ part of language learning.
But then I took up the mannerisms and the ettiquette and I even mirrored the reactions of my coworkers to a tee.
It got me some extra friends, a lot of extra attention and even some Japanese job opportunities opened up …but I’ll tell you something… It. was. so. exhausting.
I have a very, very close friend who is excellent at this. She is also bilingual and she has done some voice overs for commercials. I stood in for her one day when she was busy and the director kept telling me to change some of my intonation to sound even more Japanese.
I took it all to heart and was quite distressed that it took so many takes.
At the end it all worked out and I apologized to the director.
He said, that’s fine, the same thing happened with your friend too and she just laughed at me and said “Well, I’m not Japanese so I’m never going to sound completely Japanese.
What a champion.
I need to be more like her.
I really found my balance and a stronger sense of personal identity once I shared a house with my friend from New York. I could be then be a Japanese-speaking version of me at work and then in the evening I could be as un-Japanese as I liked and… over time… It all worked itself out.
Now I’m just me.
I’m a mixture of everything.
I’m bilingual. I adore Japan but I’m also not Japanese. I’m an extroverted-introvert …and Ill keep you posted as there is lots about me that I’m just figuring out as I go now.
Letting those compliments go to my head….just enough
We all know a few international people in Japan who have let Japanese kindness get to their heads and they start to truly believe they are rockstars.
I’m not saying to go that far, but allow yourself to relish in the praise as you improve on your language skills. Even if it’s just because I had mastered a simple sentence a the supermarket check out counter. Think “Heck yes… I did smash that sentence!.. Onwards and upwards!”
Remembering what first drew me to Japan in the first place
I’m the language nerd so going out and talking a lot in Japanese makes me happy.
I recommend everyone reminds themselves what their own reason is too.
Where your “Japan Happy” comes from.
Go to the festivals. Eat the ramen.
Take a fashion risk (if you can’t do it in Japan, where can you….really?)
Make a playlist as eclectic as you are …mine is currently a mixture of Japanese songs from the 90s, Lily Allen, The Girls Soundtrack . The Lost in Translation soundtrack and some Disney thrown in there for good measure.
So, as you can see, I adore a decent chat about culture shock and personal identity and if you spot me in Tokyo let me know if you also nerd out on these topics too …let’s chat further….preferably over a big bowl of steaming ramen and….although you’d never catch me slurping my noodles like a local, I’ll try to remember to dress my metaphorical hairy butt beforehand.
If you’d like to hear more about my story see my ‘About Me‘ section here. If you like these kinds of articles about culture shock, sense of personal identity and making it work as an outsider… please send let me know. I have lots more to say on these topics – if others are actually interested, that is.
