Observations and Inferences

By Molly Lauer

Living in a foreign culture has been quite the experience for me.  It’s very different than traveling.  Rather than just noting the beautiful architecture, tasting exotic food, and trying to learn something interesting about the differences and then go home, I find myself needing to learn about the culture in order to function on a day-to-day basis and survive here!  As my friend Katie Aiesi said, “Part of being foreign is being awkward…just try to laugh at your mistakes.”  Below is a collection of 14 observations I’ve made in the past few weeks and my inferences about the culture based on those observations (however right or wrong I may be, so please excuse my errors, they’re all out of ignorance, not spite).  

1. Public toilets often come with bidets.  I’m terrified and have yet to try them.  Usually I’m fortunately enough to find a Western-style toilet and not to have to squat over the porcelain Japanese holes-in-the-floor. 
2. Rice is good.  And filling.  And, most importantly, cheap!  Fruits, vegetables, and meat are all expensive so I can see why they’re eaten sparingly ($4/6 slices of lunch meat, $2/apple, $1.50/loaf of bread – only 6 slices though!, $2/quart of milk or juice, which doesn’t even come in gallons or even half-gallons).  More evidence that we’re on an island nation I suppose. 
3. Cell phones all have charms attached, some sort of personal decoration.  Usually with a little bell.  From what I can tell, people text just as much but talk on them a lot less, at least in public spaces, than they do in the US.    
4. There are no yards.  Houses have small patios with potted plants, or sometimes rice fields if you live in a single-family home.  
5. People regularly hang their clothes out on the line to dry.  Not sure why they haven't adopted the dryer concept yet… 
6. Meals are served with small portions of many things, each in a delicate little bowl.  I find it absolutely adorable!   
7. The language is complicated.  In addition to having 2 alphabets (hiragana and katakana) instead just one, each has 46 characters (“letters”) as opposed to our 26.   AND there’s a 3^rd writing system, Kanji, which consists of pictorial symbols of words….a few thousand of them that must each be learned individually!  So far, I’ve learned 56 of 92 letters and 2 Kanji!  :)
   
8. Because of this, shopping is difficult/hysterical at the store for me. I can find and identify most items I need okay (except I couldn’t decide if it was flour or sugar and had to wait until Benno could go to the grocery with me), but paying is something else.  When I go to the register, I imagine the cashier says something very sweet like, “Hi, welcome to our store.  How are you today? Would you like me to put this in a bag for you?”  But of course it’s in Japanese so I have no idea what they actually just said.  So I just smile, nod, and say “arigato gozaimasu” (thank you) because that is all I know.  They stare at me quizzically and wonder if they should bag my meat separately or not, which is what they probably just asked.  Eventually they make their decision without me and I say thank you again.  Fortunately, the total on the register is in our numbers, as it is on the coins too, so I can pay okay, and smile and say thank you again once more before I leave, just for good measure.  Benno says I’m probably bubbly and friendly enough I can get away with it.  :) 
9. Recycling is also complicated.  I bought many bins to try to separate the trash the way they want it to be – glass, cans, plastic bottles, bottle caps, clear plastic food containers, styrofoam food trays, newspaper, paper, cardboard, burnable trash and nonburnable trash.  I appreciate the emphasis on recycling and the 25-page guidebook the local ward gave us to explain it but, wow, where do we have room for this in our tiny apartment?!   
10. People dress nicer and more conservatively.  All the women look great in their fashionable dresses and skirts – I almost feel bad that they never get to just wear sweat pants!  (Of course it seemed different when we went to a rural village so perhaps this is related to the ritzy area we live in.)  I felt scandalous wearing my running shorts (adults don’t wear shorts here as far as I can tell, only children and pre-teens, unless they have leggings on under them) and there’s no hope of me feeling comfortable in my athletic tank tops.   
11. People are very respectful of moral codes.  Benno tells me there are few public trash cans because they’re not as necessary; the city knows people will just hold onto their trash until they get to a trash can.  When I left my camera on the bus in Kyoto, it was available for pick up at the terminal the next day, of course! Benno says.  Most people don’t even cross the street at a crosswalk unless it says too!  If there aren’t cars coming, at all, for a really long time, and I cross when it’s red, I swear they drop their jaw in astonishment! :)  
12. There is very little PDA – rarely do I see couples holding hands (Benno and I are the scandalous pair as he puts his arm around me in church or on the train :).   
13. School children are in uniform.  Navy blue and white, always.  The girls wear little sailor suits and hats.  It’s also adorable.  
14. People are still people.  I’ve seen 3-year-olds throw temper tantrums at the store, a business man scurry to catch the train, an old man stop to rest on a park bench.  Despite our different approaches to life, I think we all share a common strain.