Minor Reverse Culture Shock

I didn't think that it would happen to me. Afterall, I would only be in Japan for three months. How Japanese could I turn in such a short amount of time?

Don't underestimate what being surrounded by a different culture can do to you. When I first saw how Japanese girls dressed, I snickered to myself but a month later, found myself wanting to buy a lot of the things that I saw in the clothing stores (but didn't, because I knew that I couldn't rock the look in the States).

A lot of the habits that I carried back from Japan have more or less died in the past few weeks that I've been at home (since in the States, I'm surrounded by American culture).

But here are a few things that I carried back with me.

1. When I do something that would usually warrent a "Oh, I'm sorry," I would instead hold up my hand and say, "Ah, sumimasen!" coupled with "Gomen nasai!" really frantically.

2. In the situations described in #1, I will duck my head, as if bowing, to show just how sorry I am. Japan really is the culture of shame.

3. I walk to the left of everything. This took me a while to get used to in Japan since I grew up in the States but when I was in Osaka, I couldn't get used to how everyone stood on the right. (Oooh... I was supposed to write a post about how different Osaka and Tokyo are...) This still happens to me. While I'm climbing up the stairs or am on the escalator, I'll find myself on the left side, confusing the Americans around me. D:

4. Before eating, I'll put my hands together and say, "Itadakimasu!" It took me a couple of weeks to break this habit. I don't think that my mom appreciated it too much.

5. Instead of saying, "Oooh," I'll say, "あっ！" (Aa!)-ish things. The intonations are a bit different.

6. I feel like everything I do warrents a sumimasen. When you inconvenience someone, even slightly, you would usually say, "Sumimasen..." but in the States, you just kind of shrug it off with a "Thank you" when they do it for you. I find myself frantically saying to salespeople, "Ah, I'm sorry. Really really sorry." Let me repeat: Japan is the culture of shame.


That's all that I can think of, actually... the thing that was the most obvious was my "sumimasen!" and walking to the left tendencies. The rest were things that I noticed kind of sporadically. They weren't really a big problem.

As for reverse culture shock, it's nothing big, really... I remembered how Americans behaved and in a lot of ways, Japanese culture kind of irritated me a lot, making me long for American culture. So if you don't count my Japanese-y habits as reverse culture shock, I will go as far as to say that I didn't have any. If anything, it's just being pleasantly surprised when someone holds the door open for me (the Japanese do not do this).

:D