Reverse Culture Shock – Greggman

Posted on 18. Feb, 2007 @ 12:46 am by in Culture Views: 176

I’m sure most of you remember Greggman, the successful game programmer who has been in Japan even longer than I have, and who has recently return to the US, for various reasons.

He has has been experiencing reverse culture shock after going home and posted about it on his blog.

Check it out, let me know what you think.

Personally, one thing stands out in my memory after reading this.

When I was in college in the US, before I had ever spent an extended amount in Japan, I noticed something about Japanese culture that surprised me.

Whenever I would attend a party on the university campus that included a lot of Japanese people, say a Japanese Student Organization meeting, or a Language Exchange meeting or something of that sort, after the party, the place would not be destroyed.

Normally, after a party things get to be quite a mess, and everyone feels kinda sorry for the host because they have to clean up the next day.

At the Japanese parties it was a different story. Even before the party was officially over, everyone would go out of their way to grab a trash bag, move the chairs and tables back to their original positions, wipe up any spills, and do whatever it took to get the place back to it’s original clean state.

Often the place would be cleaner after the party than it was before.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Of course, Japanese society is far from perfect, but things like that can really stand out for people who spend a lot of time on both sides of the fence.

I hope Greggman is able to readjust!

- Harvey

  • http://pixelscribbles.com/journal Heather Meadows

    I always try to help the host clean up after a party, unless there’s somewhere pressing I have to be. It’s just polite. And when I host parties, I am typically cleaning up as we go.

    Maybe I just like cleaning ;P

    (I also don’t attend many parties where people drink alcohol…maybe that has something to do with it?)

    I think the phenomenon Greggman is talking about is at least partially brought about due to the relative sizes of our countries. A lot of things in Japanese culture seem to be the way they are due to the fact that there is less space.

    America is big, and things are spaced far apart. You can’t walk to everywhere you’d want to go, and if you don’t have a car, it’s easy to see how quickly you might get bored. This is perhaps a factor in teenage vandalism/petty crime.

    The space could also give people a sense of immunity. Kind of like the anonymity of the internet. Maybe people feel invulnerable–like if they key up somebody’s car, they won’t get caught if they drive across town.

    There’s a lack of community here that I think is at least partially caused by how far everything is spaced apart. We all have to drive, so we are therefore free to go wherever we want. We’re not accountable to anyone or anything. If we rob one store, we can just go shopping at another one later. No one pays attention to anyone else, either, so we don’t feel like we have to behave in a certain way.

    It’s not black and white. There’s a phenomenon of ignoring things that don’t fit in Japan, for example. And there are people here in the States who are community-minded.

    But I do think that in general, having less space leads to getting to know your neighbors, and that adds accountability to a community.

  • Vince

    Hey,

    Well, I can tell from an European perspective that, having lived in US for a year and having traveled to several countries in the EU and America, the US culture is quite individualistic and has completely lost the care for all things public. At the same time I see that the education system is failing, which translates into a vicious circle that is difficult to break. Well, I am mixing a lot of things in here…should go to bed probably… :-/

  • http://islandinthepacific.blogspot.com Jessica

    Just finished reading The Sex Lives of Cannibals by an American who moved to tiny Kiribati in the South Pacific for a couple years. His culture shock upon returning to the U.S. in the end was pretty huge as well. Highly entertaining (except for the ch. about the treatment of island dogs).

    The Greggman blog was interesting, although, having seen some exhibits in Europe where items were left unattended in reach of the public – something that would never happenin the U.S. – I’m not sure how much of that is “Western culture” as a whole and how much is specific to America. Not really sure.

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