I was originally going to place this in the travel section but the New Topic button seems to be missing. Mods, please feel free to place this into the travel section.
Anyhow, I took a short trip to Osaka and was dissapointed with the overall experience. There are some amazing sights, very beautiful temples, but in the end I was dissapointed with the people as a group. The Japanese are a very polite and helpful bunch, but I was a little sad with how difficult it was to talk to people or get to know them. The prices are also a pain and if you are travelling on a limited budget it can really ruin the whole experience of the trip.
I guess what dissapointed me most was how little I got to use the Japanese I have studied for so long. I had a couple of conversations with people in Japan, but I’d have to say that I have more conversations and chat with the French in the two hours at the Paris airport than my whole trip to Japan.
Maybe I just expected Japan to be a big brother version of Taiwan.
Well, you went to Osaka. While nowhere near as insular as much of the rest of the mainland, it’s still not easy for many japanese to talk to foreigners who after all are just on a short trip, with no chance to actually meet people properly over some time. I have met some great people in Osaka, but mostly through friends who live there.
Tokyo would have been worse for you then, though I have had great talks with random people in bars in Asakusa, for example.
Come to Okinawa instead! very friendly people here.
I lived with 6 Japanese students for a full year. Even dated one.
While I would consider them friends (call them if I’m in their hometown and stay with them, tell them how my day went, etc) I never felt anything near “close” to a single on of them except maybe the one I dated. They would even have parties every so often and NEVER ONCE thought to invite any one from the house (and -again- I was dating one of them! :O)
Overall less than wonderful experience. Was never so lonely in my life. And the Japanese girl was a walking comic relief. I mean, EVERYTHING was pink or with those “cute” bear/panda/chicken things attached or stickered on o_O
So needless to say she didn’t “love” me enough to talk to me.
We also lived with a girl from Bangladesh and a Filipina. They were the sweetest things I’d ever met.
The Koreans were nice and friendly. The Chinese… well, they failed at English so I don’t blame them for sticking to themselves.
So maybe it is just Japanese.
That’s not the first time i’ve heard of someone who was disappointed from a trip somewhere - the (for me) interesting questions are what did the disappointed person expect and is the next disappointment avoidable. Mind telling us a bit more about your expectations in regards to your trip?
Did you find it difficult to talk to other people, or did you find other people unresponsive when you talked to them, or did you notice that nobody talked to you on their own?
Were you surprised by the prices? Are you not familiar with the “円高” problem?
It sounds like that is a side effect of knowing enough Japanese to understand the things you need to understand to get around trouble free, no?
Is that reticence not perhaps also an expression of a culture where it is not common to shove things into people’s faces? (Compared to may other places where “everybody” is eager to sell the foreigner something )
Kyuushuu is full of friendly people! Honshuu’s a bit boring.
You need to think of Japan as Britain. We all value personal space and talking to strangers is quite strange. One would never invited an extra friend or partner to a different friend’s party without prior permission, and it would feel quite rude to ask the host yourself if you could impose an extra person on them.
Now, in the countryside, the ‘aisatsu’ (greeting) culture is still strong - children are expected to bow and greet everybody they pass on the road with a ‘konnichiwa’ (or ‘ohayou gozaimasu’) - this behaviour is met with ‘are you serious?’ stares in the cities. Go to the countryside, find a little restaurant just after the lunch rush, strike up a conversation with the boss - they’ll tell you where to go to meet people, and offer you lots of tips about their little down. If it’s a bar or an izakaya, again, talk to the boss; they’ll introduce you to other lone patrons. People who might be wishing to talk to you will be far too polite to do it without a nudge.
Southern Kyuushuu is the only place in Japan where women (young women, young mothers with children, middle aged women… the spectrum) started conversations with me. Uncontrollable curiosity, perhaps, or just friendlier. When on the Miyazaki line going down to WHERE THE WORLD ENDS (the end of the line in Shibushi; the large city of Kanoya farther south has no train service, punishment for rebellion) a mother of three chatted me up for 30 minutes until her station. At the end she said, “It’s too bad we couldn’t have a conversation.” We had been speaking in Japanese in 30 minutes, but hakujin, by Shinto edict and lacking the shaman genome, cannot “'speaka my lanuage” (Men At Work), so officially the conversation never happened.
I also felt disappointed. It was like a neater, over polite, anal retentive version of Taiwan where I couldn’t burp on the street or really enjoy something.
I knew something was up when all of the luggage came out on the belt with the handles pointing out. :aiyo:
I recently visited Japan for the first time. I thought it was awesome! I had difficulty speaking to people but that is mainly because I only know about ten words of Japanese. The politeness and order of everything is part of what makes it distinctive and unique. Everything about Japan was above and beyond my expectations.
Being disappointed is a necessary ingredient of learning. Seeing one’s preconceived notions shattered opens doors to a deeper appreciation of reality… Or so…
Immensely practical, isn’t it?
Visit Okinawa some time to get another perspective! :beatnik:
My dorm roomate in undergrad school was a beautiful Japanese girl. We became very, very close friends. I later had a chance to study for a month in Nagoya, and to visit my friend in Tokyo. It was a wonderful experience all around. I’d been studying Japanese for a year and quickly learned that I hadn’t learned much at all! I learned SO much on that trip, language wise. But I had enough to speak in short, stilted conversations with people, to get by and get what I needed.
The only thing I felt less than happy with was that you really can’t tell where you stand with people because they’re all so “polite.” But I’m a southern girl and so I know–sometimes “polite” is rude as hell. I felt that, though Japanese custom made things much more ritualised, the prescribed behaviors, just as manners in the South, allowed for a LOT of subtleties and slights of expression. A very rich sub-culture of communication that I could pick up on, but not really understand. Not trying to say I was being insulted–just that I couldn’t tell. There’s a lot more to socail interactions than just the surface tension.
Which makes for a rich experience all around. I do really love Japan.
I can vouch for Okinawa being a friendly place once went on a visa run there met some locals and they brought me out to a KTV and everything, also taught me a bit of the local language. Spent time in Kyoto recently, great place if you like temples, culture, civilization, food and cycling. We rented an apartment there. The environment is very clean, rivers well looked after in the mountains, even rafting nearby. Reminded me of northern Europe. They live a much healthier life. Their traditional markets are great too. Tokyo very cosmopolitan compared to Taiwan but Taipei is nicer than Osaka. One thing I noticed is the foreigners like to wear hats there and dress more “stylishly”, very different than the shorts and sandals and “lata” style of Taiwan, would look pretentious here, it’s just funny how people get influenced by their environment.
A basic research about Japan and Osaka would tell you that 1) Osaka is one of the most expensive cities in the world; if you’re on a budget, go to the Philippines with Cebu Pacific instead. 2) it would be ridiculous to expect to get to know people on a short trip.
[quote=“Lili”]I lived with 6 Japanese students for a full year. Even dated one.
While I would consider them friends (call them if I’m in their hometown and stay with them, tell them how my day went, etc) I never felt anything near “close” to a single on of them except maybe the one I dated. They would even have parties every so often and NEVER ONCE thought to invite any one from the house (and -again- I was dating one of them! :O)
[/quote]
Actually, I feel like in Taiwan, my roommates have never been friendly at all. The first time I came here, I wanted to ask a question about using the washer that we all shared. And, I couldn’t because as soon as they saw me, they would run into their rooms and lock the doors. The second time I came here, I stayed in a different place, and couldn’t get as much as a ni hou from the roomates. This is the third time, and it has been pretty much the same until one of them lost his keys. So, now he is forced to talk to me a little if he wants to get into the apartment. Is this normal, or am I just particularly scary? lol
First of all, I have to give this disclaimer. I am a full blooded Japanese with the US citizenship since I spent more years living in the US than Japan. So I have some bias, naturally, but I think I understand Japanese mentality/sensibility/sensitivity. If anyone who has taught English in Japan, you would know this, but Japanese students or Japanese people in general are extremely shy…and also afraid of making mistakes in conversation. We are extremely polite people, but such social mannerism can be found in upper social class in England. (both islanders?) Harrod’s and Mitsukoshi can be put in parallel. I mean that the surface politeness/service are taken very seriously sometimes, or often rather than the contents. Also, if you have ever lived in Germany, you might find that finding or creating a “friend” in Germany takes some time, just like in Japan. Once they accept you as a friend, then you will be a friend for a life. And for a person who have dated a Japanese woman, I can not generalize too much here, but there are many Japanese women/girls with many different goals and wishes. With that being said, most Japanese women are extremely hard to communicate, even harder than Japanese business men. They want you to “understand” what they want and what they are thinking without them revealing to you. If you read any Japanese literature both classic and contemporary and observe the male and female relationship, you will detect and observe such mysterious “virtual” communication.
And as many posters have indicated, there are many different parts of Japan, and indeed many different people in different regions in Japan. I have never been to Okinawa, but I always wanted to visit, since some of Okinawa I met have been wonderful people.
It is a bit ironic that one did find Osaka people unfriendly. Osaka people are unfriendly to Kanto (truly greater Tokyo area) people, but to get to know Osaka people, they are most fun, friendly and crazy people in Japan, especially people from nearby Kyoto (a huge difference).
So, I am sorry for not so great experience in Japan this time around, but give it a try, somewhere different next time.
)
I learned a few things from them.