Culture Shock on a Small Scale
How I grew to love both my tiny apartment and new life in Japan
Niijima Jou & I
‘Well, this is dismal,’ I thought, sitting on the edge of my narrow new bed, ‘Six months in here’. It certainly felt like a prison sentence; at fifteen square metres, the apartment was only slightly larger than a holding cell at the Old Melbourne Gaol. (Which I had, by the way, once tried to rent as a writing studio.)
My new Kyoto apartment was a thirty-minute bike ride to Doshisha University, unlike my first choice of accommodation, a girls’ dormitory a leisurely ten-minute stroll away. Another spot of bad luck: I was on the third floor, and power to the lift had been cut off by management due to the unspecified hi-jinks of the prior year’s students. (This was alright, apart from when I had to schlep my laundry up from the basement.)
Doshisha’s founder Niijima Jou, was a stowaway to America, risking life and limb so eager was he to study science and learn about Christianity during Japan’s isolation period. This was at a time when almost no one was permitted abroad. Guess Japan had a hard time dealing with its culture shock as this isolation period lasted over two hundred years. Do you think Niijima, stomach roiling with the choppy waters, ever thought, ‘Sixity days in here? How dismal’?
Had Niijima been apprehended, he would have certainly been executed. As it stands, he arrived in America unscathed and changed his name to Joseph Hardy Neesima. After graduating from Amherst College in Boston, Nijima/Neesima returned to Japan and opened an English school in Kyoto which evolved into Doshisha University, the location of my foreign exchange program. Both America and Japan bestowed great honours upon him.
Anatomy of an apartment
My home for the next six months was furnished with a bed set against the wall, a desk opposite, and a squat particle-board bookcase wedged in along the edge of the desk, to the right of the frosted-glass window (a common privacy feature in Japanese homes). The window had no fly-screen, something I discovered just before the underwear I had been drying on the ledge was about to flutter outside.
Bedding (see below) was provided and consisted of a futon to go over the doubtless despoiled mattress, as well as sheets, covers and a small, square pillow filled with the traditional buckwheat grain. This pillow would become the bane of my existence; lumpy doesn’t begin to cover it. Cotton-stuffed pillows in Japan are also unusually firm, so I couldn’t find a worthwhile replacement.
I’d bought my friends souvenirs from trendy Shinjuku while on a pre-semester holiday and now these served to gussy up the place. I stuck a jidou doa (automatic door) sign from Kappabashi—the restaurant supplies district of Tokyo which sells hyper-realistic food replicas—outside to add a final ironic, kitschy touch to my new abode. It was still there when I visited four years later, and I like to think it added a modicum of confusion to every subsequent tenant’s introduction to the apartment. (I wonder if it’s still there today?)
I’ve described the main room, however, there was also a genkan: an entranceway with room to stash your shoes (as in many cultures including my own, wearing shoes indoors is verboten) which lead into the raised kitchenette and bathroom. Both were tiny. There was no bench space whatsoever in the kitchenette, and the toilet was set at an angle so as to fit the bathroom. (For several years after, aeroplane bathrooms seemed roomy by comparison.)
Despite the bathroom’s compactness, there was a bathtub; Japan is a bathing-obsessed culture. It was temperature controlled (I kept the water at a very toasty 42°C/108°F degrees), and deep enough so that only the tops of my shoulders were above the water when filled to maximum capacity. However, I did have to sit with my arms wrapped around my knees; the tub was deep but not long, much like a traditional Japanese cedar soaking tub. (Also, not to complain, but I think Japan has hard water as I could never get a good lather.)
Here’s a video tour of my apartment I found online. In my day we weren’t provided with an in-room fridge and microwave (luxury!). But this is pretty much what mine looked like.
Although the view out of my window was of the bicycle parking, the apartment block faced a temple; occasionally I was roused from sleep by the chanting of monks from Nishi Hongan-Ji. A stately, black behemoth, it somehow manages to remain austere despite all of its gilding and intricate detail. It leaves you awed and cowed in equal measure as it swallows you up into its cool, fragrant darkness. It is beautiful.
Other things to wake me up on weekend mornings included a campaign van blasting political slogans in a shrill, cheery voice and an earthquake that shook the window pane. By now accustomed to earthquakes, I decided this was about a 5 on the Richter scale, and rather than crawl under my desk like you’re supposed to, I fell back onto my lumpy buckwheat pillow and promptly fell asleep. (Speaking of freaky natural events, I once got the day off because of a typhoon warning.)
Culture shock on a larger scale
The months I spent as a foreign exchange student in Kyoto were some of the best of my life: living out of home for the first time, adapting to a foreign country, not to mention something I sorely miss these days: weekdays consisting of a few hours of intense intellectual stimulation followed by swathes of free time to reflect on and enjoy life. (I’ve gone part-time to focus on my writing, so I’ve at least partially returned to that glorious lifestyle.)
Describing the slow process of assimilation isn’t an easy undertaking. When I arrived back home, my parents asked me what had surprised me the most and I lamely replied that Japan was more humid than I had expected. What else could I say and be understood? My preconceived notions would naturally differ from that of a person who hadn’t been fascinated by Japan from a young age.
The truth is, there were no big surprises, only difficult to articulate nuances. I was prepared and yet nothing can prepare you, truly, for submersion in an entirely different culture. Take, for instance:
The curious case of the woman on the road at midnight
On my first night in Osaka, Japan, I met up with a friend, a fellow foreign exchange student already living in Kyoto. I was perplexed when she found a wrinkled Yu-Gi-Oh! card on the train and went to the trouble of handing it to the conductor, who took it with both white-gloved hands as it were a gift or a business card and thanked her profusely, bowing over and over. What a waste of time, I thought.
That same night my friend and I walked past a uniformed woman passed out in an alley, her legs hanging over the curb. Considering she was partially on the road, I worried someone would run her over; I worried she had passed out and needed medical attention. My friend managed to talk me down from checking on her (‘We shouldn’t disturb her’) or calling an ambulance.
I thought my friend callous, sociopathic even. In actual fact, she had assimilated, and this contrast—the pointless detour to hand in a children’s playing card versus what I perceived as apathy toward a fellow imperilled human being—was my first bit of culture shock. (Well, seeing a Japanese man pull his trousers down on the train platform was also shocking—though a well-known problem.)
After living in Japan a little longer, I came to realise the sleeping woman was perfectly fine and never in any danger of being run over. She was likely taking a nap before a night shift, and drivers would have carefully manoeuvred around her. Rather than a culture of uncaring apathy, Japan is a culture of unobtrusive care. Not to mention, a culture where sleeping in odd places is considered socially acceptable.
Likewise, if you fall off your bicycle in Japan, no one will come to your aid or inquire ‘Are you alright?’ unless you are grievously injured. Rather, they’ll avert their eyes as they walk around you. This is done to preserve your dignity; allowing others to save face is something the Japanese consider to be of the utmost importance. Meanwhile, you’ll get up and dust yourself off in a hurry, practically scraping and bowing, because inconveniencing the people around you implies you do not care about others, equally a faux pas.
Remember all that negativity at the start of my story? All symptoms of grappling with an unfamiliar environment and customs. After two months into my exchange program, I felt completely differently about my apartment. And about Japan. Tiny apartment—perfect, less of it to clean and heat. Broken elevator—incidental exercise. Far away? More time on my bike enjoying the scenery along the banks of the Kamo River.
Tips for fish out of water
When you’re a fish out of water expect to flounder (or is that just codology?). It doesn’t matter whether you’ve gone to live overseas, started university or a new job, or suddenly found yourself single. It’ll take a while to find your sea legs (excuse my naughty nautical puns).
The thing about living in a foreign country is that it’s not at all like being a tourist. A tourist’s life is sublime, mostly carefree shopping, sightseeing, and gluttonous food gorging. A resident’s life is paying rent at the post office (well, at least in Japan it is), opening a bank account, finding a good phone plan, and figuring out what is and isn’t recyclable.
Rather than being cossetted in the unreality of various liminal spaces like airports, train stations, and hotel lobbies, all staffed with people used to dealing with befuddled tourists, you deal with regular people. They’ll have to tap you on the shoulder to teach you to queue in a very particular way for the ATM or inform you that the bank is closed on a Wednesday (and, inexplicably for a cash-centred culture, its ATM along with it). And while every country will have its jerks, generally your early days will be a series of misunderstandings rather than bona fide misfortunes.
Just so you know how discombobulated I felt, check out my email home after just one week in Kyoto written September 2009. The strange punctuation is a product of being confounded by Japanese keyboards; the immaturity a product of being barely out of my teens; and the cause of my frustrations are enumerated below:
The people of Kyoto are lovely, of course. I suspect the misunderstanding above was a product of Japanese incorporating many loan words that have a different nuance and even meaning than in the original English.
Another misunderstanding occurred when a convenience store clerk told me Wakarimasen (I don’t understand) when I asked her for directions in well-enunciated and accurate Japanese. In Japanese, wakarimasen is often used in place of ‘I don’t know’ (shirimasen) when you really ought to know. For example, when someone asks your spouse’s phone number but you can’t recall it on account of your phone-augmented memory and therefore crippling technological dependency, you might say, ‘Wakarimasen’.
As crestfallen and humiliated as I was, the clerk wasn’t being dismissive or disparaging my attempts to communicate, she simply didn’t know how to get to a famous and nearby castle in the neighbourhood where she worked. So you see, there’s a difference between knowing (Someone was rude to me) and understanding (It was an understandable misunderstanding and not some indication of racism). A fabulous life lesson courtesy of the Japanese language.
Incidentally, that’s precisely why culture shock takes so long to shake off. Familiarity is not the product of a single encounter, nor is it a matter of semantic knowledge. Knowing the language and customs of a foreign culture is not quite the same thing as understanding or appreciating them. That takes time and patience. There’s no way to rush the process; the process is just life.
One day you’ll be struck by it all: the new friends, routines, favourite hangouts and foods, the prettily decorated and superbly located apartment, the beloved second-hand squeaky bicycle, and you’ll wonder why you ever felt lost, firmly anchored as you are.
You’ll exchange a look of conspiratorial chagrin with a local woman scribbling addresses on her New Years cards because, just like you, she’s left them to the last minute and the post office (which you’ve finally located) is about to close for the day. Once annoyed by Japanese middle-man culture, you’ll sit at an izakaya and over drinks thank your mediators for helping you smooth over a dispute with your university back home.
You’ll ride your bike down the narrowest of spaces, between the railing blocking you off from traffic and the moat of the Old Imperial Palace, lifting your umbrella high to make room for another cyclist to pass. (A skill even more essential than killing it at karaoke, which you will do every Friday while guzzling melon soda.)
The feather on your cap is when an out-of-towner, a Japanese person, stops to ask you (you!) how to get to Kyoto Station. (‘Wakarimasen!’ will be your reply if you’re as bad at orienting yourself as I am.) And, once you’ve finally assimilated, it’s time to fly home to face an even greater challenge: reverse culture shock (coupled with newfound sympathy for visitors to your home country). But, well, that’s a different kettle of fish, and therefore a story for another time.
If you enjoyed this, you might also like Culturally Appropriate: Steal these Traditions to Improve your Life. And you might also like to buymeacoffee or:
Thank you. That was an enjoyable and interesting read.