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Published: July 17th 2008
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It's strange, I've been in Tokyo for nearly four months and the longer I've been here the more of a tourist I feel.
I mean, sure, I now eat rice for breakfast, can push my way with the best of them on public transport, no longer take the free tissues they hand out at the station and I can't remember the last time I used a knife and fork, but.... I really feel more western now than when I first arrived.
I've been trying to pinpoint exactly what it is thats making me feel this way and have been finding it really hard to do. Its small things. Tiny insignificant things that get my attention that confuse me endlessly simply for the fact that the mindset behind it is so completely different from my own.
I didn't have so much of a culture shock when I first arrived in Tokyo - it's a big city, I like big cities, I feel at home in big cities and although all cities are different, at the end of the day they're all big groups of buildings with lots of people rushing around. The culture shock for me has been quite a slow progression, working here and getting to know the people here is what has brought it on for me. I just don't think like a japanese person. It's hard for me to give an example without it sounding like a tirade of bewildered how can they not know that they're wrong and I'm right type rantings (which is the last kind of person I want to be), I know I'm not always right, I know the Japanese way is definately not wrong, but I have been going out of my mind trying to figure out why things are done in a certain fashion that seem to me to be a roundabout way of getting things done.
Sanaes been doing her best to explain it to me, but somehow I always end up more confused and frustrated than before and wind up repeating "but it doesn't make sense" to which she sensibly replies "It doesn't need to make sense, it's the japanese way, and you are in Japan" which is good common sense that you really can't argue with.
Searching for an answer, when there's not one is never a clever thing to do, especially when you're the kind of person who gets frustrated easily, and can be prone to throwing the odd tantrum or two. A girl I met through travelblog (http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/tiffatron/ - check her out!) has actually alerted my attention to the fact that in Tokyo they have cafes where you can go and pay money to play with kittensărabbits or whatever takes your fancy. Not being much of an animal person this idea doesn't exactly thrill me to the core but it has made me sit up and have a bit of a think. Perhaps I've been here for too long I've started to close my eyes to the wonderful crazy stuff and focus too much on the differences that are pissing me off.
There are wonderful things that happen around me all the time that I don't pay so much attention to anymore. Like the fact that people actually do walk around wearing kiminos quite often as part of everyday life. It's quite common in summer, and it thrilled me so much when I first got here but now it just seems so normal that if 20 women bustled onto the train in kiminos my thoughts would be less of the "Wow, oh my god, they look so pretty variety" and more of the "Damn, I'll have to give up my seat variety" and then undoubtedly to the "I can't wait to be old and have someone give me a seat n the train variety" which it always does in these seat giving up situations.
I really do think the kimino thing is great though. Japan is the only country I've ever been to where traditional wear is not just for special occasions, (like Germany and Oktoberfest for example) but just something they like to wear every now and then because they're Japanese, they're in Japan, and they feel like wearing traditional get up.
So, to tidy up my little ramble on culture shock I'm going to try to be a little less blaise about it all and try to revel in the differences rather than focus on the ones that drive me up the wall. So next time a man nearly runs me over on his bicycle, instead of waving my fist in the air behind him and shouting numerous expletives I will instead remind myself that when I'm back in Sydney the chances of me nearly being run over by a man on a bike in traditional pyjamas and wooden slippers, holding an umbrella over his head and simultaneously smoking a cigarette will be slim to none.
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tiffatron
tiffatron~*
GAAAASP tiffatron thats meeee!! hehe... ......another radical blog from leah-san!