Cultural Observations: I could use a summer ale right now... or just summer.

February is the coldest month in Japan. It's dark, cold and there is no insulation or central heat in most homes to combat this inconvenient and uncomfortable temperature status (so when I say it's cold, I mean inside and outside).


This gets to people.

To make matter worse, January and February encompass the time of year when most people hit their first (or at least one) wave of culture shock. Not that initial, pure-confrontation-with-obvious-differences that you might think of when defining culture shock, but the sometimes depressing emotional valleys that a person encounters when living abroad.

It doesn't just happen in Japan and this is a pattern that forms each year, but I've certainly noticed the signs of this culture shock in my expat community lately: a lot of people getting edgy and those who are heading back in the foreseeable future (like this summer) are starting to check-out, get antsy or get irritable.



I guess I am mentioning this because I think people should talk about this cycle as it's a realistic and natural part of moving to another country and culture. It happens to very normal, sane and intelligent people. To give some examples, one of my friends recently wrote an angry letter about some contractual issues she is having with her employer to a local newsletter, another friend wrote a somewhat negative article about relationships (how people in this country settle for things that they wouldn't at home) and a few women have mentioned how angry they have been about other small things recently. I, for one, have definitely been more emotional in the last few weeks than normal and was pretty cranky by the time I hit the 10th week of being sick.


I'm not going to drive this thing into the ground, but as one last example, I mentioned this topic to an aquaintance and he shared with me this letter he recently sent home about how things are going (warning: explicit language):

Japan? let me tell you. My job is boring, half the time I have nothing to do at work and I just read books or go on the internet or take naps. Sounds like paradise I know but try that every day for 8 hours a day for like 3 weeks. I'm also thoroughly sick of the passive aggressive simpering milksop culture of this benighted island. I'm sick of not being able to talk to girls. I'm sick of being illiterate and having the verbal capacity of a three year old and therefore being treated as such. I'm sick of the racism I encounter on the street, especially from old people (and you know how I feel about the elderly already) I swear I'm gonna knock one into traffic some day, f***ing worthless leeches. I'm sick of the other foreigners here and their condescending multicultural relativistic moralising, or on the other extreme the 50 year old expats who are married to 50ish Japanese women but who hold (basically) group meet-and-f***s in their private english schools with like 25-30 year olds...I swear to god, if only I could explode peoples heads with my mind. And I'm sick of not having a goddamn clothes drier.




This email is extreme, yes, but I'm telling you - this guy LOVES Japan... at least normally. He studied here in college, did a double-major with biology and Japanese, has had a few Japanese girlfriends and is an all-around cool guy. I'm not going to comment on some of the more shocking and negative aspects of the above statements, but some of them are potentially brutally honest, probably true & aren't talked about in "polite company".

So, yeah, while I am still having fun in Japan and am generally pretty happy, the general level of (foreigner-) morale is down and I think it has about 94.7% to do with the time of year and the weather. The calendar says spring (Setsubun is over!!) but it's definitely still that dead-in-the-middle-of winter drag.

The funniest thing is that all of these people (myself included) love Japan - or they are all doing pretty well here and I am willing to bet they will at least reflect fondly upon their experience and time living in Japan.

I personally run to deal with stress (or do little things that make me happy like hiking, journaling, reading or buying myself flowers - AND I'm working on getting a heater in my classroom) but I definitely think being aware of how certain circumstances can affect you is important. If you've extended amounts of time abroad (as a student, for example) and haven't had these experiences, you might be lucky. It might also be something that hits when you actually settle in somewhere, too, however and aren't in a temporary (>1 year) situation. I don't know, but it's something I would like to learn more about...