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Beyond silly mistakes like wearing toilet slippers on tatami or forgetting to add “san” to someone’s name, what other things do foreigners unknowingly do to reduce their chances of living happily in Japan?
Before going to Japan for travel, study or work, many people from overseas take the opportunity to read up on several of the country’s more common dos and don’ts in order to avoid committing any cultural faux pas. In Japan, a country with a lot of its own unique social rules and conventions, it’s all too easy for visitors from abroad to blithely inconvenience their hosts and embarrass themselves.
Pretty much every foreigner who has spent time in Japan will have tales of all the myriad ways they unwittingly did or said the wrong thing before fully acclimatising. But today we’re not here to talk about accidentally stepping on tatami mats while wearing shoes, or talking on the phone while on the train, or any of the other insignificant little social snafus that we’ve all heard of before.
Instead, we’re going to talk about the serious, potentially life-altering mistakes that many foreigners make when living in Japan, and which many people don’t even realise they’re making until months or even years pass. We’re talking about the kind of mistakes that foster distance between oneself and others, mistakes which hinder their attempts to acclimatise to Japan, and mistakes that scupper their own chances of having a happy life in Japan.
Let’s begin!
Mistake 1: “Gaijin Smashing”
The “Gaijin Smash”, a phrase allegedly first coined by an American working on the JET Program, means to exert your will over a Japanese person using your foreign-ness as leverage. A typical example of the Gaijin Smash that’s often cited is when a person pushes through the ticket gate at the station without buying the right ticket, knowing that the station staff might be reluctant to chase after and engage with a big, scary foreigner with whom they may not be able to properly communicate.
Full article continued at RocketNews24
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