lindalove

If you don't want to get drunk in Japan, never empty your glass completely. Because it will be filled instantly by someone else. (I learned that the hard way).

There is a very strict etiquette about eating in Japan, concerning chopsticks use. The worse you can do is to give a piece of food to someone from a chopstick pair to another. That's really really bad, not just rude: when someone dies, the traditional ceremony is to burn the corpse, and the bones are taken with special sticks by someone close to the dead, and given to someone else sticks to put in a special box.

The worse cultural shock for me was people snorting loudly in public places, even the more elegant looking people. As a matter of fact, it is very disgusting to use a tissue in public and snorting is completely acceptable. It is exactly the opposite here.

Something that disturbed me a lot at work: people never say "no", it is impolite. They have to find other way to say they disagree with your point of view. I'm sure they saw me as a barbarian or something.

However, they say "Haï Haï" (yes yes) a lot. When your are talking to someone, he makes approval gestures with his head, and says Haï Haï all the time. So you think he is agreeing. Then he starts to make a big speach and you slowly start to understand he is disagreeing (remember, it is impolite to say no), and that the "Haï Haï" thing just the polite way to express he was carefully listening.

Also, in France, they have this stupid habit of always responding to a question, even if we have no clue about the correct answer at the beginning of our reponse. They start to speak to gain time, while thinking madly to what the hell the correct answer is. In Japan, if you don't wait a little bit before answering, it means that you find the question stupid, or shows your are not able to think. A French teacher in Japan I know was completely freaking out in classrooms before someone explained it to him.

Oh! This one is funny: in most western countries, it's ladies first. In Japan, it's men first. My boyfriend was very surprised by the uncomprehension look on the pregnant women face when he let her a sit in the subway. I've heard of head bumping between an executive westerner executive women and an executive japanese guy when they instinctively tried to get out of an elevator at the same time.

This one made me think a lot about myself: I'm not sure I believe in god, I don't like religions, I thought I was free of all this "original sin" stuff and that I was a liberated girl from a sexual point of view. I was so wrong! I realized I'm completely impregnated by my own culture, and that this culture comes from the three religions of the book, whether I accept it or not. You should have seen my face when we were looking for a place to sleep in a "love hotel" during a trip to Tokyo (there is no need for reservation in those hotels, you can rent a room for a couple of hours or one night, and it is dedicated to legitimate couples who want to have fun in a country where intimacy is difficult due to thin walls and small appartments). The love hotel hill in Tokyo is a very wired area, and young fashion people were calmly checking the options of the rooms (sexual gadgets, school girls uniforms, sauna, bubble bath, hello kitty theme, karaoke, porn channels, playstations...) while I was all blushing and embarassed.