Japan has always held a peculiar intrigue for me since I first started paying attention to it about 6 years ago. I, like many other foreigners before me, will be moving to Japan later this month to fulfill an initial 3 year contract. After a 6-week study abroad program three years ago, I knew I wanted to go back, even though the effects of 'gaijin syndrome' had started to take their toll on me. It is easy to get into that mindset where you notice something like ritualistically taking off your shoes at the door as being weird and foreign because, logically, taking three steps to grab something off the table with your shoes on won't hurt anything. Then you meet a native from your own country who was raised to never wear shoes in the house and you feel like an ignoramus.
I have studied the language and culture for 4.5 years. My exchange student friends from Japan say I'm 80% Japanese in my behavior and mannerisms. Currently I am finishing a book about haragei, which has been the single-most enlightening piece of reading material about the Japanese mind since I began questioning it.
I will be teaching English in my job, but targeted specifically at its applications in Computer and Software Engineering. While I'm ambitious enough to decide that I will be English teacher by day and Japanese in a gaijin's skin by night, I am afraid the effects of gaijin syndrome may be too strong for me. So I will be keeping a blog to try and keep myself in check.
From what I've seen reading this forum so far, many of you are still far more experienced than I am, and I look up to your advice. So how am I doing?
The bottom line is that Japan is different. But that is why I love it. It isn't just the surface culture, the people, or the lifestyles that are opposite of those in Western society. It is the very core of the countries existence, permeating into all contained within its borders, that differs from the West.
And yet, nothing is different in Japan than what can be found in the West.
You just can't expect to go to Japan and maintain your identity as you know it. Personally, I look forward to the metamorphosis
