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Originally Posted by Misericordias
The person who represented the college I will be studying in said that some of the professors go fishing from time to time. I would really like to go fishing with them, but I am afraid that there will be some major hurdles to overcome (such as age, for one) before I can go fishing with the professors. I know US professors, once you reach a certain level of familiarity, can become very amicable and nonchalant about many things, but how would I go about fishing with my professors? Is that just something out of my realm?
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The student - teacher culture is very different in pretty much every way than that in the US. There is a huge amount of respect toward teachers and professors, but at the same time there isn`t much of a wall at all between them and the students. In other words, you can still be giving them the utmost respect while going out fishing or drinking with them. It can be a pretty strange thing to wrap your head around when you`ve grown up having teachers exist in a sort of different level of the world. Here it is pretty normal for kids to grow up going over to teachers` houses to play, etc. The respect is in how you talk to them and treat them, not in the activities. And from another view, the activities do not give any excuse for a lapse in respect either. Things that would imply a close relationship or friendship simply do not.
If you bring up the subject of fishing with them, you may be surprised to be invited almost immediately. I would just let them know that you are interested and see what happens from there.
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There's also the question about drinking. I understand Japan to be a drinking culture (please correct me if I am wrong), but I don't drink due to personal reasons. Would it be rude for me to decline an offer for a drink or would it be best just to accept it and hope that the other people are inebriated enough to not notice I haven't drunk any alcohol?
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If you start out from day one saying that you don`t drink - you should have no problems. If you drink like a fish and then one day say no thanks, everyone will want to know why and you may get some pressure. Just stay consistent and you shouldn`t have any problems. Out of politeness you should take a sip of the drink you get for the cheers - but after that sip no one will probably care at all if you order a soft drink. (And might even be happy about it if you`re splitting the costs by person, as it means they will pay less.)
I`ve personally seen a LOT more pressure to drink at universities in the US than in Japan. There is nothing "special" about it here, so there isn`t really any of the "get them trashed!" mindset. There is a lot of casual drinking, but not much binge drinking, parties to get people drunk, etc.