My Two Cents

To say that Japanese culture is different than western culture is a bit of an understatement. There are so many differences that many of them jump out at you after you have spent a decent amount of time in the country. Today I would like to talk about the difference between how Japanese people learn things and how Americans learn things.

A New Chapter

When I first moved to Japan as an Assistant Language Teacher with the JET Program I was ready to learn what my duties were and what the Japanese teachers whom I would be working with expected of me. As I had never worked in a Japanese school before, I expected to be given many instructions ranging from how to conduct myself in the classroom, how to interact with students, what to plan for lessons and even general rules of the school. Little did I know, despite my Japanese studies and time spent traveling in Japan in the past, things tend to be done a bit differently than what I was used to back home in the states.A typical Japanese school office.

Read the Air

For the longest time I kept thinking things such as, "Am I doing a good job?" "Do they like me?" "What should I do if ....?" and was a little surprised that I received little verbal instruction from anyone at the schools that I worked out. As It turns out the way of learning in Japan tends to differ from that in the States. Japanese tend to learn by observing what others are doing around them and then following those actions being especially careful to not behave in a way or do things that the people around them are doing. Admittedly this was hard for me to grasp at first as I was used to being given lots of verbal instruction at all of the jobs that I had worked at. This also made me realize that maybe the Japanese way of doing things is a bit more intuitive and helps to develop the ability to sense the situations going on around you and adapt to them.

Down on the Farm

Another example of a time when I realized this was when I helped my in-laws plant rice one day. Despite the fact that I had never done this before, I received little direct instruction as to what I should be doing and instead I was expected to look at what the others who were helping out were doing and follow along. It was at this time that I had recalled my first experiences with this kind of non-verbal training that I had encountered in the Japanese schools I worked at when I was an Assistant Language Teacher.

One of these is not like the others.

Do as I say not as I do!

To illustrate how these kind of interactions are different in the west, how my American father would instruct me when I would volunteer to help him do work as a child (read was forced to) springs to mind. My father would always give me specific instructions as to what he wanted me to do and he was sure to correct me when I was doing something wrong (more than a few times while barking orders) or not in a way that he deemed fit. I think Americans tend to feel unease when they are faced with the Japanese way of doing things that relies more on subtlety and non-verbal forms of communication. A Japanese person will almost never come out and tell you if you have done something wrong to your face they will instead act in a way that you will be forced to pick up on and correct your behavior. For many of us expats living here, this can be hard to navigate but I think that it is a valuable skill to have and helps to make our western sensibilities more sensitive to reading how others feel.