A Slippery Slope

Our apartment has another JET from the states here. He moved from his previous apartment 50 minutes away to come here. RIGHT next to my apartment -.-. Damnit. I don’t hang out with him, I do not want to associate myself with him, but the simple fact that I’m a foreigner here means that anything he does (or doesn’t do) will be reflected upon me. There has been no trouble with the other people of the apartment, all of them say hello and wave or something, and some of our neighbors have invited us over to eat lunch every now and again. I don’t want that to be jeopardized because some guy wants to bring his drama to our apartment. He left because he had problems with other foreigners here, got in an argument and ran away from those people there. However, those catty people, knowing that he’s here now, would come and visit one of the other JETs in the complex. Little does she know that her so called friends are just using her because after a while it gets boring hanging out with the same JETs weekend after weekend.

What annoys me about all of them is that all this crap that they go on and on about; it’s all drama among other foreigners. It’s drama among people who they have seen and hung out with for the past 20 or so years. My thing is, why aren’t they arguing and fighting with Japanese people? Why aren’t they trying to reach out to the Japanese people in the apartment complex? Even “the help” and her tag along, even though they’ve been here for three years, I haven’t seen ONE Japanese person around them that wasn’t a teacher and they had work to do. They stress hanging out with foreigners to the point of neglecting the people of the country, despite LIVING IN THE COUNTRY.

I think a lot of that stems from being so caught up in the foreign bubble that once you get in, it’s impossible to leave. I mean, why would anyone want to deal with speaking with Japanese people, have eventual cultural clashes, deal with the language barrier but eventually trying to come to agreements and make friends, right? It’s a lot easier to ignore them, hang out with people that speak your native tongue and only reluctantly deal with Japanese people when you have to, right?


I think all foreigners come here with the idea of wanting to make a lot of Japanese friends, wanting to feel accepted and so forth. However, when you first get here, you realize that it’s a lot harder than you thought, and their reactions to you aren’t really what you expect. If you are able to understand that what this person does doesn’t apply to all Japanese people, and while annoyed, you can begin to work through it, then you’ll be okay. I think that if you complain to other foreigners, who ONLY hang out with other foreigners (even those in charge), they will tell you that it’s your fault that this is happening to you, and the way to deal with it is to understand what you’re doing wrong to make them behave like this to you. That’s a big part of the textbook method of dealing with culture shock. I don’t agree at all. That was repeatedly fed to me by people who haven’t been through their own period of self-searching and awareness because they’ve been around foreigners for 3 years. The term culture shock is also thrown around too often as well. If I don’t like something about a culture, I’m not culture shocked. I’m critically thinking. How come I can’t dislike a part of the culture I’m living in? What’s crazy about it is that those who are giving other people “advice” are just as blind to problems, so it becomes the “blind leading the blind.”


I still stand by my opinion that most of the people I have met here, know just as little as those who just came here because they blind themselves to truth of a lot of things. After a while it’s just a passing of the veil, or rose colored glasses, or whatever way people like describing “hiding the truth.” The thing is, it seems like a lot of people have this strange notion that if you dislike ONE thing about Japan, then you dislike EVERYTHING about Japan and you’re culture shocked and need to read a book. It’s something that everyone living here will be forced to come to terms with. Whether you want to deal with it when you first arrive, or 3 years later when you realize that you’ve been living in a foreign bubble and haven’t really been IN Japan, but just looking from the outside through your bubble. Blinding yourself to the truth of things is just as bad as hating all things Japan. Being aware of things you dislike, while finding things you can appreciate is the way to go. You can never reach that point if you hang out at foreign bars and ignore Japanese people on a daily basis. Keith likened it to the Matrix; you’re either plugged into it or not.




I was given some interesting advice by a Japanese woman. I’m learning piano (still quite terrible, but I can do scales…) and the woman teaching me is one of the kindest and sweetest Japanese ladies I’ve ever met. Her daughter is also adorable too. Her mother is also great and always makes lunch for me and Keith. Out of the blue, when the lesson was over and I was getting ready to leave, the piano teacher’s mother asked me, “So, Tatum…do you hang out with many foreigners?” Excluding Keith and the awesomely awesome Rachelle, not really, and I told her that. Do you know what she said? She said, “Well….this is just my opinion (!) but I don’t think that you should be hanging out with a lot of foreigners. Ever.” Well…..shit. I’m not really sure where it came from but then she went on with, “Well, this is also just my opinion (!) but when I see a big group of foreigners around, I ask myself and others, ‘what is their purpose of being here?’ So, I don’t want you to be associated with those kinds of people, are we clear?” Whoa. First off, she said “this is just my opinion” which is outrageous since most Japanese people, in order to keep the peace, don’t really say what’s actually on their minds.

When you’re a foreigner who speaks Japanese, you get told all kinds of things that they cannot say to Japanese people. I’ve also been told by her that if one Japanese person believes something, then almost all of them believe the exact same thing. Now, I’m not sure how correct that even is, but it’s clear that a lot of Japanese people don’t like big groups of foreigners. Even for me too, if I see a big group (I’m talking 6, 7 and up) of any type of people in the states then I’m going to wonder what they’re doing and why they’re together in such a big group because of the group mentality in how everyone shares the same brain. She clearly told me to make sure that I’m not involved in that. I completely agree. Not to mention, I can’t become fluent if I’m speaking English 24/7.



I’m not saying all foreigners should be avoided; I’m saying the ones that you don’t like, and the ones that you would never hang out with in your home country are the ones that you should be avoiding. Whether or not they are able to see things that others notice, hanging out with someone just because they’re in the same company as you is counter-productive. You don’t want to be with the group that’s too busy ignoring Japanese people and acting stupidly in public. Whether or not you take part in their stupid activities, just being around them makes you guilty by association. If they want to give up and blindly hate Japanese people or blindly love Japanese people then they shouldn’t be any of your concern. I, for one, want no part of it.