When you visit Japan, you feel and think many differences between your country and Japan. The differences are valuable and important. Depends on people, especisally depends on people’s nationality, it’s very different how they feel about Japan.
Let’s talk from one of Japanese point of view about how Japanese feel to other countries and about Japan.
About Japan
It’ｓ said that when people from overseas come to Japan, they are surprised that the trains come right on time, the strees are clean, Japanese poeple have cold-hearted, Japanese people work very hard from early morning to midnight and more.
How do you think bout Japan?
For me ,one of Japanese, if the train doesn’t come on time, the schedule gets messed up. You won’t get the place you meet your friend in time, and won’t watch the movie you have planned becaue of the delayed train. You feel sorry to your frined who are waiting for you because of the train. Usually, the trains in Japan arrive punctually so that you don’t need to feel like that. I prefer trains than buses because buses sometimes come late because the traffic will congest.
It’s very necessary to be punctual in Japan. Japanese don’t trust people who don’t respect time.
Languages
Japanese people study English from 6 years old to 15 years old for compalsory education. In other words, you study English untill graduating from junior high school in Japan. In addition many Japanese people take some English lessons after school. However Japanese people are not good at speaking English even though they study English for a longtime.
WHY?
They think that they should speak English as same as native English speaker does. Japanese have ability to speak English but they are so shy to speak Japanese English. They learn English grammar from Japanese teacher at school so that they know English grammar well but they don’t have so much chance to talk in English in Japan. When Japanese people try speak English , they tend to speak in a good grammar. However Japanese grammar and English grammar are completely different so that it takes time to come out the next word for Japanese people. Then they give up speaking English and just smile.
Eyes meeting
When your eyes meet the someone’s eyes, someone nods to you with no words in Japan, even if you don’t know each other. How about your country?
When you pay to a casher, the casher sees your eye and you also do. Sometimes the casher smiles to you with no meaning and say thank you, and also you do.
Japanese parents teach that when you talk to someone, you need to look at their eyes. In addition, say thank you whenever someone does something good for you with eyes contact. When I visit south east asia, I feel lonely because there are not so many eyes meeting and smile to me who are stranger.
Summary
These are just my opinion. There are many Japanese people who have different thoughts in Japan.
Japan is an island country and has only ocean borders that’s why there were not so many immigrants for a long time. So there is not many chance for Japanese to meet people from other countries. These days many foreign people come to Japan for sightseeing. Japanese people might have chance to talk in English and experience other country’s cultures!
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