After more than a year in a different culture, coming back to the U.S. has resulted in at least a few surprises.
I suppose it’s mostly little things. Most people are once again taller than I am. And bigger, too. I had forgotten how much heavier the average American is versus the average Japanese. The fashions are noticeably different, too. Okayama isn’t a tremendously metropolitan city, but it has its fair share of department stores and fashion centers. Japanese fashions are much more interesting to look at than American fashions, I think—although I was getting rather tired of the punk rocker style that is the current favorite of the male university student population.
I miss walking into stores and not hearing “irasshaimase” (“welcome”) from every other employee! This was very unexpected. I find myself entering stores now and expecting a greeting. Instead I get silence (or store muzak), and I have to remind myself that I’m not in Japan anymore. It’s such a little thing, but that simple “irasshaimase” always made me feel welcome. American stores in general just don’t feel very welcoming anymore.
There are also small “incidents of wastefulness” (as I’ll call them) that rub me the wrong way more than they used to before I went to Japan. Living in Japan is an exercise in economy—avoiding the air conditioner and heater until it’s absolutely necessary, using a bicycle instead of a car, fluorescent lights instead of incandescent, solar power, and so on. To contrast, today I saw a person trimming along the sidewalk with a power lawn edger (forgivable). But behind the first person was a second with a leaf blower to remove the grass clippings from the sidewalk. Given the width of the sidewalk the work could have been completed in the same time with a simple tool known as a broom.
But that, like everything else, is very minor. It’s just magnified by the lens of culture change. After a few weeks I’ll probably get used to everything (or maybe “calloused” is better).
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