I am a graduate student from 2022 to 2024 in the U.S. though I lived in Japan before that.
During my stay in the U.S., I felt a lot of differences and sometimes spent hard times living in. Nevertheless, I’ve wanted to affect other people with whom I’ve been involved. Thus, I’m searching for a Japanese way of living overseas mainly from three perspectives.
Diversity
Because I lived in Japan for almost all of my lifetime, I’ve acquired a lot of “Common Sense”, which is not right in other countries.
I lived in a rural area in Japan, where only the Japanese lived. I know each person has a different personality; however, Japanese have lots of similarities.
I get in touch with diversity after I started working for several years.
I understand the meaning of the phrase, “Diversity is important.” But in reality, I didn’t know what diversity is.
Also, most Japanese are weak at diversity. We just didn’t know the concept because of a lack of at least some experience. So, I try to write the time when I felt differences as much as possible.
Why Japanese cannot speak overseas?
People from other countries often said to Japanese, “Don’t be afraid of mistakes. Don’t be shy.” It is true, including me, we are shy and often afraid of mistakes due to Japanese education. On the other hand, are they the core reasons?
People in Asian countries, such as Chinese or Korean from a Japanese perspective, are better at speaking English than Japanese though we lived in near places.
I think that Japanese tend to be poor at speaking English is from Japanese culture including Japanese language uniqueness. In reality, the difference in the sequence of words increases the difficulty of mastering other languages. Also, Japanese culture hesitates Japanese to speak English smoothly.
I think Japanese culture is too unique to live in other countries. I want to think about the strategies: how to live in other countries and what I need to acquire.
The potential of Japanese
As a country, Japan is still thought of as a strong developed country. However, in reality, Japan’s future seems to be worse because Japan is one of the most advanced aging societies in the world. Furthermore, because of the culture of respecting for elderly, I felt nervous and I had difficulty finding what I can do In Japan.
However, despite how adverse situations I am or will be in, my advantage is that I am Japanese. I need to think about Japan and its strength.
Japan seems to be a weird country. In the soccer world cup 2022, Japan won games over Spain and Germany but lose to Costa Rica.
After WWII, Japan recovered its economy and became one of the strongest countries as in a book title showed “Japan as number one” in 1979.
In history, Japan sometimes won some wars though it seemed to be lost such as Russo-Japanese War in the 20th century and the Mongolian Invasions in the 13th century.
I want to believe Japanese may have our uniqueness so I try to think about what is the uniqueness of me and Japanese.