Upon my arrival to Japan I didn’t experience much culture shock, I had mentally prepared myself for simple things as: all of the signs being in Japanese character and everyone speaking a language I can’t understand, but I found plenty of English on signs and Japanese people that I spoke with knew enough English to carry on a conversation. This would not be the case in America where Spanish is a strong second to English, but does not appear nearly as often on signs. The majority of American’s are monolingual, making it difficult for people from other countries to get help while traveling. Seeing English in many places or having access to English versions of documents made travel much easier and made Japan feel more inviting. While it was fairly easy to get around asking people if they spoke English in most cases, although I tried to speak as much Japanese as possible out of respect.
5 Comments so far
Leave a comment
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
I agree Nick. Trying to speak their language out of respect was no easy task. With our limited knowledge of the Japanese language our group was very lucky to run into English-speaking Japanese people to help us in our travels. I was elated when we went to places and they had english menu or maps. It was so much easier than having one person read everything to everyone.
Comment by pawlusiak June 6, 2008 @ 10:18 pmI was mentioning this same thing in my posts, but having English surrounding you is a blessing in disguise. I say in disguise because you don’t really take it for granted until those moments when it’s just not available. For instance: When you (Nick) and I were trying to find that Korean place and went up to the restaurant with those other kids. Our books got us nowhere. Our extraordinarily limited knowledge of the Japanese language got us more confused than we already were. The same thing when I was separated from you guys on the way to Osaka Castle… English got me barely anywhere – it was point and nod most of the time. Being a monolingual country of the most widely used language in the world is a benefit, but when you find those parts of the world where that language isn’t heard, it’s almost a punishment.
Comment by mynameisflip June 9, 2008 @ 12:37 amI remember feeling completely relieved when we first met the other professor who we met at the chicken restaurant. Even though we had only been in Japan a day or so it was such a relief to be able to communicate with someone outside of our group, and it made it seem like we weren’t so out of place.
Comment by mikeinjapan June 9, 2008 @ 9:58 pmI liked what you had said about not seeing this sort of thing in the States, because it’s almost expected of people to know English here. It was amazing the amount of people who spoke English and were more than willing to speak it to us, very, very nice of them. I was most happy that they had menus in English which I think helped us all out a lot!
Comment by felixjes June 10, 2008 @ 4:30 amAbsolutely – I was so shock went I first saw how Japanese people reacts when they see Caucasians on the street. They were abscessed with you!! Some of them really wanted to talk to you, and some of them really wanted to take a picture with you. Just like celebrities. HAHA.
Comment by ja2nyda2ny June 23, 2008 @ 4:06 am