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Culture Shock! - 04-25-2011, 05:42 AM

It would be fantastic if people could read and repsond to this idea of Culture Shock! I any prticular way...

Culture shock happens to everyone who is transplanted to another country. Few are completely immune to it. It is a real malady to some and a mild feeling of indisposition to others. Part of it is subconscious. I could be masked by the physical shock of climate change.
What is Culture Shock?
Culture shock is the stress and anxiety that occurs when you physical surroundings and the people around you change. You have to expend a certain amount of nervous energy to cope with change, and this causes stress.
Culture shock will hit you at two levels. First, at the physical level. Familiar signs and familiar shapes will not be there. You may accept the change in surroundings, but your psyche has to adjust. Second, at the obvious different behaviour of the people of Japan. Both cause a certain measure of stress.
Symptoms of Culture Shock:
Fatigue, irritability and homesickness are some symptoms. Others may include a desire to talk to people ‘who make sense’, drinking heavily, suspicions that THEY are talking about you. They are looking at you, watching you and every move you make. Or eating at McDonald’s more often than you did at home.
Who is more susceptible?
Teenagers, women, and those who have never left home. The woman is usually harder hit than her man by culture shock. She stays at home while he goes off to the office or the factory. He has an objective, the same objective he has lived with in the home country. He has the expertise, the same expertise that brought him to Japan. He has the confidence of his expertise. There are problems but he can get on with it.
She kisses him goodbye, shuts the door, and faces Japan.
Culture Shock Japan
Culture shock Japan is one of the worst varieties of culture shock. If you are whisked away from home and planted in some part of darkest Africa or Asia you know you will have to make many adjustments. But you will expect Japan, with all its technology, its centuries of development of the arts, its cleanliness, and its smooth organisation, to present no major problems that you cannot cope with. The shock is greater because you see structures and systems parallel to what you are used to at home at first. The sober business men’s suits. The expressways. Western restaurants with the most attentive service And then you meet the hurdles which are so very different from those you have experienced. You hit walls that you never imagined could exist.
The apologising, the bowing and muttering of words which even with no knowledge of Japanese you will sense are apologies, will baffle or annoy you. You just can’t understand why they think they should apologise. Shitsurei shimasu, Shitsurei shimasu, Shitsurei shimasu, Shitsurei shimasu. All the time!
Japlish, or Japanese-English, is a similar irritation. Yamamoto-san speaks English, but trying to get past his Japlish to what he means could drive you up a wall.
Culture shock can be like your first earthquake experience, if you aren’t prepared for the surprise of the ground under your feet moving and changing.
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