Will Miss #401 - the blue lights

I live along a Japan Railway (JR) line that is famous for attracting suicidal jumpers. The line is named the Chuo line, and foreigners waggishly call it the "Chuocide" line because it so frequently is disrupted by those intent on offing themselves. JR obviously would rather this not happen, but rather than do what many subways have done and put up walls with electronic gates that disallow

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Will Miss #398 - moai replicas

I'm not sure why, but Japan loves it some moai. If you don't know what they are, they're the Easter Island heads. Like the Statue of Liberty replicas, moai seem to show up in the oddest places for no reason other than people seem to think they are neat. In Kyushu, there are replicas of them. There are fan magazines devoted to them and many novelty items sold with a moai theme. I'm not sure

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Won't Miss #398 - being a minority in the minority

Foreign women in Japan have a variety of support networks to help them cope with the difficulties of being a minority here. Unfortunately, I don't fit in with any of those groups. One of the biggest groups is the AFWJ, Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese. Since my husband is American, the "welcome" sign isn't hanging on that door for me. There is also the Tokyo American Club Women's Group

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Won't Miss #392 - need for kid gloves

Have you ever approached a strange cat to pet it and as you approach, it is eyeing you warily with muscles tensed such that you fear it will perceive you as a threat and bolt if you make just one tiny wrong move? Often, I feel that way when it comes to talking to Japanese people (the "cats"). Twice I've said things on FaceBook which were meant to be informational, but they ended up being

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Will Miss #382 - not taking impersonal things personally

He's probably not even a KISS fan.

One of the drawbacks about people who live in cultures with a great emphasis on individuality is that the people who comprise that culture often don't know who they are or what they define themselves by. This results in people defining themselves by trivial matters such as the soda brands they drink, the sports teams they follow, political party, choice of

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Will Miss #363 - realizing where I am

Most of the time, I go about my business in life like everyone else. This is often a part of the sleepwalking through life that we all do as we perform routine behaviors. When you first come in Japan, the "oh wow" factor tends to dominate as the novelty of all the little differences make you think normal things are awesome because they are 10% different and have Japanese writing all over them.

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Won't Miss #355 - TP paranoia

Going through the earthquake on March 11, 2011 and its aftermath is something I wouldn't have chosen to do, but it taught me some new things about Japan and the way the Japanese people operate. Some of those things were good and some not so good. Among the things I learned was that, when crisis hits, the Japanese go for the toilet paper. This wasn't the first time in Japan's recent history

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Won't Miss #349 - jishin yoi (earthquake sickness)

Though I grew up in western Pennsylvania, where there are no earthquakes, I did experience the earth shuddering on a regular basis. My family lived near coal and strip mining operations. The use of explosives a safe, but palpable, distance away commonly shook our house. Also, we lived a very short distance from a dirt road that huge trucks roared down, causing objects in the living room to

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Won't Miss #346 - teaching English in Japan (the bad)

I've already written about the bad attitudes and misconceptions some people have about teaching in Japan, but there are negative aspects associated with it that have to do with the work itself. Foreigners who once taught but moved on to other jobs look down on those who remain in that work because they think it's a job that requires no skill. It requires a lot of skill to do well, but many

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Won't Miss #341 - living far from family (the bad)

I once had a discussion with a student in which I taught her the word "fallback". She was talking about how being married with a working spouse allows the other party to take career risks because there was one stable income to rely upon. Our talk was about how vulnerable single folks can be economically as compared to married ones. However, I reminded her that she had a fallback in case of

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Will Miss #337 - alien nation

There was a movie made in the late 80's called Tokyo Pop which shows a scene with the main character, a young singer from America, walking through the crowds in Tokyo. Her blond head and blue eyes stand above a sea of dark heads going in the opposite direction. That comes as close to anything I can say or show about the sense I'm trying to describe. I've been in Japan for a long time, so I tend

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Will Miss #336 - highly developed empathy

This is the sort of assertion that people who elevate Japanese culture about other cultures tend to make, but that is not what I'm attempting to do. Though I cannot make this assertion about every single individual raised in a Japanese cultural environment, I can say that Japanese people have much better empathy than most people from Western countries. It makes sense that this would be

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Won't Miss #336 - Japan honeymooners

I've played a role-playing game for over a decade. When I first started playing it, I paid attention to and enjoyed every detail from the nifty sounds items made to the details and rewards of every quest. Many years on, I still like the game, but the artwork, sound, and shortcomings of the quests have become apparent. It doesn't mean I don't like it, but just that the way in which I experience

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Won't Miss #334 - people who pretend to understand

One of the things I never had to contend with when I shared the native tongue of the people around me was people who didn't understand me pretending to understand. Whether the language being used is Japanese or English, there always seems to be a fair amount of nodding and the equivalent of saying, "uh-huh", when it's clear that one is either not being understood or is not being carefully

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Won't Miss #326 - the peanut gallery

A former stalker of mine once spent several months in Japan and found how she was treated so unbearably that she fled back home in a state of depression and sought medication. Since returning there, she seems to have forgotten how she felt about being treated like a purple multi-tentacled alien and seems to jump on a soap box every time someone who actually lives here has a complaint about

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Will Miss #319 - interest in my picture taking

Generally, I really don't like having attention directed my way simply because of my hair color, eye color, or body. This sort of attention is unwarranted and based on superficial observation and objectifies me. There is one type of attention which I rather like and that's when I take a picture of something strange and the Japanese folks around me notice and look very carefully at what I'm

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Won't Miss #289 - "shikataganai" (the bad)

The flip-side to the good aspects of "shikataganai" thinking (translated into "it can't be helped") is that sometimes people give up easily in situations in which their lot in life could be improved if they made an effort, sometimes just a small one. Since people rarely fight for what is their right or what is morally right, things rarely improve or change in Japan. This underlying cultural

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Will Miss #288 - "shikataganai" (the good)

When faced with hardship or a difficult situation, the Japanese have an attitude of "shikataganai" (or "shoganai") or "it can't be helped". When translated into mere words, it comes across as passive acceptance of the inevitable, but the thinking is more pervasive and applied more subtly to experiences in life. It is about acceptance, but it is also about taking things as they come with

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Won't Miss #287 - otoshi/tsukidashi

Cultural customs and habits are a reflection of a country's culture. Even small things like the custom of tipping in the United States tell you something about the priorities and expectations of the people. In the U.S., tipping is the way of empowering the customer and giving more control over the meal's expense (often at the expense of the servers). In Japan, the custom of "otoshi" or a "forced

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Will Miss #281 - cooking terms without pretense

I like to cook, and I follow several cooking blogs and a few forums. There is something that drives me crazy and that is people who use Japanese words instead of perfectly reasonable English equivalents because they're trying to sound like they know something other people don't. They're the types who like to toss around words like "umami" when they could say "savory" or "meaty" or who say even

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