Hi.
I’m in Sydney right now and am interested in life in Japan. How different is it to Australia and what provoked you to live there? if you wouldn’t mind answer an aspiring year 12 student that would be cool.
And particularly, how is Fukuoka, a lot of my favourite singers are from there.
Steve.

G’day Steve,

What prompted me to live here was marrying a local.  I suppose Fukuoka is rather like the Perth of Japan - far from the other main cities (though not THAT far) and nicer to live in than Sydney (or Tokyo, for that matter).

It’s really hard to describe living in Japan - it only really hits you when you go back home and get reverse culture shock.   More so you learn a lot about what you take for granted and what’s normal.  Normal here is somewhat different.  

After living in Japan for the first time 10 years ago, I felt rather like I was living in a huge zoo, but unsure whether I was one of the animals or the Japanese people were.  Westerners are very rare here, rather as rarer than seeing African people in Sydney, so you get stared at and treated, well, rather like people going to a zoo treat animals in the sense that you are unusual and rare.  

Going a bit esoteric here, we create personalities in ourselves to deal with different situations.  I found myself with two personalities - one trying to be as Japanese as possible, and the other wanting to be as non-Japanese as possible.   Living here, as opposed to coming here for a year on a student exchange or working holiday, unless you have a profession with a degree or other qualifications, means abandoning your life in your home country, as teaching English, the most common job for Westerners here, has absolutely zero value when seeking employment back home, unless it was as a qualified English teacher, which most are not.

Not surprisingly, expat foreigners often go to bars and drink a lot.  Few are married, though in Fukuoka many I’ve met are, as it’s an unusual destination, so their reasons for coming here are usually, like mine, because their wives are from here.

As a foreigner, also, you are popular, so you make a lot of great friends.  They find something different in their lives being friends with you, and you in them.  Teachers (sensei) also have a more significant meaning in Japanese, carrying an automatic authority and respect, so being one is a great ego boost, which, after time, leaves many seriously jaded about their lives.  For the Japanese people you teach, you are on a pedestal, yet unqualified English teaching has the lowest cred of all amongst other Westerners (though it’s not said, we all feel it).  Teaching for one of the big 5 (now 4 after Nova went bust) English teaching schools would be akin to being a toilet cleaner.

Much of this comes about as many people who failed at building a career back home end up living in Asian countries teaching English for years, unable to go back, as at home they have absolutely nothing (except maybe family and school friends).

So what’s living here like?  

Imagine that, despite any pollution, everything is neat and tidy; buses and trains are on time (well, ok, maybe not buses always) and there are few places you would ever feel unsafe.  Everything has its place in Japanese society, which makes it predictable on the one hand (the guy installing my phone line turned up dead on time) but stifling on the other (people don’t speak out about things they should in many cases).

The country is (like anywhere) full of contradictions.  Japanese people go out of their way to appreciate the beauty of nature, such as the Hanami festival once a year, when the Cherry Blossoms (Sakura) bloom, yet the country has been so seriously concreted over, with huge power lines running over mountains and highways everywhere.  Tokyo is horribly polluted. Arriving in my apartment, I wiped down the screen window with a cloth, which was turned solid black as if i’d dipped it in tar. When I lived in Tokyo and went out to a nearby mountain for a bit of a hike and some fresh(er) air, whenever I saw someone smoking I wanted to smack them.

Many cultural norms for us are in reverse: Helping someone puts an obligation on them to repay you, so helping someone can actually be unhelpful.  People don’t hold doors open for strangers, for example.  The downside is that it’s rare for people to help mother’s with babies, elderly people etc, except in extreme situations.  You pay when you get off a bus, not on.  At your train destination, there are Fare Adjustment machines in front of the gates for you to update your ticket if you bought one of insufficient value.  Pointing out someone’s wrongdoing is unusual.  When driving, people here rarely beep if someone is doing something idiotic, which is very often.

Whereas we have a culture of not showing anything private, such as wandering around in your back garden in your underwear when your neighbours might accidentally see you, in Japan it’s the other way around, with the obligation not to look.  I can see across to other apartments from mine and it’s not unusual for some old man to be out on his balcony in his underwear watering the plants or whatever.  Quite a few toilets don’t shield the urinals from view from the entrance.  Drunk salarymen often take a piss anywhere they like up against a wall late in the evening.

Commenting about someone’s physical condition is not considered rude like it is in a Western country.

Baths have a very special place here.  You wash yourself thoroughly before getting in one.  A family will share the same bath water, so you’d better be clean and fish out any hairs you left behind afterwards!

If someone has a problem with you, they wont tell you directly, but tell someone to tell you depending on the situation.  If I make a joke in an English class and the student didn’t like it, they’d tell the Japanese staff who’d tell me or tell one of the senior teachers who’d tell me about it.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of for the moment, off the top of my head.