Culture Shock Antidote

One reason I have sort of slacked in the blog posting department lately is that I finally hit my wall of culture shock a little bit. My culture shock specifically had to do with one unfortunate experience: I got sick. I feel lucky in that culture shock didn't hit me right away when I got here. I haven't found myself particularly homesick, for example, because I really have been out enjoying the world! But when I caught a mild cold a few weeks ago (with a non-threatening fever), I was pretty much in my room for a few days straight... which was no fun.

development

Because I got sick over a weekend, I was lucky in that I didn't have to miss too much school, but I did miss one day, then pushed myself to go to school the next day, and found myself sicker again, and then had to stay home the next day. It really took me a good week to recover.

community garden flower on bicycle path

The worst of it was the stress of having to deal with Japanese sick culture. In Japan, the expectation when your sick is that you will immediately go to the hospital and take medicine they prescribe you. I don't normally take any kind of drugs or medicines. I don't like taking tylenol, for instance, if I have a headache, but rather prefer to drink lots of water and rest. I don't like the feeling of taking medicines, but do enjoy the feeling that if I ever actually NEED medicine, the tylenol or whatever I take will actually be MORE effective because my body has not built up any sort of resistance or dependence on it. I understand that most Americans have no problem taking Nyquil or Zycam if they're sick, but it freaks me out. So I didn't want to go to the hospital.

yellow fields

But I made the mistake of telling my landlady that I was sick (as we were instructed to do during my program orientation). While Ariyama-san did bring me comfort foods and checked in every few hours as she went along her daily business, she had a different idea of what I should be doing to get better from what I consider the more American, "unless it's really serious, you should probably just sleep a lot and drink fluids" kind of idea.

almost fall

Ariyama-san started not only checking in with ME very frequently, but also started putting pressure on Haruna, my senpai, to put pressure on me to go to the hospital. A senpai, in Japanese culture, is your superior. Haruna, one year older than everyone else in our house, is automatically senpai. My roommate Ai, the 19-year old youngin' in your house, actually uses formal, respectful speech (des/mas forms) with Haruna, as is expected of a true kohai (the younger). During our program orientation, we were advised that, if we ever had problems in our houses, we should immediately get a senpai on our side, because their word is essentially law. And I can tell you now that it is not fun to have a senpai against you.

beautiful heron

In Japanese culture, the senpai knows best. In being slightly older than you, they automatically know better than you, pretty much regardless of the situation. Haruna very rarely wears her senpai hat around us, only when we have house meetings about chore duties and the like. Not to mention that she's a total sweetheart, always caring for others and making effort to converse in Japanese with us, even when she's tired after a long day of classes and work. So I was very surprised when she came to my door when I was sick and told me to get ready to go to the hospital.

I protested, saying that I did not want to go the hospital, and I really just wanted to go back to bed, as I had been sleeping when she knocked. She then gave me a list of the reasons why I should go, which included:

1. If you don't want everyone else in the house to get sick (which they eventually did), you will go to the hospital, as is socially responsible in Japanese society (a communal culture where your actions ALWAYS affect the people around you).
2. If you want to get better, you will take medicine, even if you don't want to.
3. If you don't go to the hospital and bring a receipt to class when you go back to school, your teachers might even mark it as an unexcused absence, and not believe that you were sick and suspect that you were just cutting class.

he got scared

This last one is an actual thing in Japanese culture. After you are sick, you are expected to bring in receipts from the medicine you took as physical proof that you were sick. As someone who does not take medicine (and didn't want to buy medicine for the sake of appeasing my teachers who should just trust that if I was sick, I was sick), this option did not appeal to me. Not only that, but I kept thinking about how virulent the common cold virus must be getting in Japan if it builds up essential immunity/resistance to ALL the loads of pills and tonics the Japanese people seem to stuff down their throats anytime they get the sniffles. That's a recipe for more dangerous sicknesses, in my paranoid opinion. But, on the verge of tears, I finally got dressed when Haruna was done trying to reason with me, and basically ordered me to get ready to go.

cityscape

While I was getting dressed, I formulated a game plan to fight Japanese fire with American fire. I went up to sweet, innocent Haruna, imagined her head replaced with Mitt Romney's, and told her in Japanese, "It's my body, and nobody can tell me what I should or should not do with it." Then the two of us went upstairs to talk with Amber and Ishani, and we democratically defeated the notion of going to the hospital in the great American tradition of 3 heads are better than one, even if the one has seniority over all of us. I agreed that if I was still sick the next day, Haruna could take me to the hospital, and vowed to myself that even if I was sick, I was going to force myself to act fine so I wouldn't have to go. I did feel bad that Haruna was being pressured by Ariyama-san to begin with (5 messages on her phone, 3 emails, and 2 calls that Haruna actually was able to answer), but we basically decided to tell Ariyama-san I was asleep when Haruna knocked (not untrue), so we didn't go. 

osaka bay and pacific ocean

So after that ordeal, I wanted to get out of the house as soon as possible. I think that the best way to get over culture shock is to go out and find more things you love about living where you live. So since then, I've started taking long bike rides a few times a week. These pictures are some of the ones I've taken when going half the way to Kyoto, to the Pacific Ocean, to the grounds of Osaka Castle, basically exploring anywhere my pedals take me.

safety designation zone

This picture above is of a bicycle highway, called a "safety designation zone" that I came across by chance in metropolitan Osaka. 4 lanes total, 2 pedestrian and 2 bicycle, one going each way. There were "exits" ever 100 meters or so, and this highway went along for several miles uninterrupted. It was really quite cool.

osaka skyline

This picture below reminded me of a level of Katamari Damacy. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't need to, but just know that I had fun going around on my bicycle like a little kid pretending to roll each one of the little statuettes up!

katamari damacy

This next picture depicts the cat on which Moon, the cat from Miyazaki's "Whisper of the Heart," must have been based. Such a city-slicking cat.

goodnight moon

I absolutely love exploring the contrasts in Japan between old and new. This is the mote and southwest guard tower for Osaka Castle, framed in the background by fancy scientific research laboratories.

osaka-jo mote

There are ferrel cats everywhere in Japan, but I think they're pretty cute. This one was pretty beaten up, and she had scabs running all along her neck, but she was so cute when she meowed back at me.

ferrel kitty

In addition to bicycle highways, this is the general setup for bicycle paths next to rivers in Japan. There's usually a high road and a low road.

recreational area at the yodogawa

Once, I made eye contact with this business man commuting home on the high road while I was on the low road, and I mentally challenged him by saying to myself, "I'll get to Scotland before ye," and we raced for quite a ways until our paths separated and we waved goodbye cheerfully. Those are the happy moments that make me remember why I love Japan.

bike lane on a tollbridge

I've come all this way for intercultural exchange, to speak the language of the people, to learn about their customs and way of life, and to see what's so different and special about Japan. But in the end, the people here are just regular people living out their lives just like our families and friends in the United States.

sunset bike path

So my antidote to the poison of culture shock is to go out and explore and slowly realize that with all the very few uncomfortable experiences I've had come millions of people just going about their daily lives, trying to do the best they can. And that all the people I interact with might be very different from me when it comes to how they treat getting sick, but their hearts are all in the right place, so I'm still happy to be here, and not at all ready to leave.

my bike after a good ride