Random Thoughts: Little Culture, Big Culture

One of the things about living in Northern California in the Bay Area is that it has a lot of people from various cultures. It is far more ethnically diverse than most parts of the U.S. and has ample numbers of people of Hispanic origin, African America, Middle Eastern, Indian and a wide representation of Asian cultures including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. It's rare that a day goes by in which I don't hear a language other than English spoken. For me, this is actually pretty awesome since I'm used to not completely understanding what people are saying and it makes it feel more like "home" after 23 years in Japan.

Beyond the sense that this is a "right" atmosphere to live in, I also have access to a large number of markets and restaurants offering ethnic food. In fact, it's been very gratifying for me as someone who runs a blog about snacks to have a chance to continue to experiment with different food and write about it. What is more, the people I have met and gotten to know also represent different cultural backgrounds and this has given me a chance to explore other cultures in a way which was not so accessible in Tokyo, aside from, obviously, Japanese culture.

It is this last point which I want to talk about and that is the idea of culture (and I have talked of this in another context in this blog before). My husband and I had lunch with a cohort of his from graduate school. She is of Korean descent, and remarked about how Koreans do this or that in their culture and that her family's ways were different than the way her husband (who is of European descent and more conventionally or stereotypically what people regard as "American") grew up. What I told her at that point was that it wasn't just people of different ethnic backgrounds who experienced such things. Each family or group has its own "little culture". This is what fuels in-law problems in large part. We all see what we experience growing up as "normal" and when we start to encounter people in the broader world, we see what they do as atypical, even when those people superficially resemble us in every way. You don't have to have what society views as a "cross-cultural relationship" to experience cross-cultural problems. They're just either reflections of big or little cultural differences, but they are differences nonetheless.

The somewhat frightening thing about this is that our "normal" can be exceedingly abnormal, but we don't even know it because our experiences are such that we believe our everyday life is the same as other people's everyday lives. We are not aware of the idea of having a "family culture" because no one teaches us that this is the case.

For example, I grew up with an emotionally fragile mother who was prone to depression and who acted out on her pain by raging at her family members, usually my sister or me. Any tiny little mistake could set off a tirade full of personal attacks deriding us as stupid, malicious, and selfish. In my mother's world, others were responsible for keeping her from suffering and any time they upset her, they were doing so willfully. If she misplaced her handbag, something she frequently did because she was careless with where she left it, she would say we "hid" it just to upset her. The notion that we would do anything willfully to set off one of her tirades was absurd as no one would be foolish enough to invite such verbal abuse, but it didn't stop her from continuing to believe this was the case.

In the early days of my relationship with my husband, when he did something which upset me, I would accuse him of intentionally upsetting me. I did this because this was "normal" to me. In my thinking at the time, people who were close to you were responsible for not upsetting you with their careless actions (or what you perceived as such) and they must have intentionally set out to make you unhappy if they did not fulfill your needs.

My family dynamic, which was fueled by my parents' problems, "normalized" a dysfunctional mindset and my guess is that my mother's actions were emulating those of her parents to some extent. Fortunately, my husband reflected my actions back to me and I saw the light rather quickly. He did not grow up with such a "norm" in his family culture, and rather obviously, found this way of dealing with emotions troubling. Had he grown up in a family with similar problems and felt that it was normal to blame others for upsetting you or for not keeping you happy, we both may have simply engaged in such destructive behavior and never changed. A culture "clash" in this case resulted in a better outcome for all and a cultural "compatibility" would have resulted in continued pain.

This brings me, perhaps strangely, to talking about Japan. Culture can be small, as in a family's own culture, or it can be big, as in a country's culture. When I was teaching, students often asked me about "America" as if it were a monolithic entity full of people who thought and acted alike. They asked the question that way because that is closer to how Japan operates and they assume that their "normal" is every country's normal, just as I believed my family's normal was every family's. Once I came to conceptualize this, I got less irritated with what appeared to be ignorant or bigoted questions. They assumed a "sameness" because that's what they tended to experience.

Just as they assumed people operated by similarities, Americans tend to assume there are differences and diversity. If you grow up in a society that struggles to educate people in tolerance and egalitarianism, you assume people will think and behave differently than you and that's okay. We are taught to respect differences, though we may often fail in our efforts to do so. In Japan, we all know the saying about the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. They are not taught to respect differences, but rather to smash them out of existence. They assume people will think the same and behave the same. It is their norm.

The Western reaction to this idea in Japan is to see them as "sheeple" who mindlessly follow their society's wishes. I've challenged this notion before and I will challenge it again. Just because they do what is expected, it doesn't mean they don't question it and it absolutely does not mean they like it. However, in their culture, the "normal" thing to do is to go along to get along, to put up and shut up, and to avoid conflict and confrontation in order to preserve relationships. Whether willfully or grudgingly, they frequently comply.

They face the same choices we face when they deal with people and they feel the same things we might feel to greater or lesser degrees, but they are compelled by their society's norms and expectations to make a particular choice, as are we. We are compelled to speak out and voice our individual opinions. In fact, we often celebrate "speaking your mind". We feel weak and cowardly if we hold back on our opinions or back down from a confrontation and see those who demur as spineless and fearful of being disliked. We believe people should be strong enough not to care what others think. Conversely, the Japanese feel as if they are masters of their emotions and have chosen to preserve a good relationship at the expense of their own ego gratification if they hold their tongues. The norm for "success" in Japan in terms of how people are dealt with is very different than that in the U.S.

In line with this way of handling people, we find that the Japanese are far more likely to obfuscate, lie, mislead, or withhold information in situations in which Americans (or other Westerners) might desire honesty about, even if said honesty results in emotional pain. It can be maddening from a Western perspective to communicate with Japanese people because their culture has different priorities. It is normal for them to do what they can to avoid upsetting any apple carts in communication in order to preserve a particular relationship or situation, either for the benefit of themselves, all parties involved, or for their entire organization.

What is more, since everyone is indoctrinated into a culture which values this type of preservation to greater or lesser degrees, they expect it and have learned to read a situation. The talk of "reading the air" or "reading between the lines" in Japan is related to this form of communication. Western folks don't expect this and don't know how to interpret situations that Japanese people do. It's not that we can't do it if we get enough experience and know what is happening, but more often than not, we are taking things and people at face value because that is our cultural norm. There's a game being played and we not only aren't aware of the rules and procedures, but that there is a game at all.

For many years, I railed against the lying and duplicity I felt I faced in Japan. I hated the way in which people seemed to never have said what they meant or to have meant what they said. There was a lot of capriciousness in how I was dealt with that had meaningful effects on my life and I felt frustrated and powerless. People said "no" then later said "yes" or vice versa. It felt like I was being toyed with, sometimes cruelly.

My husband had an experience when he worked alone in Japan in 1988 in which he was given permission to take a day off to attend a concert and that permission was rescinded weeks later after he'd already bought the tickets. After painful days of shilly-shallying about as they bandied back and forth about what was to happen, they finally re-granted permission with a word about how magnanimous they were being in doing so. In his mind, they gave him permission to do something, went back on their word, and then pretended it was an enormous concession to fulfill their original agreement. It was the height of arrogance and not a little mean-spirited in his estimation and I'm sure in the estimation of other Western folks.

The truth was that my husband had been caught in a crossfire between his boss and his boss's boss and he had committed what the Japanese saw as a faux pas. His boss gave him permission and the boss's boss didn't like it when she discovered it so she simply withdrew it. This was a way of not only showing power over his direct boss and pointing out her disapproval, but also a way of letting my husband know that he was out of line in having ever made such a request in the first place in the boss's boss's mind. This sort of game-playing is abhorrent to me, and to many Western folks, but it is not uncommon as a means of indirect communication in Japan and they are accustomed on the whole to ones word not being ones bond. Contracts, for instance, are seen as starting points for business, not the final word that they are in the West. It is not meant as cruelty or a reflection of exercising of whim at the expense of others. It is simply meant to let something be known without confrontation or directly asserting that the direct boss stupidly did something that her corporate overlord didn't like. It is communication, Japan-style.

Another example of this sort of thing was how vacations worked differently for foreign employees and Japanese ones at my former company. The president gave us far fewer vacation days than he gave the Japanese. While they got the mandated 10 days per year for the first year of employment plus 1 day for each additional year up to a maximum of 20, my boss got frozen at 7 days per year and I got frozen at 5, even after a decade of employment for both of us. The reason the president did this, and I will say that he was breaking labor laws in the process, was that he knew the Japanese would not take off their entire allotted time, but we foreigners would. There was an unofficial understanding that no one took more than 5 days off per year if they were of a certain status and no more than 7 if they were of a somewhat higher status. He gave us as many days as he felt people in our positions "should" take off according to Japanese sensibilities so that the Japanese employees would not resent us and there would not be discord in the office.

For years, I was angry at all of this type of behavior in Japan because it seemed so unfair and even mean-spirited. The rules for gaijin were different than for Japanese and it seemed very, very wrong to me. My anger faded over time as I understood that this wasn't about me, but about their culture and how they operated in it. I still didn't like that I was treated differently, nor that I wasn't given what I viewed as reasonable autonomy to manage my life in ways that I felt I should, but I did understand it better when I saw in in the proper context rather than as a personal affront or prejudice.

Just as I had to change in my marriage when I began to live with someone whose family culture was different than mine (better, actually), I had to change when I lived in a nation's culture which was different than mine. I didn't have to change my core values or what I thought was best, particularly not when dealing with people of my own culture, but I did have to change how I received and operated in their culture.

Knowing the reasons things sometimes happen as they do doesn't make the situation any "better" for Western folks. It's still frustrating to be "played with" in this fashion if you are not accustomed to this sort of "communication". However, understanding this helped me not take such things so personally. It also helped me learn to (crudely) navigate the treacherous waters of Japanese communication style and why choices were made.

It's a tough balance to remain true to yourself and your own values, especially when one of those values is being honest, but it can be done. I had to learn more to read and understand the context of their communication than to subscribe to it as there was more said to me than I had to say to them in most cases given the power structure. That being said, a white lie now and then smoothed things over and made all concerned more comfortable. If a student wanted to schedule a lesson at a time when I had social or personal plans (a rare, but not unheard of occurrence), I would not say that I was going to meet my husband for lunch and didn't want to change that, but rather that I had another student. Japanese people respect work commitments more than personal ones, and the outcome was the same.

What was more, I learned that Japanese people not only have no problem with white lies or obfuscation, but they prefer them or it in many cases if they smooth things over and the outcome will be the same whether you tell the truth or not. They know you're lying or confabulating, but they don't call you on it because they would often do the same thing in your shoes. It's only important that the lie be in the service of preserving dignity and a good relationship. A lie that does not serve those ends will be received differently and not understood or appreciated.

I also learned how to say "no" without saying "no", though this was one of the harder things for me to bring myself to do. If I was overloaded at work and our president wanted to heap another task onto the backbreaking pile, I wouldn't say, "no, I can't do it," but rather that I would do it, but a more pressing task would not be completed until a time which would be, in his estimation, too late. He would withdraw the request in such cases, because the primary work could not wait and he knew it. This was true, after a fashion, but the important point was that it placed the power for the decision with him rather than with me. If I judged the workload to be too big, then I was taking power into my hands. If I offered him two choices and he chose, it stayed with him and that respected his status as president.

The byzantine path of communication in Japan is hard for straightforward-speaking folks to understand and it does waste a lot of time, but there is a positive side to it and that is that it does tend to preserve relationships and, yes, that old canard about "saving face". It's embarrassing or insulting to be starkly told "no" and can make people feel powerless and diminished, even for Western folks in some situations. It's far worse in Japan where such bluntness is not the norm. Once I understood where all of this was coming from and the purpose it was serving, I gained empathy for how people were dealing with me and how I needed to deal with them. In most cases, they weren't trying to be mean, duplicitous, dishonest, or misleading. They were just being "normal" for their culture.

Will Miss #507 - people try (hard) to understand

I had a conversation recently with a friend about communication among native speakers of the same language. In particular, she and her family were having some issues trying to understand why a new person of their acquaintance seemed not to be true to her word. It is possible that this person is not actually meaning what she says, but it's also possible that she doesn't mean what they think she's saying.

To help make that clearer, I'd like to offer a personal example. My husband sometimes will say, "I'm thinking about pizza for dinner." When I hear this, I hear a request or an explicit expression of intention. When he says this, he's not being concrete at all. He's merely vocalizing a notion he's entertaining among other possible notions. We've been married for going on 24 years, and we still don't speak the same language when we are speaking the same language. 

Communication isn't only about words. It's also about patterns that are set in ones own social circle or family. My family made "requests" all of the time by expressing vague desires. They expected that the rest of us would understand the true intention. My husband didn't operate that way. Neither way is "wrong". It's all about context. In the context of my family, my husband would be failing constantly to "get" things. In the context of my communication with him, I'm always reading into things.

In Japan, I found that I rarely experienced this sort of problem because both sides were trying hard to communicate and understand as well as possible. Here, people are not even aware of this issue and, when misunderstandings occur, they can sometimes become adamant that they were clear and you misunderstood due to intellectual shortcomings or willful desires to frustrate.*

The language and culture gap brought a strong motivation to understand and took ego out of the picture when misunderstandings occurred. I miss the way in which people were always trying their best to be understood and to understand rather than on believing that the other party had somehow failed.

*To be clear, this does not happen with my husband and me. I use a personal example, but we don't have arguments or tension over this because we know it happens and that it's just one of those things.

Won't Miss #490 - cut out of the loop with no recourse

I've already mentioned that we had a pretty good landlord, but one thing I realized about him was that he did something that I experienced in other areas of my life in Japan (especially business). For the first 15 years of our time in the same apartment, he told us every little detail of work being done on the apartment building and surrounding area including when his wife would be sweeping up in the front and back areas. During those years, neither my husband nor I worked from home and we just said "okay." In my final 6 or 7 years, I was working from home and had actual concerns about noisy work. I expressed the fact that the noise was a problem or about the times at which work is done (because it can interfere with private teaching). After I did this, the landlord decided to stop telling us anything at all and simply scheduled loud and obtrusive work at his convenience. This is an example of a tendency (which I experienced many times) to tell you as long as no objection is expected, but to not tell you if an objection is even remotely possible. In other words, the idea that your opinion matters or that "harmony" is valued over expediting the interests of the person in power, which are commonly  held notions related to Japan being a culture based on consensus, is an act.*

The minute your interests have the potential to conflict with theirs, they simply cut you out of the loop and you have no recourse but to accept it because there is no law structuring how people are informed. I won't miss that.

*In America, these sorts of issues tend to be governed by law, so you are told what is mandated by legislation. There's no show being put on that your opinion matters or that your concerns are factored into what will be done, and you also have legal power to assert that you should be informed and have veto power when loud construction is going to be going on in the apartment above you starting at 6:30 am and going on all day. In Japan, such matters are left vague so that the power rests with the person who has the vast majority of it already.

Won't Miss #472 - poor chain of communication

Bad communication can and does occur everywhere, but it is more likely to occur in Japan. Americans communicate clearly and like all details worked out and at least try to ensure that anyone who needs to know about something knows. Yeah, they fail sometimes. In Japan, vagueness is the order of the day. This, in and of itself, does not have to result in a poor chain of communication, but what it does is create an environment where people become comfortable and even expect not to know everything. They don't ask questions or confirm things because they figure someone will tell them if and when they really need to know. This results in many annoyances in which you aren't told something you really should have been told and waste your time or someone hasn't been told something they need to know and they waste your time. This is especially annoying when working in an office (such as people not relaying schedule changes), but can have repercussions for ones private life as well.

My landlord wanted to paint the inside of my apartment door (for reasons I can't fathom) and he asked when it would be okay considering my private lesson schedule. I told him 1:00 pm in writing (so there could be no mistake), and he got the message. He obviously told someone at the painting company, but they failed to tell the person actually doing the job so at 9:30 am, the painter is ringing my bell and yanking on my door handle trying to get in and do the job. No one told him the situation. They just wait until there is a problem and then communicate.

I won't miss the way in which vague communication habits promote poor communication and cause problems.

Will Miss #456 - subtle complaining

Click this image to see a larger, more readable one. This is their nice way of saying, "don't be an ass when you come here."

Many foreign folks believe that Japanese people don't complain. While it's true that Japanese people don't like to complain, and often don't mention trivial annoyances, they do complain; they simply don't tend to do it in an overt or "in your face" manner. If you're not paying attention, you can miss it or write it off as some sort of quirky communication problem. For example, my new neighbors have been very noisy for the past two months and my husband and I have, reluctantly, had to complain about their stomping and banging around at all hours of the day and night. Rather than go to my neighbors and say, 'the downstairs people have complained and you're too noisy, so settle down,' the landlord issued a gentle note saying, "please be mindful of your neighbors when moving around your apartment." The tone isn't accusatory ("you're noisy"), but a suggestion to be considerate of other people (without revealing exactly who may have a problem).

This type of subtle complaining is designed to keep the relationships between people cordial as well as to allow people to feel they are in control rather than being controlled (which respects their dignity and autonomy), and I'll miss it.

Will Miss #431 - intuiting what you mean

Japanese have a culture of "reading the air". It's a skill that not only is one encouraged to develop, but those who lack it find themselves derided and labeled as "kuuki wo yomenai hito" (people who can't read the air). While this sort of thing can be maddening if you aren't skilled in decrypting what people are trying to say to you (and I have not been for the vast majority of my time in Japan and have found it frustrating), it can be quite a relief to be in a culture which will intuit what you're trying to say in an awkward situation in which you'd really rather not come right out and say something uncomfortable. It's also, frankly, nice to live around people who care enough about their relationships with others to not always be deadly blunt. And for the record, I'm a blunt person by nature and used to think that it was pure cowardice not to just come out and say things. Living in Japan made me grow up a bit and understand that it's the easiest thing in the world to just aggressively blurt things out without regard for the effect on others. It isn't about bravery, but about courtesy.

It's sometimes very nice to live in a culture which doesn't need to be beaten upside the head with a clue stick every time you wish to be subtle and I'll miss that.

Won't Miss #431 - "reading the air" expectation

Part of what hinders communication between foreign folks and Japanese is that it is common in Japanese culture to "read the air" or to intuit what is meant rather that attending to what is actually said. At higher levels of communication, this goes beyond "it's difficult" (muzukashii) meaning "no way!" It can often mean very involved or sophisticated things, but without experience with the other party (as well as Japanese culture), it is hard to have any idea what the other person wants. My husband was once a supervisor at a language school and the Japanese manager of the school was incomprehensible but expected others to "read the air" and know what he meant. Even the Japanese office ladies couldn't figure him out, yet he blamed others for misunderstandings.

I don't like the inefficiency with which many Japanese people communicate and I won't miss the expectation that one should "read the air".

Won't Miss #414 - beating around the bush

One of the difficult things about communication in Japan is its indirectness. In fact, the goal in Japan often seems to be sure that you take as long as possible to get to the point, and, if you are truly masterful, to never actually make the point. The goal seems to be to speak only of trivialities (like the weather) or to  talk around it in enough circles for long enough that the other person is so weary of listening to you go nowhere that they give up on ever understanding what the hell you want. Okay, that's my frustration talking. You're supposed to reach the proper conclusion once the bush has been beaten to death. The reason people don't come right out and say things is that then they are responsible for their own words. Making you figure it all out makes you responsible and gives them plenty of wiggle room to claim there was a misunderstanding should they piss you off.

This is an enormous waste of time and sometimes I just wish people would say what they mean and mean what they say rather than talk around the point and I won't miss it.

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 confrontational in the eyes of the other parties. In one case, I commented on a video that had been posted stating that it was important to keep in mind that the English translations were somewhat misleading and that the video had been edited to put forth a particular viewpoint. The poster withdrew the video and apologized most humbly saying that she never should have posted it at all. In another case, someone posited that a particular food was healthy because the sign outside the restaurant said it was based on Japanese washoku and I said that I didn't know how healthy "it" (meaning the food I actually ate in that restaurant) was since it was all sweet and some of it was deep-fried or pasta-based, and therefore decidedly "un-washoku-ish". She deleted her comment after I said that. Both of my comments were providing information, but were received as admonishment and contradiction.

Sometimes I feel like it's far too easy to scare away or upset Japanese people and that I have to watch what I say to a ludicrous extent and reactions are unpredictable. The risk of offending them or sounding like I'm "disagreeing" with Japanese people when I'm not is something that I won't miss. 

Won't Miss #295 - "fishing"

I continue to do freelance work for my former company and as part of this work I am asked to offer my time in line with a company's request. The company will say they want me to do a job between X and Y time with spans of up to 8 hours between those times, but they will only need two hours of my time. They will not say they want 1 hour in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. They will simply say to give them time in that broad range. About 60% of the time, I will offer a two-hour block in their requested range, say from 3:00-5:00 pm and only after the offer is made will the company reveal that they want one hour in the a.m. and one in the p.m. This sort of fishing to see what they get before asserting what they really want is rampant in Japanese business. It's maddening because it doubles (or triples) the communication time spent on reaching an agreement and wastes everyone's time. It's part of the culture of inefficiency which makes doing business with the Japanese a chore when other cultures deal with them. Often, they simply will not be straightforward with you, even when it is in their best interest and is a trivial matter such as scheduling.

I really wish that Japanese businesses would just be straightforward about what they want in the first instance rather than waiting for the first offer to magically match their true wishes, and I will not miss this tendency to do this.

Won't Miss #234 - reluctance to express oneself

The Japanese are often reluctant to express themselves because their culture does not reward varying opinions. A lot of Japanese people will not have a debate or even a discussion with you about a topic of interest because they do not want to risk offending or upsetting you with a different opinion. In fact, many Japanese people will simply shake their head "yes" when you assert some viewpoint even when they don't agree with you at all. This reluctance to express their opinions makes it hard to get to know them on a deeper level and often makes conversations that go beyond the trivial difficult. Japanese people are often closed off and self-contained unless you are a very long-term, deeply trusted friend or unless they are drunk off their asses. Even then, they may not reveal their true opinions.

I won't miss this reluctance on the part of the majority of people to express their true feelings and opinions.

Will Miss #220 - finding a communication key

One of the things that invariably happens when you live in a country where you do not speak the native language is that some things come up which you don't know the proper word for. This happens because some language is specialized, and you don't tend to learn it, or you learned it once, rarely used it, and simply forgot it. When this happens, you have to puzzle out a non-language-based way to make yourself understood and it's an awesome feeling when you find the key that opens the communication lock outside of the use of words. Sometimes it's gestures. Sometimes it's pictures. And sometimes it's a common education link that is apart from language. One of my favorite experiences was being able to convey the meaning of the element "lead" by writing it's abbreviation (Pb) on the periodic table for a student.

I'll miss the satisfaction and challenge of finding one of these non-linguistic keys to communication.

Will Miss #180 - unexpected bursts of English

My husband was walking around the area outside of his office and the employees from McDonald's were milling about shouting about a new burger. Of course, they were shouting in Japanese, but when my husband momentarily made eye contact with one of the women, she shouted (in English), "it's delicious!" There's something delightful about these surprise communications coming at you out of the blue. You know people are trying to be extra friendly and to connect with you on a level you will find easier to understand. The English they use also comes across as innocently funny.

I'll miss these kind and warm efforts to connect with me.

Won't Miss #142 - communicative "insecurity"

Part of my former office job was doing brief telephone lessons with students from all over Japan. In a very "light" year, I spoke to 500 students, but in a "heavy" year, I would speak to closer to 900. I was at that job for 12 years so it's no exaggeration to say that I have spoken to literally thousands of Japanese people in many populated areas. I can add the experience of hundreds of face-to-face conversations I've had and witnessed to the communication experience pool.

One thing that emerges is that there are very concrete differences in behavioral communication patterns in Japanese as compared to English. One of those differences is that Japanese people require much more frequent confirmation that you are listening and understanding them than English speakers. If you are not saying "yes", grunting in acknowledgment, or nodding your head until you develop a cervical spinal disorder, they feel something is amiss. I've had people say 3 or so words and stop speaking to wait for me to say "hai" (yes) and they stop more and more often if I don't do it. I've also been grunted at and "hai'd" (or "yes'd") so much that I don't think the other person could possibly be paying any attention to what I'm saying because they're so busy stuttering out affirmations over my speaking. I've also had people who I've occasionally nodded at and made regular eye contact with during the duration of their telling of a story ask me at regular intervals, "do you understand?" If I'm not saying I understand all of the time, they don't think that I am doing so. I always tell them that I'll tell them if I don't understand, not tell them I do constantly, but this never sticks for long.

Though I understand that Japanese communication styles are different, I will not miss this comparatively constant need for and offering of affirmation which I find disruptive and tiring.