Won't Miss #505 - being seen as incapable

AKB48, a manufactured girl group (with over 90 members) that discards members when they get "too old". They are clearly the product of a highly sophisticated culture. If you don't appreciate them, it is only because you are to simple-minded to comprehend.

In my previous post, I mentioned that the Japanese readily forgive foreigners for their bad manners or cross-cultural ignorance. If you take a business card and cram it in your pocket instead of looking thoughtfully at it and then placing it on the table such that you can view it, they won't be offended because they figure there's no way you could know their customs in this regard. While this may come across as tolerance, that is not what is really going on. It is more often than not the case that they feel that their culture is too complex, sophisticated, and difficult for someone from a less byzantine culture to comprehend. You are not seen as merely uneducated in their ways, but incapable of knowing them. This is why simple mastery of things like basic greetings in Japanese or using chopsticks are so highly praised. By acquiring even rudimentary Japanese cultural skills, you've overcome hurdles they thought you could never begin to vault over. It's like you are seen as a child who stacks blocks together to make a rudimentary house who receives praise for his efforts. 

When it comes to cultural understanding, many Japanese people operate from an unconscious (or conscious) sense that foreigners lack the sophistication to understand their ways. They believe you are the cultural equivalent of a developmentally disabled person. I will not miss this expectation that I lacked the capability to understand and follow Japanese customs. 

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.

Will Miss #196 - a ritual for everything

One of my students is an older gentleman who pays me in cash at the end of the lesson. There is a certain awkwardness associated with handing money over to someone with whom you have a teacher/student relationship because of the atmosphere of friendliness and cordiality in what is essentially a business relationship. The Japanese have a way of addressing this and many other potentially awkward situations by having a ritual that people can follow. There is a special envelope for giving money. The money is placed in the envelope and handed over in a particular way. This is the way such things are done and everyone expects things to be done this way so there is no embarrassment or strangeness to the experience. The same goes for how business cards are handled, bowing is done, and gifts are offered and accepted.

I like the way in which there are little rituals for certain types of interactions so that everyone knows what to do and how to do it so that there is less risk of embarrassment, and I'll miss that.