- Roles of men/women ARE different here
- In France, some women are willing to pay their meals when going out. In Japan, it's more like they won't be offended to pay their meals.
- There is a wide "Grey zone" between being friends and being in a relationship.
- You can be "sort of together" but not yet "facebook official"
- The word "love" means pretty deep relationship. Probably none of my Japanese friends understand the border line between "love" and "like" (neither do I).
So what does this mean? I think it means that Japanese value the format/title in general. Japanese think that it is important to be somebody's boyfriend/girlfriend, where as Westerners tend to value their relationship between the two people.
For example, if you proceed romance without confirming each other as your partner, one side would probably say
"Hey I think we should make this clear. I'm your official boyfriend/girlfriend right?"
to officially become a partner before doing things like kissing each other. You may even reject to proceed in romance if you are not officially confirmed.
Also, in business situations, things are similar. If your division manager was called Peter NAKADA, Japanese would call them "Division Manager Nakada". By stating their position, it makes it clear that we value his position, and confirm the relationship between you and him (same if he was hierarchically below you in the firm). But them, most westerners call them "Peter", which makes you feel more close to the person. You value the mental relationship between the two persons, more than the given relationship in western countries.
Another example is the so called "honorific language". In Japan, when you are talking to someone hierarchically higher than you, you use a specific kind of language to sow respect to the person. Most verbs have two types of honorific forms, both a respectful and a humble one. You use the respectful form for all actions that your senior did, humble forms for all actions that you did. These languages create a moderate mental distance between the two people, which makes it harder for them to "truly" communicate. But then, Japanese value the hierarchical relationships, so it's okay.
On the contrary, I'm mostly talking with master students who are few years older than me here, but I use daily English terms with everyone. It's soooo much easier to communicate directly. One of my Japanese friends said that language can change your way of behavior; I probably am using more direct terms and expressing myself more straight-forward when I'm speaking English.
So I started with romance, a nice topic that most people are interested in, got some people in the debate, but came up with an useful generalized rule that I should keep in mind when I talk with other people here.
I'm glad that I got these findings; they are mostly because I've been hanging out with Europeans/Americans here. By the way, most it's really clear here that Asians tend to hang out with the Asians (JAP/CHN/KOR), the Indian with the Indian, and the Southern Europeans with the Southern Europeans (ITA/SPA). Is this because you share the similar values, speak the similar languages, or look alike? This is one question I've been thinking about recently.
In any case, I really like the fact that I'm learning new things here, not just finance and politics and those academic stuff that I can learn in Japan. Anyone going studying abroad should try to interact with people who are different from you; you learn a lot out from the experience!
※Generalizing cultural differences are fun, and interesting, but be careful not to think too stereotypically!
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