One of the big knocks on Japanese society these days is that people don’t take time to get to know their neighbors. I often see TV programs and surveys that show that rarely people really spend much time with people outside their homes, and while I suspect this issue is much more prevalent in cities rather than where we live, I do notice that people around here rarely slow down in their daily lives to talk with other people living around them. The idea of chatting with just anyone you meet isn’t very popular, and despite signs everywhere in Japan that tell you that “a warm greeting will warm you up on cold days” and “a smiling face and welcome will make for a better neighborhood” rarely is this a reality.<\/p>\n
I should say that as a weekend-sociologist I observe with great interest how people treat each other in normal and unusual situations, but as long as I live in Japan my interactions with other people will always be an unusual situation for them, and as such normal social rules probably are not in effect. So please take my observations with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n
It does seem to me that the aspect of Japanese culture that involves the formation of groups, and the clear delineation of members and non-members makes it easier to treat neighbors as outsiders… that is, not members of your “family group”. Certainly in America I treated neighbors differently from family members, but depending on your personality it may not be that dramatic of a difference. Here in Japan neighbors are treated somewhat differently than what I’m used to – rather like you would treat an unexpected but socially high level guest in your home.<\/p>\n
The other night while grilling some beef on the back patio I exchanged smiles and waves with the neighbors two doors down while they were gathered on their patio eating dinner outside. After I finished grilling the beef I cut a few slices off and walked over to give them a sample. The husband has been eyeing the gas grill and had some questions, and I thought a taste would be the best way for him to check it out. We had a nice conversation, and I invited them over for cocktails next weekend. This is very un-Japanese behavior, and for everyone but me it appears to be a social stretch (including Kuniko).<\/p>\n
Hopefully we’ll have them over soon and we’ll see how it goes. I guess this is part of why I love to live in a foreign country – even a simple thing like inviting some neighbors over for drinks turns into a social experiment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the big knocks on Japanese society these days is that people don’t take time to get to know their neighbors. I often see TV programs and surveys that show that rarely people really spend much time with people outside their homes, and while I suspect this issue is much more prevalent in cities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-pR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}