It seems strange to be writing about culture shock when there are so many other things going on in my life — new baby, friends and family visiting, parties, etc. — but I finally feel, after five years of being back in the United States, that I am okay living here.
It’s weird.
I told my friend Sheleen about it the other day, how I like driving my big Volvo, and how I enjoy my energy-sucking fridge with superfluous ice (crushed and uncrushed) and filtered water in the door. How I sold my european, super-energy-conserving washer and dryer and bought a new, big-ass American washer and dryer that can wash and/or dry more clothes than I can carry in one shot. I can’t get over this. All this time I was waiting for my washer to heat its own water and spend an hour and a half sprinkling tiny bits of water and spinning about an armload of clothes at a time, when the rest of the U.S. could load a week’s worth of laundry into their washer and 30 minutes later — wa lah! Finished! I felt the way settlers must have when the well was finally finished and they didn’t have to haul water from the creek anymore. No more mounds of laundry, waiting to be washed. No more agonising when, inevitably, the laundry soured in the summer and I had to wait 2 more hours for those six shirts to wash again. I had really, truly come home and I liked it.
I am now married with two kids. We have a house with a yard. We have two cars. We have credit card debt. We are Americans, dammit.
Some things that have changed since I came home:
10. I find it unusual and wrong when people run red lights.
9. I don’t think the pizza slices at Costco are absurdly big, as in, big enough for a family meal.
8. I think $2.97 a gallon for gas is “expensive.”
7. I no longer need to stop in the middle of a conversation to remember the English word.
6. I can look my supervisor in the eye when I am not angry.
5. I don’t get grossed out walking barefoot in a bathroom.
4. Paying $20 for a melon not only isn’t cheap to me anymore, it seems stupidly expensive.
3. I don’t feel like I need to eat an entire cheesecake in one sitting because I can get good cheesecake anywhere.
2. When I order “lasagna” at a restaurant, I get lasagna.
1. At a size 16, I consider myself “pleasantly plump,” not “extremely fat,” and moreover, everyone else thinks so too.
Here are a few things I just can’t shake:
10. I still feel like I need to take a gift when I go to someone’s house, usually of fruit.
9. When people give me something, I immediately calculate how much my return gift should cost, making it a few dollars more than theirs.
8. When I go on a trip, I still bring omiyage (gifts of chocolate or sweets) to my co-workers and apologise for having been away from work.
7. I still have the tendency to want to bow and look at the floor when I apologise.
6. I can’t distinguish between American and English spellings (apologise or apologize? Catalog or catalogue?) and I still mix up articles (a or the?).
5. I think that uniforms, strict rules and utmost respect for teachers should be the creed at every public school in the country.
4. I think the idea that clothing style expresses personal and artistic freedom is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
3. I wish people would shout an honorable welcome at me when I go into a 7-11, instead of looking me over to see if I have a firearm or gang colors in my pocket.
2. I think it’s perfectly natural to have little or no furniture in a room used for entertaining.
1. I am still surprised when people are deliberately rude to me.
All that being said, there are plenty of things about the U.S., other than the size of its appliances, that I enjoy. Americans are innovators, and being different, despite the problems it brings, is encouraged in our society. Americans enjoy clean supermarkets and wide streets. There are a lot of generous, big-hearted people who remember when the West was a little wilder, a little more open, and a little more dangerous. It’s still possible to live somewhere that looks like you were the first person ever to put foot there (although this is quickly becoming more and more difficult). I can still go out hiking and see wild animals, including mountain lions and bears. These things, along with many others, are what make the U.S. a great place to live.
For all its faults, America is a beautiful country and I’m not ashamed to be American, regardless of the stupid things our politicians do. They are but a few hundred and there are millions of better people here.
I know some of them.
I still yearn to travel and see other places. I still wish we could be more open-minded, see our own actions for what they are. But I have come to accept that, for better or worse, this is my home. And that’s okay.
It took a mere five years to figure that out. I guess I’ll have to see what the next five years brings.
June 30th, 2006 at 6:35 am
As weird as I thought it was when clerks yelled, in unison, “Irashiamase!,” in welcome when I entered grocery stores and convenience stores, I miss it too. American service personnel (including librarians) seem to find it unnecessary to acknowledge a person’s presence a lot of the time, which is completely un-human, because acknowledgement is the lowest level of attention we need to feel that we are valued.
Goes over to that rudeness/politeness thing too. If there is one thing I’d change about America, it is our level of politeness in public. There is no reason that I can think of not to be polite to everyone you have contact with in public. You don’t know them and you should not think the worst of them without cause.
I also think the Japanese cultural mindset that causes them to call complete strangers by the names we use for family relations, aunt, uncle, grandmother, etc., increases their likelihood of thinking of others as members of the larger human family, and therefore deserving of respect and politeness. We automatically think of others as separate, instead of thinking of them as the same. That sameness thing needs to be more natural for us.