Re: Anyone ever live in Japan
My girl friend is there about ten times a year, and although the new wore off about fifteen years ago, she still likes going.
If your on a base, you still benefit from little America, so culture shock isn't as bad as it would be if you were not connected to the States in someway.
My step sister and her husband were there for several years with no connection to westerners what so ever and they kind of got tired of it after the first year, which they loved, and spent the next year planning on how to get back to the States.
Get a business card if you plan on mixing with locals, printed on two sides, in English and Japanese. When you exchange cards, don't just stick it in your pocket like Americans do, take it as something valuable in both hands, and look at it like it is important, and interesting for 30 seconds or so.
Also when meeting important people in groups, the people doing the talking will not be those that are the most important. Unlike Americans, important Japanese business people don't talk in meetings, they listen, and have people who talk for them.
Also don't underestimate the number of Japanese business people who speak English. Many do, but won't with you. It is all a strategic business philosophy. Watch out what you say, and how you say it.
Go with an open mind. Don't be loud. Bow a lot. Smile. Your going to get lost, even the Japanese do, get used to it. Nothing is English, so don't confuse experiences you may have had in Europe. Wait till you see their toilets! Don't play with the buttons till you stand up or you may get some suprises!
Everything there has some kind of digital melody that it plays, you can't escape them.
Get ready for $15 apples, and $75 square watermelons. Everything is expensive, expensive, expensive, unless you have a company expense account, that is.
It is like falling on another planet, strange but cool. China is more like America, than Japan.
P.S. Oh yea, if your walking on the street and men or women give you little pacts of Kleenexes with writing & designs all over them, they are not for wiping your nose, and you are probably in, or close to, a Red Light district, and it is their way of advertising their, uh, business. If you are a woman and take them, they think you might be looking for a new job, if you are a man, you are looking for, uh, never mind.
My girlfriend brought home hundreds over the years because she new I liked to study the Japanese style of commercial design, and they were free. She would have the whole crew out collecting them for me. The ugly ones I took to work in a big bag one winter. People found out at our office I had them to give away so they were everywhere. Hundreds of them, really hundreds of them.
We got a visit from a bunch executives from Mazda once, and the next thing I know they are all in my office grinning and laughing.
Someone told them the Kleenexes packages were all from me.
It was then I found out I had just become the companies Japanese entertainment director for their future stays in Germany.
