happily disoriented
Going from Australia to Japan is like that split second when you have just stepped onto one of those moving sidewalks at the airport: a sudden lurch, a kernel of disorientation and then you realize that you are being speeded effortlessly and efficiently along by a force that is no longer your own.
Culture shock is eased by the elevators and escalators and buses that speak to you, comfortingly, in a gentle but authoritative female voice. The inanimate objects seem to sense my confusion and I imagine their responses--sympathetic, helpful, but completely above my concerns in their expensive simplicity. They are a higher form of intelligence! Sometimes I think I can hear the cellphone sigh as I try clumsily to turn it to "manner mode."
Currently, I have non-negligible language comprehension and production ability. I can make very casual (too casual) and acceptable daily conversations. I can cook an okonimiyaki on the heated metal in the center of a tavern table. I can slide the packaging off a convenience-store rice ball so that the nori stays perfectly intact. I can also sort my garbage in to appropriate bins now.
I walk around the city for eight-hour stretches, through its alleys and well-manicured department stores, I stare and am constantly stared at for speaking English with my colleagues. My food pyramid here is composed largely of food-purchased-from-convenient-stores, but the largest widest part at the base probably reflects my pastry intake, which is large.
As far as my emotion pyramid goes, there are about 4-5 of longing for familiarity and friends, 5-6 servings daily of amazement, 2-3 of intense confusion or aimlessness, and 8-12 servings of embarrassment. I have suddenly become conscious of proper language use, which means that all attempts at communication lead inexorably to embarrassment.
Though my language output skill is currently a mess, being in Japan has left me oddly able to understand most Japanese conversations quite well.
I must have powerful gods on my side, because I have not once been significantly lost when left alone. Every time I lose myself among crowded stalls packed close together like drupelets on a raspberry, I find myself seconds before I start to wonder if I should look for help. I take the right train quite by chance, even when all I have to go on is "That sounds like a place name I've heard before." My intuition is foolproof, if you are willing to walk around for a long time.
It has been a whirl wind of a ride so far and I hope it will continue to be so with all the people I have yet to meet, places and food to discover and a whole new world to experience.
Culture shock is eased by the elevators and escalators and buses that speak to you, comfortingly, in a gentle but authoritative female voice. The inanimate objects seem to sense my confusion and I imagine their responses--sympathetic, helpful, but completely above my concerns in their expensive simplicity. They are a higher form of intelligence! Sometimes I think I can hear the cellphone sigh as I try clumsily to turn it to "manner mode."
Currently, I have non-negligible language comprehension and production ability. I can make very casual (too casual) and acceptable daily conversations. I can cook an okonimiyaki on the heated metal in the center of a tavern table. I can slide the packaging off a convenience-store rice ball so that the nori stays perfectly intact. I can also sort my garbage in to appropriate bins now.
I walk around the city for eight-hour stretches, through its alleys and well-manicured department stores, I stare and am constantly stared at for speaking English with my colleagues. My food pyramid here is composed largely of food-purchased-from-convenient-stores, but the largest widest part at the base probably reflects my pastry intake, which is large.
As far as my emotion pyramid goes, there are about 4-5 of longing for familiarity and friends, 5-6 servings daily of amazement, 2-3 of intense confusion or aimlessness, and 8-12 servings of embarrassment. I have suddenly become conscious of proper language use, which means that all attempts at communication lead inexorably to embarrassment.
Though my language output skill is currently a mess, being in Japan has left me oddly able to understand most Japanese conversations quite well.
I must have powerful gods on my side, because I have not once been significantly lost when left alone. Every time I lose myself among crowded stalls packed close together like drupelets on a raspberry, I find myself seconds before I start to wonder if I should look for help. I take the right train quite by chance, even when all I have to go on is "That sounds like a place name I've heard before." My intuition is foolproof, if you are willing to walk around for a long time.
It has been a whirl wind of a ride so far and I hope it will continue to be so with all the people I have yet to meet, places and food to discover and a whole new world to experience.
