First Impressions Are Important Especially in Japan

First Impressions are Very Important in Japan!

That's not me for your information.

If you were under the impression that first impressions are not important in Japan you are wrong.
First of all let me set the record straight about a few things. Since I've made a mistake here or there a few times, while in Japan. Well, maybe not ONLY in Japan, but anyways...

No matter what culture you are in, first impressions are important. It sets the tone for how you feel about a person and how things with that person are about to unfold.

Well, let me tell you a few stories about making the wrong first impression.

The first time I went to Japan, our Japanese teacher, a Canadian guy was trying to tell us how to be introduced to a Japanese family, what formality level to use etc. I couldn't really care less. I recall him saying something about an entrance way at a Japanese house being important and slippers or something.
I figured at the end of the day what is the worst that could happen? Japanese people are polite and I'm generally a polite kid, what cultural mistakes could I possibly do? The answer to that, is a lot.
First off I was stuck with a family that spoke no English. Perfect immersion I thought, although since I barely knew 10 words its going to be difficult. Secondly, I had a book of Japanese jokes that I started off with them as soon as I met them. "Grading tests is terrible" I said. They halfheartedly laughed. I wondered if it was funny.
According to the book the words grading papers is terrible or "Saiten wa saitei" is funny. It has to do with a play on words. The first part of the words are the same. I didn't get it and I took it by their fake laughs neither did they.
Oh well, I thought at least I broke the ice. Things will only get better.
We arrived at their house. I noticed the entrance way. I guess in English a better way might be to say alcove or something around those lines. Its a place to put your shoes and hang up your jacket. Whatever, who needs it I thought. My hostmother pointed to the floor, sandaru. I didn't know what that meant, but she was pointing at some sandals. I smiled and answered "No, I'm good, I have shoes on, thanks." It didn't occur to me that I was still wearing my shoes still, let's blame it on the jet-lag. As she pointed out my room, I saw Japanese tatami reed mats. I walked into my room with my muddy shoes on. At this point whatever my hostmother was trying to hold back came out! "NO! AHHHH NO!". I thought someone had got injured. I realized for the first time my shoes were on and I was tracking mud into the house and including the tatami mat floor. Whoops!
Mistake number one.

Notice the pointy tips? Don't eat those ok?

I wasn't great with chopsticks, but I had eaten enough Chinese food in Canada to know in theory how it worked. I wasn't great, but I could get the job done, if I ate slowly. The first night my hostmother had prepared a massive feast of sushi, sashimi and pork cutlet! Yummy! The only problem was, I had to use chopsticks. They told me they had bought me special chopsticks. With the help of a dictionary they explained they had gold inlay and real pearl in them. I was like Ok cool.
As I started to eat, I noticed the sashimi was pretty crunchy. Why so crunchy? Its raw salmon. What the heck? I kept chewing because I was hungry. Pretty tough on the teeth I kept thinking.
After dinner I went to pass my chopsticks to my hostbrother for cleaning. He said something in Japanese which I didn't understand.
His mother said something I also didn't understand.
At that point I looked at my chopsticks and realized I had eaten them. To be precise I had somehow managed to bite the pointy tips of the chopsticks off. That explains the crunchiness.

Mistake number two.

My hostmother had setup a Japanese boy day display in my room. It contained some samurai armour and an elephant tusk. Actually the elephant tusk wasn't part of it maybe, but was still in the same room. Who doesn't have an elephant tusk in their room?
I took out the ornamental sword and pretended to decapitate my hostbrother. So funny I thought, my hostmother looked upset as I was using her family heirloom that was probably 500 years old was being used to pretend cut her son. Whoops! Oh well, its a cultural experience, kind of.

Mistake number three.

To top it off it wasn't until a few trips later that I totally botched things up.
I started going to my school to teach English in the summer. The only problem was there was no kids in class. Since it was summer holidays there were only doing sports and no classes.
They told me although I can meet the teachers and talk to them the formal introduction wasn't until a month later. No biggie I thought, its not like I'm going to wait a month to talk to them. I did my Japanese introduction and figured, if I did it to a few of them and saw them all everyday, why bother doing it "officially".

They told me that the school day started at 815AM every morning when school started, but because it was summer I could show up at 830AM.
I was on time everyday and never showed up past 830AM. My American co worker would come to work at 9AM each morning. I had beat him everyday and I felt good since I wasn't late.
The most important day had come. The first day of school!
I somehow managed to sleep in. Only on that day, and it was the only day my American co worker was on time. I peddled my granny bike as fast as I could in my suit in the humidity and arrived at the school 30 minutes late. I had slept in. The principal had already introduced the American guy and he was trying to introduce me, even though I wasn't there and technically I had already met everyone.
The principal looked at me and said "First impressions are very important in Japan, you should show up on time!"
F##$! I thought.

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva

 

Arrival to Nagahama as part of Jet Programme!

Arrival to Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture Japan.
Yeah!

Nagahama dark green on the lake.

When we first arrived in our new city I was quite excited. Despite being a new environment and not knowing anyone well, I felt like it was a party. Well the party hit reality when I got to my new apartment. It was barren as the dessert and it smelled like paint. There was a tatami room(Japanese reed mats), a normal western style living room, a kitchen, and a tiny shower/bath. The shower/ bath seemed like a plastic box with a small sink beside it. The toilet was tiny in a room with a metal door with grates you could see through. Strangely it opened up to the kitchen. I thought it seemed like a weird place for a bathroom. Enjoy your food with some wonderful bathroom smells, mmm tasty!
There was also one large spare room as well with what looked like wooden floors. Lastly, there was a fridge in the kitchen with nothing inside. At least it was clean.
The smell of freshly painted walls was a little overwhelming at first. I imagine if you take a balloon of nail polish remover and stuck your head in it, that’s what it smelled like. On top of that the heat, oh the heat! If you could imagine the fires of hell that will partially explain to you what the heat of Japan is like. It penetrates your entire soul. Its so humid that when you come out of a shower and feel fresh as a daisy, you are immediately covered again in a sticky sweat. So imagine this heat and you think the only way to escape it is to hide in your apartment. The only problem is the smell of the paint mixed with the heat from hell is killing you. The heat makes the smell of the paint 10 times stronger. I was probably partially high during that first week now that I think of it.
Because I’m a social cat, I asked the other newbies from the building if they wanted to come over for a drink. I didn’t realize it at the time but none of us were drinkers. It seems funny now that I told everyone to drink. If I knew no one was a drinker I probably could have said let’s have a P and P party, pop and pizza. Although we’d have to replace pizza with something else, as Japanese pizzas usually consist of a 1mm crust covered with tomato sauce with corn on it.
We all sat down at my place in the living room inhaling paint fumes. That may have been what helped make it so much fun. Because I didn’t have any furniture most of us leaned on the walls(probably covering our clothes with paint), and a few in the center of the room. One guy let’s call him Mr.C was from Texas. His glasses were kind of coke bottle glasses. If you don’t know what they are Google it. They are basically thick glasses and look like they are made for comic effect. We found out Mr.C’s father was an optometrist. When one of the guys found that out he kept saying to me in private “If his father is an optometrist why would he make him wear those glasses? Has he ever heard of Lenscrafters?’.
After mentioning to everyone to be careful and not spill anything since this was my new apartment the worst happened. Mr.C split his drink all over my new floor. It may have been his glasses were too thick and he couldn’t see the floor, but that’s up to debate.
The floors themselves were quite odd. The looked like hard wood but when you walked on them they were not. In fact on top of whatever substance it was it seemed to be a layer of plastic film. Looking back on it now I think it kind of a linoleum that was coloured to look like hard wood. The weird thing though was the film on top of it. I’ve never seen that in any other country I’ve traveled to. When you walked on it, especially with sweaty feet, the plastic would tear itself off from the hardwood looking layer. I would often be pulling off chunks of plastic film from my feet. It was particularly hard to pull off when your feet were sweaty in summer and every step you take you feel like a plastic layer, or the skin on the bottom of your feet is about to peel off.
Mr.C’s spilling of alcohol and pop on the floor seemed to be like a corrosive acid to the plastic film and hardwood floor looking layer. I worried that the first day of this place and I’d already be dinged for damage deposit! Snap!

Our apartment "High Life". I'm not sure that was a good description.

Our apartments a collection of of 18 units was called “High Life Morii”. And yes, the side of our building actually had the words written in large letters “High Life Morii”. I can’t say there was anything high about it other than the smell of the paint in my unit. As for the Morii this referred to the older man Mr. Morii that spoke no English who owned it. Ironically for a person who owns 18 units he rented out 12 of them to foreigners. I often wondered if the city somehow tricked him into doing that. I often saw him dealing with problems that the foreigners were causing him. More on that later.
When we finally managed to dwell outside our foreigner kingdom castle (which had 2 sides covering it by rice fields) we ventured into the city to find a supermarket. We found a large supermarket and department store nearby called Heiwado which Chinese characters meant “The Peace Store”. Its symbol being 2 white doves. I wasn’t sure if I was about to walk into a place selling peace pipes or the Salvation army, but it turns out it was just an innocent name.
I had some stupid idea that when I moved to Japan I would start cooking amazing Japanese foods. Well first of all I don’t cook. Other than toast or cereal I don’t know how to cook a thing to save my life. As we entered Heiwado I looked at the fresh seafood section. For some reason my brain kept saying “Get something unique to Japan”. Well, not entirely unique to Japan but definitely cheap and something I wouldn’t ever cook at home, I saw octopus. How do you cook octopus? I had no idea, but I figured I’m in Japan I’ll have the motivation to find out. I picked up the biggest fattest tentacle I could find and threw it in my basket. Mission accomplished I thought.
I put that tentacle into my brand new fridge and left it there for over a month. I don’t know if there was an expiry date on it, but either way I didn’t care, I figured at some point I’d use it. After that month I realized there was a strong rotten fishy smell coming from the fridge. I wasn’t sure what to do so I didn’t investigate, instead I’d get in and out of the fridge as fast as possible. It was only when my girlfriend came from Canada that something changed. When she first entered the apartment she made a comment about a fishy smell. I was like “Oh hmm I don’t know what it is”. When she opened the fridge a few hours later she did a CSI investigation and realized that it was the month old tentacle. She threw it out, entirely scrubbed the fridge down and then put a special Japanese fridge deodorizer(similar to baking power) into the fridge. I would end up hearing complaints about the tentacle for another 3 years. She claims it still smelt after that time. I apologize to any future tenants of that apartment who may be using that fridge. 

If you found anything above amusing or even slightly funny help me out and click one of those boxes above or give me a Google +1 or something. Might come in handy in the future. If only it could make me some money. That would be even nicer!

My Youtube Channel, wearing red tights and jumping around as Deadpool (but I say Dadpool to avoid copyright. Smarter than I look!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUXxArlapy0

Other funny stories from this blog 
http://memoirsgaijin.blogspot.ca/

My blog about everyday life (not Japan related)
http://eyethroughtheglass.blogspot.ca/


My Youtube Channel (makes no sense just like my blog)
http://www.youtube.com/user/judoka4eva