Hmmm. I lived in the UK for just over two years, and didn't go through anything quite that bad. I remember being really irritated at the fact that the sidewalks all rolled up at 5pm, being aggravated at some of the slang, and irked at some of the government's policies...but overall, I wasn't terribly affected by culture shock. I never ever hated it there.
I have a good friend who is living and teaching in Japan; I wish I had had that link to send to him a while back, so he'd know (a) he's not alone--it's not just him and (b) it will get better. I think he was finding it pretty aggravating and stressful for a while, though he's an amazingly positive person and dealt with a lot by just doing the "tomorrow is another day" thing. I think now he's through that and very happy (with most of the cultutral aspects--there are still things he'd like changed about how his job works...)
Of course, with a situation like his, there's the language barrier on top of everything else, which is not *totally* absent in the UK what with dialect and accent, but nothing like learning a actual whole new language. Mike, I know, thought he had a decent grasp of Japanese, and he certainly seemed to be fluent to me (could talk to and joke with visiting friends, etc.), but apparently it was nowhere near good enough to get by until he'd had more training in-country. His description of trying to convey to a shop clerk that he wanted to buy dishwashing detergent was hilarious. It was the vocabulary problem plus, of course, the cultural issue that a Japanese shop worker could never (a) admit that they couldn't understand what a customer, even a gaijin, was saying and (b) could *never* let a customer go away without what they came for.
I remember being really irritated at the fact that the sidewalks all rolled up at 5pm, being aggravated at some of the slang, and irked at some of the government's policies...but overall, I wasn't terribly affected by culture shock. I never ever hated it there.
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timeasmymeasure
Different strokes, perhaps?
Date: 2005-09-29 10:45 am (UTC)Re: Different strokes, perhaps?
Date: 2005-09-29 12:19 pm (UTC)Of course, with a situation like his, there's the language barrier on top of everything else, which is not *totally* absent in the UK what with dialect and accent, but nothing like learning a actual whole new language. Mike, I know, thought he had a decent grasp of Japanese, and he certainly seemed to be fluent to me (could talk to and joke with visiting friends, etc.), but apparently it was nowhere near good enough to get by until he'd had more training in-country. His description of trying to convey to a shop clerk that he wanted to buy dishwashing detergent was hilarious. It was the vocabulary problem plus, of course, the cultural issue that a Japanese shop worker could never (a) admit that they couldn't understand what a customer, even a gaijin, was saying and (b) could *never* let a customer go away without what they came for.
Re: Different strokes, perhaps?
Date: 2005-09-29 05:09 pm (UTC)Me too!