==JAPAN: KM== [Culture]

"Hi Akira!"
Someone called my name. I looked round. There was a rather blonde girl wearing a red T-shirt. "Hi Amanda!" I greeted her enthusiastically and we walked toward each other.
"Nice to meet you again!" And we hugged, so glad to see each other again after a year. This was in the waiting room of Mountain-View High School, in California. Mountain-View H.S. is a sister school of my Iwata Minami High School. I went there as one of the exchange students on the sister school program during the spring vacation before my last year at high school. Amanda was a pretty girl who was a year younger than I. She had come to my school in Japan the previous year and had stayed at my friend's house. I had also been one of the host students, so we had become good friends. When she left Japan, we regretted parting and hugged when we said good-bye. So we naturally hugged when meeting a year later. She seemed to like greeting with a hug, even more than other Americans.
When I looked behind, I felt the cold eyes of other Japanese students who had watched our style of greeting. For most of them, this was their first trip abroad and they were astonished to see many new things in the U.S.A.. Furthermore, a boy and a girl were hugging before their eyes. As you know, for most Japanese, it is regarded as a strange or extraordinary act that a young man hugs a young woman in public...... But I was able to do so naturally with no trouble at all. This was a moment when I felt superior to other Japanese students, because I realized that I was more of an 'International Man'.
There were many other things I was impressed with then:
1) Everything was larger than Japan. Americans use a different scale!
2) There were no hedges, as if green lawn were a public thing.
3) Communications between a teacher and a student, a father and a son, or wife and husband were very friendly.
I found that hugging is not so strange or a dirty thing, and I began to think that to express one's mind physically is natural and wonderful. To hug spontaneously or to find these local points cannot be achieved without living or staying there, I think. I learned the importance of "Do in Rome as the Romans do." What we think bad is probably not. And I had already learned this when I was a child.
Years ago, while travelling in New Zealand, my family went to a Japanese restaurant in Queenstown to have dinner. We ordered Sukiyaki. Sukiyaki with a portable cooking range and raw eggs, Nama-tamago, were brought to our table. When we saw the eggs, we said, "Let's eat Tamago-kake-Gohan!" We cracked the eggs into bowls, mixed them with soy sauce, and then poured the mixture on the rice. This is a typical Japanese breakfast menu, I think.
You may ask, "Why did you eat Tamago-kake-Gohan though you came to the Southern Hemisphere so far from Japan?" I can understand that criticism. But, you see, we were not ordinary sightseers from Japan. We were from Thai- land. We had lived there from when I was 11 until I turned 15. Thailand is my second home and it is a country of nice experiences for me. The Thai are trying to develop and overtake developed countries such as Japan, but still, they are not so good at hygiene. They can't eat raw eggs and can't drink tap water. I couldn't eat Tamago-kake-Gohan for 4 years except when I came back to Japan for short vacations.
Of course, to be able to eat raw eggs and drink tap water that is free of bacteria are special things. In fact, some people say, "We can eat raw eggs, but the Thai can't, so we are superior to them." But I don't think so. Because they can't eat raw eggs, they eat cooked eggs. It is only a difference! That's all. I think to decide something is bad only because it is different is wrong and not a matter of superiority or inferiority.
Japan is an island country and we tend to refuse differences though we are seeing only the surface of foreign countries. We tend to think that we are superior to any other country (especially developing countries), but there are some re reasons beneath the differences, and our habits which we sometimes think superior to others' are not always better. "To find these differences and accept all points of view" is equal to "understanding foreigners". And to live with them is necessary to understand them.

COMMENT When I finished reading this essay, I thought that "understanding foreigners" is very difficult. I have not been abroad, but when I was in the ninth grade, I talked with an exchange student of our sister school. Then, I experienced many things as Mr. Ohishi did and I was impressed with their style of greeting. I also think that to understand foreigners, we have to know their way of thinking, their style of life, the national character, and so on. By understanding foreigners, we can have many points of view, I think.

Yuichiro Okubo