Comment by bitbasher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitbasher | Hacker News Reader

Japanese also has a number of social systems and expectations that can be tricky to navigate as an outsider.

When I was younger and studying Japanese I used to play a popular Japanese MMORPG. It was popular among middle aged individuals (25-50).

I was lucky enough to meet a Japanese clan leader that invited me into one of the largest clans in the game. Fast forward a year or so-- and a new player joined the clan.

One day the new player flipped out on me in our clan chat. Our clan leaders told her I wasn't Japanese and to cut me some slack. She refused to believe I was a foreigner.

On the one hand I was proud. My Japanese was good enough for someone to think I wasn't a foreigner. On the other hand I was sad, I clearly did something wrong.

The clan leader spoke to me in a 1:1 fashion and tried to explain. It wasn't the language I used, but more or less how I interacted with the more senior clan members. I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...

> I would often suggest things we could do or ask if they wanted to do something. In reality, it was expected to do small talk and wait for senior clan members to suggest something to do. I was crossing some social boundary...

I know that this sort of shit happens in corporations and the government, but the idea that it crosses over into even multiplayer games makes me reconsider if I really want to ever visit Japan...

Big clans are basically companies with hierarchical power structure.

Social structures still exist in social situations. I don't really see what the alternative would be.

I found an interesting interview on youtube of someone who grew up in Japan and moved to Korea:

> What is your favorite thing about Korea?

> I find it comfortable that Koreans are honest about their thoughts.

> In the beginning I was hurt a lot and it was hard because of how honest Koreans are

> What do you think is the difference between Korea and Japan?

> First of all I think there is a difference in personality

> Since I was living in Japan, up until I was 18 years old, I had a typical Japanese personality

> Back then I couldn't speak my mind [...] and dancing was the only way I could express myself

> [...] and I also couldn't reject [someone/something]

> when my friends said we should do something, I always said yes

> after living in Korea, I felt a lot that I need to say what I want and don't want to do

Given that it's unacceptable to reject what a peer wants to do in Japan, I can see where making suggestions to a superior would cause problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqqwrZqjK8

This is exactly what I ran into-- it's something you learn by experience/living through it. Unfortunately, no amount of text books can really prepare you for that.

It's weird. I knew thousands of kanji. I could conjugate like the best of them. I could read and discuss classic Japanese literature. I could read and explain classic Japanese grammar and the root of modern grammar.

What I couldn't do? A simple social situation.

As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.

I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.

And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.

Seriously, just go. They were incredibly nice to us while we were there visiting.

> As an obvious foreigner, you are 100% exempt from all this. In fact, if you get it right, it'll make them feel weird and they'll try to avoid that.

Are you sure? In Korea, everyone who seriously cares about this stuff absolutely prefer it if you get all of it right. Of course, plenty of people (probably most under 30) secretly hate it and are therefore thankful if you don't get it right as it gives them a semi-out to be slightly more loose as well.

> I read a story once about someone who went to McDonalds in Japanese, and the clerk flipped the menu to the English side. The person flipped it back over, and the clerk flipped it to English again! They simply couldn't believe the foreigner could read it.

> And I've read stories of people who didn't act like a "gaijin" (foreigner) and people didn't know how to interact with them, and the person finally just accepted it and acted like they expected a gaijin to act, and then everything was fine.

Not trying to be rude but this pretty much tells me your first claim is likely wrong. Plenty of the exact same stories abound about Korea, especially online, yet they're both outdated and very cherry-picked. They're real, they happen (I've experienced them myself), but 99% of people would strongly prefer it if you were fluent in the language and followed every procedure as "normally" as possible.

Japan and South Korea are different countries.

They are, but they have in common that a huge portion of things written about them online in English - especially about these cultural subjects - are very outdated or otherwise unrepresentative. Like I said, most of that comment is written all the time about SK too, and they're effectively untrue. There would need to be strong evidence that such reports about Japan are any different.

They aren't going to live there. They're going as tourists.

If you want to live there, in standard apartments and jobs, then yes, people are going to be annoyed constantly by all the things you do 'wrong'.

But as a tourist or visitor of any kind, all those misdeeds are easily forgiven, and they can even enjoy the difference.

It's not surprising at all because I guess as one would expect, schoolyard rules applies in a game, not company rules. Seniority is still going strong at school, perhaps since the age difference is low or because there is lower opportunity for merit-based respect.

At companies, basically everyone should be speaking polite Japanese regardless of seniority. Harassment has been a big deal and companies have gotten a lot stricter on it these past years, so at large corporations there will be far less of senior members talking down to low members as did happen before. One reason companies can change like this is at most, HR is a much stronger org than product, i.e. the ideal career path for a manager tends to be to move from product to HR, at least at the ones we wouldn't refer to as "tech companies".

SMBs will still feel quite old though since they don't have strong HR like the big companies. I don't know much about government but do have the impression that they would also still have these issues. But I think corporate Japan has gotten a lot better than you might be thinking.

I co-run a guild in WoW right now on the anniversary server with >150 members.

It's people who play these games and almost any weirdness you can imagine that could exist in a person in real life gets brought into these games.

Often it's magnified because of the pseudo anonymity. We've only been "big" for a few months and a handful of things we've already ran into would make you not want to visit several western hemisphere countries if held to the same standard. :)

As a Brazilian kid I played WoW with an American guild. One day people were doing some trash talking and I threw the line "it is all Obama fault" thinking it was funny because I often heard that from TV due to all the political drama in the US at the time. The conversation wasn't about politics at all.

My guild leader pulled me aside and seriously said to not bring politics into it haha. My first big culture shock of my life.

In Brazil it is quite common (at the time at least) to just blame the government for everything, no matter who is in government.

The second was that apparently wearing speedos is not socially acceptable in most a lot of the first world beaches anymore.

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