Coming Home

Everyone has heard of culture shock.  Most people don't ever hear about reverse culture shock, though.  It is the process of coming home and going through culture shock all over again in your native land.  Most exchange students get their first real exposure to the idea of reverse culture shock at their orientation about a month or two before they go on their exchange.  The idea is presented reasonably enough...  You have spent a year changing and adapting to a new culture.  So once you get home, you will have to change again to adapt back to your native culture.

Makes sense, right?   And I believed it, too.  I just didn't believe how severe it could be.  I don't think anyone really does.  After all, you've only been in your host country a year.  You've lived in your home country at least 16 years by the time you can go on a Rotary exchange.  How hard will it really be to adapt back to this country you've spent all your life in?

For me, it was very hard.  It is said that the easier and quicker you adapt your host country, the more trouble you will have adapting back to your native culture.  I adapted quickly.  And once I came home, I realize how much I had changed. 

A lot of the changes were little things.  I sat differently, I talked differently, my gestures had changed, and I saw Americans as intolerably rude.  Certainly there were big changes.  It took me several weeks of speaking like Yoda before I was thinking in English again.  I kept mixing up "as", "in", or "for" (horrible for my first college class which was Shakespeare!)  Eventually, I got to the point where I would instinctively say "ow" instead of "itai" after stubbing my toe, my dreams were back in English, and I was remembering to say the subject of a sentence when speaking. 

But just because I was back in English mode didn't mean my reverse culture shock was done with.  Oh no.  While I had only been gone a year, it took me almost three years to associate myself with being an American and not getting horrible homesickness for my home in Japan.  I even planned on going to work in Japan after graduation.

I still get homesick for Japan, but it is much easier now (and it should be after more than 5 years!).  I have even been able to start on my scrapbook of my year there - something that took me 3 years to work up the courage to do and then would sometimes still make me sad.  But now I can say that I finally feel more American than Japanese.  That doesn't mean I have forgotten about Japan or don't feel any connection to it (of course, if you have looked at the other parts of my page, there's no way you can think that!).  I fully plan on going to Japan so many times that I will lose count.  And I still have day dreams of Dan or I getting a job that would require us to transfer there.  But, until that happens, I think I will be okay living in the States - as long as I have lots of visits back home.

Back to Japan '96 - '97