Fitting in... or Not

"...that he was in some ineradicable way unlike others and set apart from them.  Like so many other voluntary exiles - there are a host of them resident in Japan today - he found that this disturbing sense of alienation from his fellow men was appeased by a wholly alien environment.  Now he could console himself:  of course he was not like the others - he was a Westerner, they were Japanese!  The difference was merely one of pigmentation, of tradition, of upbringing; it was not that terrible other difference within the psyche itself." - Lafcadio Hearn: Writings from Japan

I have come to realize the main reason I enjoyed living in Japan was the fact that I didn't fit it.  No foreigner does or ever will.  You aren't supposed to.  No matter how hard you try, you  will never be Japanese.  No one will mistake you for Japanese (unless it is on the phone).  You can learn everything about the language, culture, people and mores.  You can live a more "typical Japanese" life than a typical Japanese.  But you will still get routinely congratulated on how well you have mastered eating with chopsticks.  Because everyone knows that you aren't a natural product of Japan.

This might sounds frustrating.  And it certainly can be.  But it is also freeing.  In your home culture, you are expected to know the right and wrong things to say, do and think.  Maybe you do know.  You might just fit in perfectly.  But then, maybe you don't.  Maybe you have always considered yourself to be a little strange, odd, eccentric... in a word: different.  You don't know why, but you just seem to have strange sense of not fully fitting in.  You should fit, but you don't.

And then you get to Japan.  You ARE different, no question about it.  While in your home country, you might not have know exactly why you feel that way.  But in Japan, you know the reason:  you aren't Japanese.  Of course you feel different.  You ARE different.  No need to worry about it! 

Of course, that doesn't mean I didn't try to fit in.  I gave it my all to walk the walk and talk the talk.  I even got the compliment of not being recognized on the phone by my best friend - she though she was talking to my Japanese host sister!  I learned to bow and it became so natural that I would find myself bowing while on the phone (revenge for picking on my host mom for the same thing six months earlier).  I adapted so much to Japan that even the way I sat changed.  Most of these things I didn't notice until I came home, however.  But when I came back to the States, all the ways I had "become Japanese" hit home.  But was I Japanese?  Nope.  Not at all.  I never truly fit in.  But that's okay because I knew exactly why. 

Here, things aren't so clean cut.  Maybe everyone feels that they don't fit in one way or another.  After all, we are all taught that no one is the same - everyone is an individual.  But there is always the feeling that we should feel like we have found our proper place in the puzzle.  Maybe that is just my mid-twenties, post-college self talking, but I feel that I am still looking for the place where I just click.  Of course, I would never be able to find that click in Japan.  But knowing it isn't there just meant I didn't have to worry about looking for it. 

On to First Impressions

Back to Japan '96 - '97

Last updated 18-Sept-03