Introversion in Japan: A Series of Bizarre Comforts

Well, after collecting banal thoughts and scribbles over the last couple months ago and leaving the content-heavy posts to Ariel (i.e. the drudgery), I finally have the motivation to piece together a blog post on what are possibly my two favorite topics: cultural psychology and introversion.

...Although still, of course, not nearly as thoroughly or as organized or as succinctly as I would like - although those who know me are laughing, as they know that’s not possible. Well, this is a post on introversion after all...

As we close up our first month in the fourth country we’ve lived in together, I’d like to think that Ariel and I are getting better at culture shock. However, to be honest this probably has more to do with the fact that we have hopped from country to country in order of increasing structure and ease of living. I don’t think we’ve really been stressed or uncomfortable so far (barring typical work complaints and the difficulties of setting up home that are found everywhere), part of which I would attribute to the elevated quality of life available for introverts in Japan.

While Japan has been stereotypically labelled a land ruled by introverts, I’d have to balk at that assessment. For the most part, there are very high expectations for the Japanese to perform and excel in social situations, much like for those in any similarly developed country. I think we draw this conclusion more because we are accustomed to America, which is such a clear example of an unilaterally pro-extrovert culture, so Japan’s more equal treatment seems so striking.

As I mentioned before, I think the implications of this mindset manifest in ways that make daily life subtly yet considerably more pleasant for the average introvert. I think the simplest way to show this is to relay how it plays into a single weekday for me.

Each workday at our company (and as far as I am aware, for almost every other corporation in Japan) begins with a reading of the company principles. As we work for both a parent company and its subsidiary, this ritual takes the form of two morning meetings for us. In the first, the reading is closed off with a celebratory “Oh!” and a pumped fist; in the second, an overhead clap and fist bumps with neighbors. Initially I found this practice quaintly cultish and charmingly corporate, but over time I have come to appreciate the sense of community and oneness it brings. It seems, to me, an interesting compromise between the desires of introverts (I want to stay at my desk and get settled in before talking to anyone) and extroverts (I want to get up and talk with people to start my day). It’s an overall win for the company, as goals are clarified, announcements are made, and company culture is reinforced. And for me: I don’t have to chat with strangers, there is physical contact that feels bonding but not overly intimate, and I’m free 15 minutes later to settle in with limited interruptions.

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My first several bathroom breaks while working here were spent contemplating the complex etiquette regarding “flushing sound”. Much as it sounds, each toilet comes equipped with this feature to create a sort of white noise in an otherwise quiet bathroom. I myself have been quite shy about pressing “flushing sound” - was this not a tell-tale indicator that one was making sounds that needed to be covered? It would seem not. “Flushing sound” seems, for the most part, to be an introvert’s public bathroom dream. A chance to wash out the world during one’s extended restroom respite, an option to eradicate awkward silence in the inevitability of shared intimate space. Most people press “flushing sound” as soon as they get into the stall, and one can often hear a round of babbling fake toilets as you walk by the restrooms, drowning out the silence. Once shy of the hidden implications, I now happily join the chorus.   

Stepping out of the (always) floor length, reassuringly isolated stall, I approach a set of single sinks and mirrors. After quizzing Ariel on the subtleties of bathroom architecture (she loves me) I think I can safely say that an extrovert would never notice or care that mirrors in every Japanese restroom are divided, yet not having to share a large mirror and accidentally make eye contact with someone else who is admiring themselves or marveling at newfound crows-feet is a bizarre comfort in a series of bizarre comforts that ever so slightly increases introvert happiness without ever marginally infringing on the desires of extroverts. In comparison, the idea of any company in the US ever designing something with introversion in mind is laughable.

After, uh, bathroom trips, we occasionally venture out into the outside world (the building we work in is completely self sustaining, containing a full grocery store, convenience store, and several basement floors of quality restaurants, which is very nice in the rain!) to buy food. Here is where Japan veers into the stereotypical, especially in Shinjuku: the home of the original salaryman. Most lunchtimes eateries in this area are single seating only, complete with my favorite Japanese dining tool: the ticket vending machine. While the single seating can be a little inconvenient when you find yourself halfway across the room from your dining partner just because you really wanted ramen, I’m struggling to come up with negatives to the vending machine system. As these are often located outside of the restaurant, this gives an indecisive introvert basically unlimited time to painstakingly translate all the Japanese with their 3rd grade reading skills, decide on the perfect dish, and proceed into the restaurant with tiny receipt in hand as if the whole process took 5 seconds. Said introvert (who probably only managed to drag themselves outside and face the world knowing that they could carry out this process human interaction-free) may then snuggle up into their single seat with their carefully selected ramen, possibly companion free. I can see how this could be interpreted as introvert-centric, but really these are only some of innumerable restaurants in the area, and thus only a small selection of the possible experiences. As such, the eating options in Japan allow for a respite for introverts, but do not promote one personality style over another. Especially considering that the aforementioned introvert is likely to go on to spend their evening hours at a loud bar drinking with colleagues late into the night, this option is considerably valuable in efforts to maintain sanity.

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While out with one of my Japanese coworkers, she remarked that I, like the CEO of the company, was clearly intuitive. I was struck by this, not simply because so few people in the US would have actually pointed this out, not only because so far in Japan this has been noted several times, but because it was so clearly seen as a normal, positive trait that can lead to success. In the US, I have never been noted for my intuition in a professional setting, and that is part of what drew me to Japan (where I was specifically recruited for my interest in one-on-one interaction and the subtleties of psychology, by a CEO who consistently explained his reasoning as “just feeling”). I’m not sure which is more dumbfounding: the fact that this is indisputably valued in Japan or the absurdity that this will never be valued in the US. And yet, again, Japan has not discriminated, as Ariel’s extroversion is equally valued. Of course, after encountering a country wherein people with talents on both sides of the spectrum are seen as valuable, such an outlook seems obvious. When contrasted with the realities of the US, however, where many of my extroverted friends find themselves rising in the ranks while introverted coworkers often find themselves continually questioning their worth and suitability to the workplace, an appreciation for both extremes seems curiously dichotomous.

So for now, I enjoy the comfort of being a foreigner in Japan (being Japanese, of course, comes with a host of stresses to which I am ever so thankfully not beholden), in a culture that I find by no means avoids or abstains from social interaction and contact, but rather has erected natural ways of meaningful interaction that aren’t quite so imposing. A culture so deeply connected and focused on community yet so respectful of solitude; a place so interdependent yet so understanding of independence. From a socially liberal point of view, Japan could certainly be said to be behind in a lot of ways, and indeed is reminiscent of 1960s America in more ways than one. A positive, though, is the harkening back to the cult of character vs. the cult of personality, which is certainly easy for introverts to romanticize.

Of course there are qualifiers and exceptions and a dark side to all this, but I thought now it’d be nice to wax naively appreciate - perhaps another post for another time!

Our First Getaway

This weekend was our first 3-day weekend here and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s been about a month since the big move and I like to say that’s about how long it takes to settle into a place. Up until now, most of our weekends have been spent running errands to set up our apartment and our life here, including but not limited to: groceries (which is more difficult than it sounds, since this means not only searching for our favorite foreign staples [*ahem* peanut butter], but also looking for the biggest and cheapest places, which we’re learning is quite a feat in Tokyo), getting appliances, attending work functions, building furniture, and attempting to get internet and phones. We’ve been able to explore a little around our area, but this was our first real “let’s get out of the city and jump into a giant pile of nature” trip.

Originally, we were told we would have to attend a conference that Saturday, which meant 8 long hours of sitting in a chair attempting to decipher the plethora of Charlie Brown’s “wahwah wahwah wahwah” teacher surrounding us, but ultimately zoning out thinking about the many paths I could have taken in life and wondering how I ended up with a sore tailbone and a confused brain (or how I ended up with an awesome opportunity in a country so different from my own; it depends on my mood). To our surprise, our colleague who first informed us of this event, hinted, or rather outright told us, that there’s no point in us going and we should enjoy our 3-day weekend instead. Now, normally we are hard-working individuals who understand the importance of presence and body language, which you would gather from our attendance at daily morning meetings. But considering we’ve already sat through a number of endless conferences (exhausting my supply of questions about my greater purpose in life), we couldn’t argue with his logic and immediately looked online for quick Tokyo getaways. One of the great things about Tokyo is how many must-see destinations are 1-2 hours in the surrounding area. Combine this with the ease of high-speed (albeit expensive) transportation and 48 hours after learning of our newfound freedom, we were on a bus to Fujikawaguchiko (“Fuji”, like Mt. Fuji, “kawa” like river, “guchi” like mouth, “ko” like lake; a breakdown that might help you with that mouthful of Japanese syllables).

              This area is popular largely because of its breathtaking view of Mt. Fuji. After hopping off the bus, it was right there in your face, and it was gorgeous. We only got to see it the first day we were there because after that it was mostly enshrouded in fog, but that made it even more ephemeral and majestical and all words magical that one usually associates with nature and unicorns. Another wonderful thing about living in a city with actual seasons (looking at you, L.A.) is that as nature changes and scenery transforms, there are reasons to visit places again and again. This might be old hat to some of you, but for me, multi-colored leaves will never stop being foreign. So with Autumn, of course comes an endless array of oranges and reds and other indescribable colors of fire mixed in with the traditional greens and browns we know and love. We went to a place called Maple Corridor on the northeastern part of the lake, which had a small canal flanked with trees with leaves of every color of the rainbow. It’s apparently a thing in Japan to surround the trees with spotlights at night, which they call illuminations. It makes for a fun new dimension to the view, and we visited this part of the lake more than once during our stay.

One thing I forgot about mountain towns was how early everything closes down at night and starts up again in the morning. Once the sun sets, there’s not much reason to be outside in the freezing weather, so when the warmth was officially gone by 5 pm, there was little for us to do by way of killing time before we could go back to our hotel. I should mention as a side note, the hotel double-booked and we found that out while we were literally on the bus halfway to the town. Their fix was to transport us by van to and from another hotel they owned about 30 minutes away. It was terrible and we were reliant on their transportation to do anything and add to that the driver was an exceptionally talkative man whose English was simply not on par with the crazy ideas he wanted to convey to us. At one point he literally described a pyramid scheme (that he clearly did not know was a pyramid scheme, which reminded me of this "The Office" clip) and after 20 minutes of it, asked us if we understood his business plan. When we politely nodded (considering the fact that we were trapped in the car with him), he said, “Wow, I’m impressed with my English that you can understand me!” The hotel was not owned by Japanese people, which means it lacked the typical Japanese style of high-quality service regardless of price.

But despite this, we had a lot of fun filling our day with many of the activities in the area, including a tour of a sake factory, a visit to a museum of a professional kimono artist, exploring a cutesy European town, and visiting an onsen in the evening.

Julia and I have a lot of fun visiting breweries (after all, what else are you supposed to do in Portland? I'm joking, Portland's awesome), so when Julia parsed through the internet and saw that you could tour a Sake Factory, we jumped on it like white people to sushi. It’s recommended that if you don’t speak Japanese, you bring along someone who can translate the tour for you, so imagine their disappointment when they asked me if I spoke Japanese (no doubt assuming I was Julia’s tour guide) and I sadly shook my head (I always think it’s interesting when people ask me in English if I speak Japanese, versus the times when they ask me in Japanese. It’s like an accidental litmus test to see what they already assume the answer will be). The funny part of course is that he is more fluent in English than I could ever hope to be in Japanese, knowing words like “glucose” and “fermentation”. He constantly checked in with us to see if we understood what he was saying, and always breathed a sigh of relief when we said yes. Halfway through the tour he leaned in to me and said (half joking but mostly serious), “Please. Next time, learn Japanese.” After touring the factory itself, we went out back to a traditional Japanese house and garden that had been in the family for 22 generations. 22! They don’t actually use the house as a house anymore, only for wedding ceremonies and celebrations, which makes sense considering there were paintings and swords (katanas) that were hundreds of years old just hanging out like it was nothing. The tour was wrapped up with some sake tasting and since we are in our mid-twenties now, we felt it was time we be adults and start actually buying things to support the local business (something I’ve always wanted to do, but couldn’t make an excuse to do until I was a little more financially comfortable). So we bought our favorite plum sake and had it that evening in our cozy ryokan, with heater and 5 layers of marshmallowy puffy blankets (insert sigh of content; warmth always wins).

The museum visit was a very unique one and would have made the entire weekend worth it even if we only visited the one room filled with beautifully painted giant kimonos. The artist, Itchiku Kubota, was an apprentice kimono maker before becoming a Russian POW in Siberia during WWII. When he came back from the war, he decided he wanted to recreate an ancient dying technique from the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Considering he had no living teachers to learn from about this technique, his journey was long and arduous and he eventually adapted the technique with modern-day tools and came up with the kimonos you see today. If you’re curious, this is actually the exact video that’s played in the museum (My favorite are the old school Washington D.C. blue bloods). Not only did the technique take years to learn and master, but also a single kimono can take as long as a year to make. His main collections are entitled Mount Fuji, Universe, and Symphony of Light. Essentially, the collection involves paintings that span a series of kimonos (The final count is intended to be 80 kimonos). You can see what I mean here. Even better, like a true artist, he wanted people to really interact with his art, so none of them are in glass cases. You can walk right up and put your nose super close to them and really look at the details of the painting (which is incredible especially if you learn about his process first). He passed away before completing his mission, but of course there are apprentices who are continuing to carry out his vision. Highly recommend visiting this museum if you ever find yourself in Japan.

On par with the west’s obsession with Japan (mostly the U.S.) is Japan’s obsession with the west (mostly Europe; which when you think about it, makes for an unfulfilling love triangle in which the U.S. loses). I say this because it’s apparently common to create a life size replica of a quaint European town smack dab in the middle of some of the most Japanese places in Japan. When we first read about the Music Forest Museum, we weren’t quite sure what it was. After entering through the garden of music, we realized it was supposed to be a little getaway of flowers and bridges and whimsical architecture, complete with a Fairyland and a House of Fragrance. There was a sand art show about Pinnochio, automatic/self-playing organs and pianos, and even a Japanese opera singer.

Lastly, another highlight of the trip was our visit to an onsen (Japanese hot spring/bath house). I’m unsure of my reader audience, so while some of you may know exactly what this is, I want to describe it for those who don’t. It’s basically a public bath house (separated into male and female), where everyone showers in a giant room, after which you get to hang out in hot springs, steam rooms, etc. Think bath combined with spa. Some onsens only have a hot spring, but the one we went to was really big and had a lot of spa-like places you could go, including an aroma room, an outdoor hot spring, a cave hot spring, a carbonated hot spring, and a sauna. I had been to an onsen before, during my high school trip to Japan, but it was a different experience going as an adult. Also, while in general people don’t look at other people (especially as this is a very old and historic Japanese tradition), Julia and I tended to get a few furtive glances most likely due to us being foreigners. As Julia pointed out, you can’t really blame them. It makes sense that a largely homogenous society would be interested in what the bodies of people of other races look like; I know I would if I didn’t grow up in such a salad bowl of cultures.

So that concludes our first weekend trip! Phew, this one took me quite a bit to write. The weekend I was referring to was November 21^st – 23^rd. Still, it was a lot of fun to write about. I hope you have as much fun reading it!