The People (Gillian)

As much as I can and have talked about festivals and food and manga as being the coolest things about Japan, the true heart of this country, the essence of what makes Japan a unique and interesting place, lies in the people that make all of the other things cool in the first place. I will be the first to admit that the Japanese can be difficult to understand or agree with at times. This is not due to individual views and it certainly is not because of racism (at least, it shouldn’t be), but more to do with inherent cultural differences. For example, teaching a class full of Japanese people is notoriously difficult, because the Japanese are not used to speaking up in class like us ruder, more loud-mouthed westerners are. As a result, the Japanese will rarely volunteer answers to questions, which can be quite frustrating for a teacher. But obviously along with the more difficult characteristics of Japanese people come some fantastically cool traits, some of which I shall endeavour to explain in this article.

The Unashamed Delightedness

My mother is a magician. As such, she frequently performs her tricks in front of other people. Naturally she thoroughly enjoys doing this, but one thing that she finds endlessly infuriating about western audiences is how they do not tend to like being made the fool. So often, instead of enjoying the trick, the audience will try to figure out how the magician did it. The Japanese, however, do not mind being fooled in the slightest. They will instead gasp in awe after a trick has been done, then applaud enthusiastically and ask the magician to, please, do something else.

This willingness to simply enjoy the performance, rather than to try and out-do the performer, is not limited to magic tricks. Anything that involves an element of competition, like karaoke, ten-pin bowling, gaming, etc, can often become fiercely competitive to the point of fights and tears in the western world, but in Japan it is much more about doing something with your friends and having a wonderful time. Competition often does not come into play at all.

This might seem like a small thing, but it is nice to finish a song in karaoke and have everybody say “that was amazing!” rather than “I can do it better than that.”

The Desire to Please

The Japanese are always concerned with making sure that things are done with as little hassle on the person’s part as possible. This is a fantastic aspect of Japanese people and of Japanese culture, because it makes a person feel like they are actually being cared for.

Allow me to present an example. Once in England I was on a train travelling to London, only to realise that I had forgotten some necessary documents at my hotel. I went back to the station I had started from and fed my ticket into the gate, not seeing that the gate was already open. My ticket was swallowed. I went to the man at the gate, who had seen what had happened, and explained the situation. I was offered absolutely no sympathy and had to pay for another ticket, which is not exactly ideal when one is a university student. In contrast, one time in a Japanese train station a friend of mine realised that she had lost her ticket. She went over and explained the situation to the station guard, and was let through the ticket barrier without a problem.

Again, this might seem like a small thing, but the fact that Japan shows so much more care towards other people is incredibly cool to me. That sort of exceptional service is one of the greatest things about living in Japan as opposed to other countries.

The Friendliness

This is probably the best character trait of all. Japan is not the most multicultural of countries, and you do hear horror stories of people not being hired for jobs because they are not Japanese, or not being allowed in clubs because they are foreigners. However, in normal day-to-day life the Japanese are incredibly friendly people. I have had men and women coming over and talking to me in English, I have had people offering to help me when I was lost, I could go on. Once a Japanese lady helped my mother and I when we were trying to buy a train ticket, without us asking her for help first. I could never expect that sort of help in England, let alone in Australia. At least, not without me asking for it first.

This might be a part of the Japanese people’s eagerness to please, but either way the Japanese people’s inherent friendliness is definitely a huge asset.

So the Japanese people undoubtedly have faults, as do the people of every other nation. But if you are looking for a country full of friendly, eager-to-please, companionable people, look no further than Japan. Japan is a country with a unique personality and many admirable qualities, and its people make up a significant part of that.