Taken by the Wind » Cultural Differences

Travel, Soul Mates and a Book about Mormons

Reannon Muth — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 02:38:03 +0000

"Where my Heart is" by fwooper

I just finished reading Elna Baker‘s memoir, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance. In it, she recounts the struggles she faced as a 26-year-old Mormon virgin looking for true love in New York city. She’s a funny writer and her insight into the Mormon faith was interesting and informative. Now 30, Elna is no longer a virgin or a Mormon but a successful writer. She made the very personal announcement in an essay she wrote for Glamour, “Guess What? I’m not a Virgin Anymore!”

Though I wasn’t raised Mormon or even religious, I loved Elna’s voice (the chapter about her trip to Tanzania is hilarious) and could relate to her as a traveler. Elna split her childhood between Washington, London and Spain (her family moved around a lot because of her father’s job). Here’s an excerpt from a conversation she had with her co-worker about soul mates that I found particular relevant to life as a travelholic.

“Vinny,” I began. ”Do you believe in soul mates?”

He thought about my question. ”Nah,” he shook his head. ”Take my wife – she grew up five blocks from me, only we didn’t meeet till we were thirty-five. I’d been in the army, I’d traveled the world, and still I married a girl from Astoria, Queens. What are the odds that my soul mate grew up five blocks away? Is it fate? No. In the end, people just marry other people who are like them.”

I was disappointed by his answer, but nodded my head.

“You know what your problem is?” he continued.

“What?”

“You believe a buncha different things, you’ve lived in a buncha different places, and now, nobody’s like you.”

“Thanks, Vinny. No one tells you what being unique actually means: that you’ll die alone.”

That quote reminded me about something I’d read about ‘Third Culture Kids’. ’Third Culture’ is a term used to describe children (usually American military brats or the offspring of missionaries) that were born in one culture but raised in another. It’s sad because usually these children have an incredibly difficult time adjusting to life in their home culture when they return. Though they were never fully able to assimilate into their host country’s culture, they find that when go back ‘home’, they aren’t fully able to assimilate there either. They’re stuck forever straddling two worlds; never fully feeling like they belong anywhere and having difficulty relating to anyone except for other ‘Third Culture Kids’.

Though no one can fully identify with someone else (as everyone’s life experience is unique), for those who’ve lived abroad, it seems particularly difficult. It seems ironic that some of the experiences we’ve had as travelers that make us most interesting, are also what make us wholly unrelatable; an alien race of no-culture nomads.

Help! I Was Born in the Wrong Country!

Reannon Muth — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:05:01 +0000

Flag Girl by Brittany Randolf

”The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
– Maya Angelou

Since I wrote that post about personality types and their corresponding countries, a lot of you have found this site through google-searching “Where in the world do I belong?” or “My country doesn’t match my personality type.”

Apparently, there are quite a number of you who feel as though the stork got lost while on his way to say, Fiji and dropped you off in Finland or France or Fallujah instead. Well, that sucks. And I hear ya. I’ve often wondered if a country like Spain (with it’s siestas and 36-day of yearly paid vacation time) wouldn’t perhaps have been a better cultural fit for my vagabond ways than my motherland (Land of the Free, Home of the Work-Enslaved).

The author of the book Geography of Bliss: One Grumps Search for the Happiest Places in the World, Eric Weiner, has a term for this. He refers to people who’ve found a better cultural fit in a country other than their birth-place, ‘hedonic refugees’. As he explains, hedonic refugees are “not political refugees, escaping a repressive regime, nor economic refugees, crossing a border in search of a better-paying job. They are hedonic refugees, moving to a new land, a new culture, because they are happier there. Usually, hedonic refugees have an epiphany, a moment of great clarity when they realize, beyond a doubt, that they were born in the wrong country.”

For me, that epiphany came when I was 15. I’d just returned from spending a summer studying abroad in Chiba, Japan and although I knew that Japan wasn’t where I was meant to spend the rest of my life, I knew without a doubt that the US wasn’t either. While my peers were busy plotting what they’d wear to prom, I was in the school library pouring over the encyclopedia and plotting future trips to Paris and Peru. ‘Operation: Move Abroad and Live Happily Ever After’ was in full-swing and now, 30 countries and 13 years later, it’s nowhere near completion. I still haven’t found a country to call ’home’ and I’m beginning to think that I never will. Which, perhaps, at least according to Eric Weiner, isn’t such a bad thing.

“What to do with this information?” He asks after detailing the phenomenon of ‘cultural fit’. “Should we administer cultural-compatibility tests to high school students, the way we used to test for career compatibility? I can imagine the phone call from the school guidance counselor. “Hi, Mrs. Williams, we’ve tested little Johnnie and determined that he would fit in perfectly in Albania. He’d really be much happier there. A flight leaves at 7:00 p.m. Should I go ahead and make that booking for you?

Of course not. Just because the culture fits doesn’t mean we should wear it, and, besides, every society needs its cultural misfits. It is these people – those who are partially though not completely alienated from their own culture – who produce great art and science. Einstein, a German Jew, was a cultural misfit. We all benefit from Einstein’s work…”

He has a point. I imagine that if I ever did manage to find a country filled with people identical in personality to me, I probably wouldn’t want to live there. If such a country existed, I’d imagine that it probably wouldn’t fare too well for the simple fact that there’d never be anyone there to run-it. At any given time, half of the country’s population would probably be sitting in a park somewhere in London or Los Angeles and on every restaurant or storefront window would read the sign: “Gone on a vacation break. Be back in 5-10 days”.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you could devote your entire life to traveling the world to find that soul-mate of cities or that country you were destined to spend happily ever after with and maybe you’ll luck out and find it. Author David Sedaris (an American in Paris) did. As did Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Madonna, Johnny Depp, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pamela Anderson.

Or…

You could save yourself the trouble and devote your energy to learning to love the country you’re in. Embrace your outsider status. And let that freak flag fly.

For more information on hedonic refugees, read an interview with Eric Weiner on World Hum.

The 999th Reason Why I Hate Kanji

Reannon Muth — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:58:00 +0000

I woke up this morning at seven, stepped into the shower, and sleepily pushed the button that turns on the hot water heater.

Or so I thought.

Suddenly the bathroom erupted into chaos. Sirens blared, an automated computer voice started shouting instructions at me through the vent over the bathtub and I screamed in terror.

Apparently the button located near the hot water heater wasn’t outlined in pink because it symbolized ‘heat’, but because it was the emergency call button. I’d just unwittingly notified the doorman, the receptionist and possibly the police, that I was having a heart attack in the bathtub.

Niiice

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, But Reannon, how could you have not known that was the kanji for ‘call’?

I know. I know. It’s so obviously a picture of a one-legged man holding a baby and hopping away from an erupting volcano. I mean, clearly. I don’t know how I ever misinterpreted that to be anything other than ‘call for help.’

The only thing I can in say my defense was that I was still half asleep, which is also really the only logical explanation for what happened next.

I could hear the intercom buzzing so I grabbed a towel and dashed towards the front door and was confronted with a flashing, beeping, vibrating intercom system with no less than 10 buttons, all of which were labeled in kanji.

Damn.

I did what I normally do in these types of situations and I panicked. I punched every button, pausing for a second after each one to shout: ‘moshi moshi!’ into the microphone.

I like to think that if I’d been more awake or less frantic I would have stopped before hitting the bright orange button baring this symbol:

It’s a man with an afro standing next to a tee pee…and they’re both on fire!

But as it happened, I wasn’t and so I didn’t.

Yes, I set off the fire alarm.

Cue an intense moment of cursing as I stood in my bath towel and noted the sprinkler system and the sea of fancy electronic equipment below it. A flat screen TV, a Mac laptop, a DVD player and a playstation. And none of them belonged to me because this wasn’t my apartment. I’d been entrusted with the responsibility of safe-guarding my friend’s bazillion dollar Roppongi mansion with explicit instructions to ‘not set the place on fire’…and I was about to do quite the opposite; drown it in a flood of water.

“Moshi, moshi! I yelled into the intercom. “It was a mistake!”

Damn. I forgot the Japanese word for mistake. “Misutaiku!” I yelled, pronouncing the English word with a Japanese accent.

“Chotto Matte (Just a moment),” came the reply. And then the line went dead. And two minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

I only had enough time to quickly rearrange my towel back into place before I watched in horror as the front door clicked open and in walked a police officer.

Talk about embarrassing. Not only do I have to be ‘that idiot gajin who can’t read’ but I have to be caught wearing nothing but a towel with sopping wet hair and ugly mascara tracks running down my cheeks.

Funnily enough, this has happened to me twice before. I once hit the emergency call button while looking for the ‘flush’ button in a subway station bathroom and I hit it another time while looking for the ‘open’ button to release the automatic door in a restaurant bathroom. I blame those experiences for why I’m now ueber paranoid about using public toilets.

After both incidences, I swore that I’d never make that same mistake again…and I went home that night, looked up the kanji characters in my textbook and committed them to memory.

Or…so I thought.

Flower Girl

Reannon Muth — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:58:00 +0000

There’s a new celebrity in town and her name is Sakura. She’s tiny, delicate, a pale shade of pink and every one’s clamoring for a chance to be photographed with her. She’s the new Paris Hilton and she’s got this country so love-struck, one could say it’s bordering on obsessive. People travel thousands of miles and camp out overnight in freezing temperatures, all just for the chance to spend a single day in her presence.

For weeks, I’ve known she was coming. Everyone from my boss to my Japanese language school have been sending me emails, waxing poetically about her beauty or else theorizing when she’d make her first appearance in Tokyo. The morning news has offered daily reports on Sakura sightings; where she’d been spotted last and educated guesses on where she’d be headed next.

I chalked it all up to yet another Japanese fad, akin to the Banana Diet of ’08 and didn’t give it much thought.

“What’s the big deal?” I said every time I clicked on the “not attending” icon to yet another ‘Sakura party’ or picnic invite on Facebook that one of my sakura-obsessed friends was hosting. “The only Sakura fans are old people,” I said in an attempt to reassure myself that I wasn’t missing out. “She’s not THAT pretty.”

But then last weekend in Kyoto, I grudgingly agreed to accompany a friend to a Sakura photoshoot. Sakura was doing a week-only special appearance in the Zen garden of a famous temple. It was agreed by most that the beauty of the peaceful, majestic and meticulously groomed Zen garden would be the best spot to photograph her. Green, yellow and blue spotlights had been set up with this in mind, and as the sun began to set, crowds of tourists descended upon the temple in eager anticipation.

“I feel like I’m in Disneyland”, I said as well paid the US $8 entrance fee and joined the throng of tourists waiting in line at the entrance.

“Shh!” my friends said, as we slipped off our shoes and followed the crowd who’s excited chatter had fallen to a hushed quiet. We tiptoed barefoot across the cold wooden temple floors and then around a corner…and there she was.

I gasped.

“Wow, oh wow,” I said, awed. “She’s like…Cinderella.” Flashbulbs went off all around us as peope pushed forward leaning over the barricade in order to get a good shot.

She stood, rooted in spot, her hair falling in long, soft tendrils across her face. It was the color and texture of soft, fluffy, pink cotton candy and was so long it nearly touched the ground. The spotlights illuminated her hair, casting the rest of her in dark shadows. The stars above her head seemed to twinkle like dainty diamond-crusted barrettes. She was gorgeous.

And I fell in love…hard. It was like that Justin Timberlake song:

“Those flashing lights seem to cause a glare
The way they hit her I just stop and stare
She’s got me love stoned from everywhere
She’s bad and she knows
I think that she knows…”

I’ve spent the last few days in this sort of love-stoned bubble of happiness. It’s true what they say, Tokyo looks a thousand times more beautiful when Sakura is around. I wander around the streets smiling like a mad-woman, sharing my sakura-spotting story with my roommates and co-workers and with the random old ladies I meet at Lawsons.

But you know what? It doesn’t even matter…because everyone around me has been bitten by the love bug as well. They understand.

In fact, Sakura has inspired…

Wedding themes…

And Fashion trends…

Even Starbucks and The Body Shop have jumped on the trend…

And you know you’ve made it when drag queens write you tribute songs…

Sakura, I heart you…

Are Japanese and American Children Really all that Different?

Reannon Muth — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:39:00 +0000

I spent all of last week shuttling back and forth between my old job teaching (mostly North American) pre-schoolers at an International school, and my new job, teaching ESL at a Japanese after school preschool program. The whole experience was exhausting (imagine working for nine hours straight, all of your students under the age of six) but the experience got me thinking.

Are Japanese and American three-year-olds really all that different?

My Japanese boss believes that answer is a definite ‘no’. She believes all children are basically the same, especially at the preschool age.

My ESL teacher friends have all sounded in with a resounding “Hell yes”. As more than one friend put it “Japanese kids are really, really weird.”

Here are some of my observations from the last few days.

Five Differences Between Japanese and American Children

* Japanese children tend to ‘shut-down’ when they’re upset. I’ve noticed that if a Japanese child is either angry, sad, bored or just doesn’t want to do something, he or she will give you this blank, expressionless ‘poker face’ look (that is, if they look at you at all). They won’t acknowledge they’ve heard you and won’t even respond when you tap them on the shoulder or say their name. It’s perplexing because you’re left try to surmise why it is they’re upset, (or if that’s even the case). I used to think that it was because they couldn’t articulate their feelings in English, but I’ve watched them do the same thing with the Japanese staff. The Japanese teachers will usually try to joke around in order to coax a smile out of them, or else cuddle them and heap lots of praise and encouragement.
My reaction is to assume it’s an attention seeking behavior and ignore it, but maybe I’m wrong?

American children do this too and might say things like: “I’m not talking to you!” and then go sit in the corner and pointedly ignore you, but it usually doesn’t last more than a minute or two. I find with American children, it’s fairly easy to discern what they’re feeling, mostly because they won’t hesitate in telling you. Or it’ll be written all over their expressive little faces. But then, perhaps someone not familiar with American children wouldn’t say that it’s easy.

* Japanese kids are used to being ‘man-handled’. I’ve observed this happening a lot, especially when mother’s drop their children off at school. If the child is in a bad mood and doesn’t want to go, he won’t say a word but will instead, just sit on the floor and refuse to budge. No screaming. No crying. No tears. Just the silent treatment and the ‘poker face’. It’s uncomfortable to watch, because the mom (embarrassed), will whisper and speak softly in the child’s ear, pleading and trying to gently pull him into a standing position, but to no avail. After about five minutes, she’ll pick him up and carry / drag / yank / pull / push the motionless child into the room. He’ll then silently walk back out of the classroom and drop like a dead weight onto the hallway floor and the whole process will start all over again.

When teaching, I’ve found that I can quite easily maneuver a child around by gently pushing him or her in the direction I want her to go. Or if I want a misbehaving child to sit, I can simply pick them up and place them in a chair. This isn’t true with American children. If you try to coax a child into a line by pulling them by the hand, for example, he or she will likely shout: “I can do it by myself!”

* Japanese children are fiercely competitive…from a very young age! They seek adults approval and are perfectionists. They won’t offer an answer to a question unless they are sure that it’s the correct one. This makes games hard to play at times, because the children are hesitant to just ‘take a wild guess’, which is often necessary for a game to work properly. It’s interesting because even though they’re competitive, it’s usually only with themselves. Every time we play a game and a child is struggling with an answer, another student (even someone from the opposing team, will whisper the answer in the child’s ear. It’s sweet and adorable but I’ve got to wonder: Why? Does it have to do with the whole group culture orientation, (“I help you, you help me”?) Or is it that they can’t stand to see one of their classmates uncomfortable or embarrassed?

American children, on the other hand, have no problem volunteering an answer, and won’t hesitate to shout out an answer, oftentimes when the teacher hasn’t even asked for one. For the most part, they’re a lot more uninhibited and more willing to take risks. I guess that can be attributed to the American educational concept that “there are no wrong answers”. They also have an ‘every man for himself’ attitude towards games and will be quick to shout out “Hey, he cheated!” or “That’s not fair! You helped him!”

* Japanese children need ‘genki’teachers! It’s funny, because when I first started working at the international school, one of my boss’s criticisms was that I was ‘too energetic’. “Speaking in a loud, overly-excited voice, just adds to the chaos and will make the children more rowdy and disruptive. Speak in a normal, quiet, soft tone of voice and they will calm down and listen to you.” This is more or less what I was told, and it really worked. At the Japanese school, however, my boss told me that I need to be more ‘genki’ (excited, energetic and expressive). At first, I balked at the idea. I follow the philosophy that if you plan an interesting, fun lesson, you shouldn’t have to work hard to encourage the children to participate. They’ll naturally want to join in because it’s fun. But I think that because Japanese children are quieter and more timid than American or Western children, they need an energetic teacher to ‘show’ them how to have fun.

* Japanese children love silly, physical humor! That’s another reason why the ‘Genki teacher’ thing seems to go over well. Children love it when the teacher ‘accidentally’ trips over a chair or messes up the words to a song. One of the best teaching tricks to use with Japanese children, is to intentionally get an answer wrong and have them correct you. They never seem to grow tired of this and will gleefully shout out: “Noooo! That’s wrong!” ‘High Fives’, sound effects, funny drawings on the board…these all go over amazingly well in the Japanese classroom.

American children aren’t so quick to buy into it, however. If a teacher ‘accidentally’ dropped his flashcards in front of a class of pre-school American students, for example, they’d more than likely roll their eyes in annoyance.

My boss pointed out that perhaps a lot of my observations have less to do with the fact that my students are Japanese and more to do with the fact that they’re non-native English speakers and in an ESL setting.

What do you think?