...and while I don't think I'm wiser, I have learned a little.
One thing I've learned is that you don't really realise the differences between Japan and the West, until you come back to the West. You settle into life in Japan and very slowly, like a virus creeping into your system, it gets inside you and it changes you from in there. Not a whole lot, and very subtly, but it does something to you and you aren't aware of it until you're made to live without it.
I'd forgotten, in a mere seven months, how big people are, how big cars are, how fast everyone needs to move (this isn't just a Japan thing, it's part of my living in the boonies in Japan, where everyone stops behind the stop line at an intersection and doesn't go until there's a green light), how loud people are...
Oh, how loud people are.
I'm back, actually, for Anime Expo in Los Angeles, part of my penance for working at the job that I do. So naturally I'm plunked in the middle of anime fandom, and I'm absolutely stunned at what I never realised was such a huge difference between Japanese and Western fans. Western fans holler. A lot. Every day, every hour, on the hour, we stand in our booth with our ears plugged as a certain company incites fans to scream in unison for the potential honour of a free t-shirt -- there's no sense trying to pretend that it's not happening, as the other dealers seem to do; we literally can't hear our customers while this nonsense is going on, so we just stand there smiling and waiting until it's over. It leaves me with a ringing headache at the end of each day.
But it's not just hollering for t-shirts, it's hollering in general -- no one wants to get close enough to talk, so they just yell at one another across a room, across an aisle, over their cell phones. Out in the street, they shout. In the hotel lobby, they shout (and our hotel lobby is a peaceful and elegant one. The lilies shiver when the kids go by). In the elevators, down the halls, they shout at one another.
And oh, my goodness, human interaction is so different.
I can't tell you how many times during this convention I've been saying a simple 'thank you' to a customer, when that customer promptly grabs his or her package, yanks it out of my hand, and stomps away before I've finished talking. I've gotten so used to waiting for packages to be wrapped, for clerks to make quiet small talk while they get my purchases ready, that this behaviour leaves me, I admit, standing a bit stupidly with my mouth open. And I have to wonder -- are Westerners so used to being rude and, worse, to being treated rudely, that they expect it -- that politeness is anathema to them?
I long for the serene detachment that I've gotten from the Japanese for the last seven months of my life, which felt so cold when first I arrived in Japan. I yearn for their quiet noise, their neatly-folded shopping bags, their willingness to wait until someone is darned good and ready to give them what they've bought.
I'm almost looking forward to the ten-hour flight back.