I can't give too much insight as to how to deal with this, as I decided to leave after 2 years. There were many things I loved while I was there, but especially at the "working level" (I was a grad student) I found the cultural differences to be such that I was not confident I would be able to succeed. Also, I found that while language was a barrier, I had more and definitely graver misunderstandings due to culture than to linguistics, and I decided I did not want to change most of my morals/ideals.

That being said, I would like to highly recommend the book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword by Ruth Benedict. Ruth was an anthropologist tasked with analyzing Japanese morals, ideals and mentality towards the end of the second world war, in order to understand what surrender conditions would be accepted (she was one of the major proponents of allowing the Emperor to maintain his position) and how to administer the subsequent occupation, which ended up being very different from how Germany was handled, for example. Although the book is dated (1946), I found it to be very insightful and helped understand a lot of the experiences I went through.

If you enjoy reading, and want to round this out, I also recommend The Making of Modern Japan by Kenneth Pyle (not the same title by Marius Jansen, which I haven't read and can't comment on... probably also good). This does not focus so much on mentality, but you do see a lot of how society was actively shaped through history and it explains a lot (i.e. I assumed company-loyalty stemmed exclusively from medieval Japan, whereas it takes it's roots primarily from the creation of Zaibatsu and policies they created to keep skilled artisans in the early 1900s).

And good luck!

Related categories:

Reddit mentions of The Making of Modern Japan

idea-bulb Interested in what Redditors like? Check out our Shuffle feature

Found 2 comments on The Making of Modern Japan:

Interested in what Redditors like? Check out our Shuffle feature