Cross-cultural communication （100）　

100) Work!
I started writing the “Cross-cultural Communication” series in Japanese once a month since 2012, and this time marks the 100th installment. I never thought I'd be able to continue writing for 100 installments, so I'm surprised myself.

On this occasion, I would like to introduce the creator of this blog to all of you readers. It's a classmate of mine from university, K-kun. You may be wondering why I'm using a pseudonym, but this time I'm writing a surprise post without his consent, so there's nothing I can do about it. Before this intercultural blog, I was writing a series of posts called “Brooklyn Memoir”, followed by “Riyadh, Gulf Crisis Confidential”, and one of my regular readers was K-kun.

When the Gulf War ended, he asked me, “Hey Kido, any more funny stories?”, and begged me to start writing again. As you can probably guess from his initials, K-kun is a “comrade in arms” who spent the six years of our medical school days in the same practical training group determined by the order of Japanese alphabet. (This is the case at most medical schools and faculties throughout Japan). I couldn't ignore the pleas of this comrade in arms and blog reader. However, even Dr. Kido, who has worked all over the world, couldn't think of any more stories to tell. One Sunday, while I was walking around my neighborhood, I had an idea: instead of writing a blog with a vertical, theme-based structure, I could write about episodes related to different cultures that are connected horizontally, and interweave them with the movies I had seen, newspaper articles I had read, novels I had read, and so on. As soon as I got home from my walk, I started writing about an episode that happened at the Osaka National Hospital, shortly after I had returned from America.

When the first article was uploaded in a certain month of 2012, I received an email from K-kun immediately. “You kept your promise. Keep going for at least 50 times.” In response, I said, “All right, I can do 100 times if I have to.” And so, eight years later, it has become a reality. I know I've made a long preface, but this is the 100th article, after all. Please forgive me. Now, here is a cross-cultural episode that is appropriate for the 100th article.

This is a story from when I was 19 years old in 1971, the year I entered medical school. I started attending night classes at the YWCA English School in Ohgimachi, Kita Ward, Osaka City, three times a week. This is a memory of one of the American male teachers from that time.

He was probably in his 50s, and was extremely knowledgeable about Japanese culture and history (including modern history). I think he could probably read and speak Japanese, including kanji (chinese character). As evidence of this, he pronounced the title of the then-best-selling book “The Origin of 20-Year-Olds” by Etsuko Takano correctly as “Hata-chi no Genten”. He also seemed to have read Kohei Oku's “Gravestone of Youth”. When I think that he was reading these works, which could be called valuable primary sources of the student movement of the time, he also told me in English, “I went to Shitennoji Temple last weekend.” And of course, he pronounced the name of the temple and the proper noun clearly.

One time, this teacher asked us in class, “What do you think is the most important thing in life?”. We responded with things like “having a hobby” or “learning as many foreign languages as possible”, and even jokingly suggested “making money”. Then he said one word, “Work”, and then he said, “I think that finding a job that suits you and working hard at it is the most important thing in life.

At the time, I was 19 years old and I didn't have much direct contact with Americans, but the Americans I had met up to that point were all friendly and would call each other by their first names as soon as they met, but they were mostly a bit of a lightweight type. A classmate of mine from medical school (his name is N, not K) who went to a private junior high and high school in Kyoto told me an episode about his American English teacher from his junior high and high school days. That teacher was also a Japan fan, and his watch was a Casio G-Shock. He was proud of the fact that this G-Shock watch could withstand any kind of shock, and he threw it from the podium towards the wall at the back of the classroom. Of course, the G-Shock watch was smashed to pieces. Even a Japanese elementary school student would know that. It seems that this kind of characterization of Americans as friendly if you want to be nice about it, or a little silly if you want to be mean, is not just my impression, but is widespread around the world.

In fact, I was very grateful to have met an American who, at the young age of 19, said to me, “The most important thing in life is work. After graduating from medical school, I lived in America for three years as a resident doctor, and even after returning to Japan, I have continued to interact with many Americans as a patient. To be honest, the national character of Americans that I gained from this experience is still a little silly. However, there are also Americans who are very serious about life, such as the one I met at the YWCA.

From my own background, I often get asked questions about the “national character” of various countries in blogs and lectures. My answer to this is something like, “From my own past experiences, I think that there is certainly a certain national character in each country. It would be useful to know this in advance. However, when you are dealing with someone from a different culture, I think it is better to judge that person based on their words and actions.

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