Editor’s Note: Since Austin wrote about what it’s like being East Asian while living in Japan, I thought it was appropriate to follow it up with Lenna’s experience joining a club at her university and what she had to go through to fit in as well. There’s a lot of similarities and differences between the two, see if you can spot them as you read through!
The most common recurring piece of advice I heard before leaving to study abroad in Japan was that I should make efforts to join a club, or a team, and become involved. The idea behind it was full cultural immersion: to take our Japanese outside the classroom and apply it to everyday life. I was welcomed into my host university’s track and field team, and in my experience, it was as much of a culture shock for me, as it was for them.
It was not an easy transition to position oneself inside a group of all Japanese, and my friends who also joined various teams and activities also shared similar experiences. By being a prospective addition to the team, and the “uchi to soto” (inside group vs outside group) concept that exists in Japan, I was already an outsider, and then even more so by being a gaikokujin.
Just because you look like them, it doesn’t necessarily make you one of them… I wouldn’t describe it as an unwelcoming atmosphere, but an awkward one. The first day I went to observe the track and field team, I was handed a uniform and tracksuit, and the second day was a race day. It was a qualification race for the Hakone Ekiden, one of the most prominent university relay marathon races in Japan. So, I dressed in my tracksuit, and went to the train station and ran into four of my teammates on the platform. Their faces were new to me, just as mine was new to them, and even if they did see me the day before, this time they were curiously whispering when I was only five feet away. And we rode the train all the way to the meet like that: as two separate groups, not talking, despite wearing identical outfits.
Dressing like the Japanese, following the trends, and styling based on their fashion is not all it takes to be welcomed into a particular “in-crowd”. The foreigner wearing gothic Lolita clothing or mimicking popular hairstyles and make-up art will stand out and garner attention but at the expense of still being thought of as soto. It isn’t about whether or not it looks good or bad but rather just that it’s different. And with this cultural concept, being different is enough to distinguish “in” from “out”.
My impression of the Japanese is that they are introverted and shy, but curious… I’ve also learned that some of them have interesting impressions of foreigners, and in my case, specifically Americans. There exists the assumption that all Americans are outgoing and extroverted. For me, being the guest on the team, I expected that everybody else would approach me after I made my presence as a new runner. In my mind, I had played my part of the extrovert by seeking out the group and following through with my interest to join. I assumed that I would be met halfway in making new friends, but instead, I was kept waiting. And I was kept waiting for a while. There would be a few exchanges of words and greetings though nothing that led to a substantial conversation.
Over time, when they did start to open up and express their curiosity, I was overrun by various questions and comments. I was told statements such as “I’ve never seen a half [mixed] person before” and asked questions such as “do you own a gun?” The more they realized that simple conversations with the American didn’t have to be terrifying, the language barrier seemed to come down more quickly.
That being said, speaking the same language also doesn’t make us one of them. The language barrier is a big issue when it comes to interacting and communicating. In my experiences, the introversion did not just come from the shy Japanese personalities, but also the fear of striking up a conversation with a non-native because they won’t know what to do if it fails. The fear of not being able to understand the response, or the fear of not having the foreigner understand what they are trying to say is enough motivation to keep the “in-group” exclusive for a while. A dialogue may open for a couple of sentences only, because one or both parties believe that they have reached the limit of their foreign language abilities.
There were also those teammates who were studying English, or had lived in America before, or wanted to study abroad, who seemed to be driven by the prospect of one thing: eikaiwa (English conversation). Rather than becoming a fellow athlete or teammate, I had become the source of practicing English that they would not otherwise have access to. In theory, it was convenient for both parties involved, though ultimately, I was left to discover that I was merely the token English- speaking person in the group, who was befriended for the sole purpose of conversing in English. Every practice while jogging, I would act as an English conversation partner for one of my teammates. It ended up being great practice for them, and a good bridge to making real friends for me, but in the beginning that was not the way “in” and it wasn’t giving me any Japanese language practice, which was my motivation for joining in the beginning.
It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that to most Japanese, I did not look mixed or half-Asian, but fully Caucasian. They had no reason to assume that I had any level of Japanese language ability that included keeping up with nuances and humor. This made it easier for me, since it allowed me to surprise them consistently. Even with this “advantage”, when my teammates did realize that I could converse in Japanese, they were suddenly worried about how much I knew and would be overly cautious in considering how much I did or did not know. It seemed as they were entered into a new realm of stress regarding speaking with the foreigner. Considering the opposite of that, the expectation for people who look Japanese seems to be set much higher. In regard to those non-natives, it appeared to be assumed that they can speak Japanese, until it is discovered that they can’t. In both scenarios, it’s at these points that the aforementioned fears of being unable to communicate kick in, into a positive feedback loop.
Another difficulty of feeling fully accepted is the presence of the sometimes false, always presented, politeness known as tatemae. The difference between honne, one’s true feelings or desires, and tatemae, one’s public behavior, is hard to notice at face value. Similar to those times when store employees don’t get responses to customer service surveys, or when we get non-responses from friends who decided they wanted to cancel plans at the last minute, that was what is was like living in Japan for the first few months every time I met a new group of people. In fact, I would say it was safe to assume that without a situation that would require consistently seeing the new people I met, there was a high possibility that I would not see them again. They will be polite, probably exchange phone email addresses, and will say that they want to hang out again so an event should be planned, only to result in me never hearing from them again. It emphasizes that distinction between just experiencing a night out and making a close friend. I think that foreigners tend to expect the latter, which can be the source of frustration. But that is okay because despite all of that, if you give it time, the “uchi-soto” dynamic can shift.
It is possible for those shy exterior walls to come down… Though many foreigners and non-native Japanese feel as though they will never fit in, it is possible to go from being an outsider to part of the “in-group”. I joined the university track team during the off-season, but by the time track season started, it was no longer awkward to be wearing the same uniform going to track meets. When it ultimately got to that point, it made my time on the bukatsu (club) one of the best conquests of the intended cultural immersion. The collective cheering that is customary of Japanese sports fandom was unlike any form of cohesion I experienced as a track and field runner back home in California. I managed to make one or two close friends a couple of months in, and like a domino effect, the warmth from the rest of the team followed. It may take a shift in perspective on both our parts and some patience working through some cultural and language boundaries, but once “different” goes from being scary and unapproachable, to interesting and safe, it is my experience that the uchi to soto differences also seem to matter a little bit less.