Monday, April 20, 2009

Disillusioned with Americans

Its funny that my last post was a rant and here is another little one. I think I'm just going through the culture shock phase where you get upset with everything that is wrong with your home country. That's pretty much me right now. Little miss critical.

Its really amazing how many different countries are represented in my dorm alone. So far I know there are people from of course the US, Britain, France, Netherlands, Argentina, Germany, Australia, and Argentina. I really wasn't expecting the there to be such a wide range of people. I don't know why, but I guess I just figured that people in other parts of the world wouldn't necessarily choose to study Japanese. Really we have quite an international crowd though.

I have had a couple of really long conversations with Americans about the Americans studying here. Joel was saying how he realized that overall people from all of the world who are here are pretty cool. Its just the Americans who are really quite strange. Especially guys. He was saying how its not even that they are all into anime or anything, a lot of Americans in Japan just don't seem to have any social skills period. Lol a really interesting observation.

Compared to a lot of the other foreign exchange students, I feel like their education system is so much better than ours. Pretty much everyone who isn't from an English speaking country can speak English and know Japanese. The guys from France can speak French, English, and Japanese. One girl in the dorm knows Spanish, English, German, and Japanese. Its really pretty crazy. I really am starting to believe that other countries have superior education systems. It scares me that American students are getting left behind.

Some of the Americans here are quite ridiculous. A girl in my Japanese class was taking this morning about a club she went to this weekend. It was $40 to get in, but she happily chirped that she didn't have to buy any of her drinks. She is the type of girl who has never gone out in the states, but is happy to test it out for the first time when she is abroad. She was explaining how she went out with some friends, but didn't really see them the whole night. Random Japanese guys bought drinks for her and she would dance with them and then leave them. She admitted that she couldn't really understand what they were saying and that she had to watch her drink so the bartender or Japanese guys didn't spike it. She went home by herself at like 5 in the morning. Her whole safety was justified because "we're in Japan, Japanese guys won't do anything." She said she wants to go out and stay out all night at least twice a month.

Stupid, stupid girl...Like ya we are in Japan and the crime rate is really low. But as a single, young, female, gaijin tourist who cannot really speak the language, clubbing alone and having guys buy drinks for you is definitely not the way to go. I was invited to go when she goes out again. I had to refuse. I really don't know what she is thinking. In Roppongi, tourists drinks were getting spiked and their wallets and everything were stolen. Their debit cards would be swiped and the Japanese thieves withdrew as much money as they could from the atms. Some people don't think at all when they are traveling. I really hope nothing happens to her, but at this rate it is more than likely.

4 comments:

  1. omg i totally agree with you about Americans. gahhh. social skills are lacking and why aren't we trilingual!...lol.

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  2. i agree! i have a friend that speaks japanese, english, and spanish. another that speaks, russian, chinese, english, and japanese. they amaze me.

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  3. Yea, definitely a phase you go through when you get to Japan. But after a while I think it'll snap back like a rubber band and you may realize how stupid some of Japanese culture is lol. Personally, being in Japan made me proud to be American. Granted, we don't speak as many languages as our fellow global citizens, but I don't think that is an accurate representation of the real quality of an education.


    I don't deny that out of everyone the Americans can be by far the most embarrassing and stupid though hahaha. Oh man...those kids!!!

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  4. The kids from Hong Kong surprise me the most. There are two in my Japanese class. One of the guys was explaining that the primary language is Cantonese, but they learn English from age 3. He said he can't speak much Mandarin, but now they are teaching it as part of the school curriculum. Its so crazy when people don't have accents and English is their second language.

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