Dear cozy little Lemmy World Japan Life community,

I made a random small self-observation recently and would be curious about y’all’s opinions. Where I’m from people casually talk about being super busy. A conversation can go like: “Hey, how are you doing?” “I’m fine, just drowning a bit in work. I have these 5 projects in parallel, 3 families to feed, and do some sports on top, but yeah, nothing exceptional”.

I don’t understand this as “bragging” in most cases, just a casual conversation item and most people really are super busy these days.

In Japan however, I noticed the dynamics around this are a bit different. I feel like I am quite busy here as well. But when I say something similar the conversation often becomes a bit awkward. For example, a friend recently asked me for a translation job as a favor. In a later conversation, I casually mentioned that I’m quite busy, so they felt bad for burdening me with even more work and directly addressed this (“I’m sorry that I asked for this, I can try to ask someone else” - “no, no, that’s fine! That translation is not so much work actually! In fact I enjoy it even!”. In my mind this was not really connected, but after saying it, there was this little awkward moment and I needed to do some conversational repair work. I had similar experiences with other friends, but now I thought that’s an interesting small cultural difference. Here, I feel people would rather appreciate and talk about how much other people do (as manifested e.g. in お疲れ様).

I know, it sounds a bit cliche (“Japan is so awesome, wow!!!”), but I was actually more curious if you had similar experiences/thoughts about this?

  • Zealous@lemmy.world
    2·
    7 months ago

    20 upvotes but no comments? Strange. Anyway, I think a big factor that you did not mention is that Japanese people generally don’t complain. The concept of “shouganai” is so ingrained here that idea of complaining about something can be interpreted as “well what do you want me to do about it?”. But in the scenario that you mentioned, they probably do think they are burdening you, otherwise you wouldn’t say you are busy . Or it could be a case of 思いやり

    This was a big culture shock compared to the UK where people complain all the time, even just to vent their feelings.

    • udon@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      7 months ago

      Thanks, maybe it’s just hard for people to say anything meaningful to this.

      Venting vs shouganai culture is certainly part of it. I probably just need to be more cautious with this.