My ex is Japanese American, 4th generation, but his American-born grandmother never learned to speak English, if that tells you how much the culture persists in his family.
The one thing about him that I noticed as being very stereotypically Japanese was the fact that he found shame devastating to cope with, although he didn’t talk about it.
Apart from that, he just had a very unusual and super-polite habit of ALWAYS covering his mouth when he laughed. Very odd.
Does this not indicate a certain superficiality and insincerity? The idea that the clothing is more important than the actual act of skiing?
Is it like this among all skiers in Japan? Or are there subgroups of them who don’t care about looks, use mismatched beat-up gear, but can ski better than any of the well-dressed amateurs?
Here in America we have the concept of someone being a “poser” if they try to front a certain image. Does this exist in Japan too?
Could you elaborate on how the Japanese attitudes towards dating, relationships and sex are different from those in America? (If, indeed, you believe they are?)
Can’t say this is limited to Japan. Italians do exactly this. Get the gear, the right brand, make it look right and then worry about the actual sport or activity.
Don’t get stuck on the skiing. Does the expression “dress code” ring a bell? It’s a perfectly fine example of “fitting through form”.
Is this what you got out of my post?
Isamu hits the nail on the head, for my experience. In fact, I’d actually started a post that said essentially the same thing about the small differences being more disorienting than anything blindingly obvious, but abandoned it (I’d have the highest count on the board if I submitted every post I started…). As TokyoPlayer points out as well, that majority of impressions non-Japanese seem to have about Japanese are flat out wrong. Even if you’re tempted to speak in generalizations, they’re no more accurate close-up than any other prejudice people have.
Humans are humans and human dynamics are fairly limited. The two things that basically equate to modern Japanese culture are:
The whole “collectivist” thing is really just talking about item 2. I suspect that pre-WWII Germany was fairly similar in terms of an ideal of subjugating yourself to the good of the race/nation/region.
My experience with Japanese and other East Asian cultures (Korean, Chinese and Filipino) show a strong sense of “family.” In other words the FAMILY is just as important as the individual.
In the west, especially America, we like to “do our own thing,” “don’t tell me what to do.”
I’ve known a lot of Japanese people who have trouble with their parents because they have become (in their own words) too Westernized and not respectful of family.
In my opinion the family is to controlling, but I can see it from their point of view. It’s just a difference of cultures.
This isn’t to say that the individual doesn’t matter, but that the family and how you reflect on them, is and interact with them is equally, if not a bit more important
You and me both.
And then there are people who don’t want to lose those prejudices.
Maybe you’re getting North Korea mixed up with Japan?
(bolding mine)
Thank you thank you thank you thank you. I usually avoid threads like this one, because all too often it turns into the twilight zone situation bolded above. I’ve lived here on and off since 1987, and continuously since 1999, and I couldn’t–and wouldn’t–answer the OP’s question if my life depended on it. Not only are the exceptions for every single stereotype, the impression you come away with of Japan or any other country is also influenced by the type of person you are.
Maybe if I had a sociology or anthropology degree I would be able to, I dunno, know what behaviors to look for, etc. etc. But I just live here. I really enjoy going back to the US for visits/business trips, and every time I go I can look forward to getting totally knocked on my ass by some of the behaviors I see there.
The only teeeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiiny nitpick I have with TokyoPlayer’s excellent post is the skiwear bit. Bro, how many years has it been since you’ve hit the slopes? I’m happy to report that the scary neon ski-wear and godawful ‘pair look’ getups are a thing of the past. 
You’ve got me there. It’s been years since I went, so if those $500 suits are a note in history, then all the better.
I grew up in Salt Lake, so I always thought that skiing was a sport where you didn’t spend money. $6 for half-day passes (and yes, I know the current rates force all but the very wealthy to second mortgage their homes), $3 in gas (dated again) and $1.50 (really dated) for a sandwich at that 7-11 at the bottom of Little Cottonwood Canyon, on skis you inherited from your friend who got too good for them, your normal winter clothes and off you were.
Hell, I wonder this, and I only left the US 12 years ago.
Worth adding: the testicles of the real life Japanese raccoon dogs (that give rise to the tanuki of folklore) are themselves comically large. I tried to find a photo on google but curiously could not.
How? You aren’t wearing a dress code to fit in. You are doing it because someone in charge has mandated it. It’s not that, if you don’t wear it, you’ll be assumed to be bad at your job–it’s that you’ll be fired if you don’t.
This “fitting through form” thing sounds more bottom up. I would think it would be more analogous to fads. People in one social group want to dress like people in another social group so they’ll fit in. No one’s making them do it. You’re clothes are actually used to judge you–to judge whether you really belong in that social group.
Anyways, I have a question. I watched a documentary that said that what we would consider prostitution is considered preferable to actually cheating on your partner. The logic offered was that money indicated that the person was not cheating emotionally but only physically. Was this ever true, and is it still true today?
Also, is it true that looking someone in the eyes and smiling at them is frowned upon? I know that, when I did this to the Japanese exchange students at college, they always turned to each other and giggling amongst themselves, as if I had done something wrong. Only later did I hear about the difference, and suspect that might be the reason.
As KinkiNipponTourist (and I’m sooo tempted to abbreviate to just the first word) says, maybe it’s best to not answer questions, because it’s so difficult, especially as we’re not sociologists or anthropologists, but I’ll slug on.
My WAG (and now we’re moving into theories and not simply observations, so it’s more ambiguous and subjective) is that there can be more of a tendency of the sense of identity kicks in at a quicker level than what would typically occur in America.
What I mean by that is that your trust fund baby who lives on the beach and can surf like no one else will have an self identity as a surfer, where someone just picking up the sport and only goes occasionally will not.
Part of people’s approach to sports (and back to observation) is influenced by college “circles,”
quasi-formal organizations of people who participate in the same activity, be it skiing, mountain climbing, or windsurfing. It’s self run, by the students, and mostly concerns getting getting together for drinking, partying and other typical college behaviors. The kids will often pick a circle they think they will like and buy equipment and an outfit to get into it. The socialization is primary and the actual sport can be secondary, so no one really cares if you are good or not.
Although technically illegal, prostitution is much less frowned on in Japan than in the US. Prostitution is only prostitution if it fits Bill Clinton’s definition of sex, so there is plenty of room for paid hand jobs and oral sex.
For many people, what you said would be true. I know many Japanese men who visit such institutions, and don’t think of it as cheating.
That attitude is changing, and a Japanese board I read often has younger women who are not happy with their husbands or boyfriends visiting prostitutes, with not a few getting divorces.
Maybe they thought you were trying to hit on them? 
I have less experience in Japan than many of the other posters in this thread, but I lived in Japan briefly as a child and then as an adult worked there in 2003-2004 as a teacher in an English conversation school. My college also had a large number of Japanese students, so I had quite a few Japanese friends when I was in school.
For some reason these are popular stereotypes in the US, but they’re definitely exaggerated. While living in Japan I never, not once, encountered or even heard of men who were in love with body pillows, enjoyed pornography featuring tentacled monsters, bought used underwear from schoolgirls, etc. (And I did have two Japanese coworkers who enjoyed trying to shock me with stuff they thought I’d consider weird.) I have only heard of these things in the US, and I think it says more about Americans than it does the Japanese that we’re so interested in the non-mainstream sexual behaviors of a small minority of people in another country. It’s like if the Japanese were hung up on the idea that Americans were really into having sex while wearing furry animal costumes.
I’m not interested in pornography and couldn’t speak to the content of Japanese porn, but based on the adult materials I saw on display in shops the most prevalent fetishistic element is uniforms. Not just schoolgirl uniforms, although there was definitely some of that, but women in any kind of sexy uniform. “Naughty Nurses” seemed really popular. This kind of thing is hardly unheard of in American adult entertainment though, and may be more common in Japan just because more people in Japan wear uniforms in real life. For instance, Japanese nurses still wear the dress-and-cap uniforms that have largely been replaced by scrubs in the US.
A lot of Japanese men seemed shy to me by American standards, but it’s hard to say how much of that was how they normally acted around women and how much was because I was an Amazonian foreigner. In my experience the Japanese (both men and women) don’t talk about their love lives anywhere near as much as Americans do, but again it may be that they just didn’t talk about them to me or that I missed office gossip that was going on in Japanese.
I do not believe that 40% of Japanese men are virgins and would not believe it without a pretty impressive cite. The marriage rate in Japan is low, but there’s little stigma against premarital sex. As TokyoPlayer mentioned there’s also a highly visible sex trade industry in Japan. While it’s against the law to pay a woman for intercourse, a man can legally obtain a “happy ending massage” and other sexual services that are outlawed in the US.
It’s not frowned upon, but as TokyoPlayer said, they very likely interpreted this as you flirting with them.
Probably not really relevant but a couple of years ago a local second-hand DVD store had a large section of ‘foreign’ films, I bought quite a few after being pleasantly surprised at their quality.
I found that the Chinese and Korean movies could be pretty much viewed as ‘Western’ films with odd accents, subtitles and locations but the Japanese movies were more unfamiliar and difficult to relate to as regards storylines, characterisation and themes.
Doesn’t prove a thing and your milage may vary but I found it interesting.
The Japanese are not subject to layoffs and outsourcing like we are. I worked with lots of Japanese engineers. Ask them how long they worked for the company and add 22 to get their age. It is easier to feel an affinity for a corporation that does not see you as expendable . They do not have the adversarial relationship with their company like we do. It is caused by the company.
Many of my adult students were engineers, and it seemed like a lot of the single guys lived in company dormitories. Actually living in the same building as other employees probably adds to the feeling that the company is like a family.