Culture Electricution

So I recently watched "Lost In Translation" for the first time. First off, it's pretty remarkable how closely my recent attitude resembles Bill Murray's. Except for the movie star part. Well... even that has its moments. In a land of people who, on stilts, reach my shoulders, and have straighter hair and fairer skin than I, I am frequently the target of gawkers of all sorts. Old. Young. Male. Female. (Yes, those are all the subgroups of people in the town I'm in.)

I have been asked how getting used to life in Japan has differed from getting used to life in Prague last year. In many ways, Prague was much easier. For one, I could get by on English in most places. It was easy to find menus with at least some English. Signs were in the Roman alphabet, so even if I didn't know what the words meant (e.g. zmrzlina), it was easy to find that in my pocket dictionary. Not so much the case here.

Also, Praguian culture is pretty lax. It's very much a laissez-faire attitude. "You do whatever you want as long as it doesn't infringe upon me." Simple. Free. Lax.
But the list of unwritten rules here is staggering. Some of them I knew before arriving. Others make sense, and some appear to be someone's personal whims.
For instance, the taking off of shoes when entering a school, house, etc, is a nice, and sensible, way to keep the floors pretty clean. It provides an air of really welcoming someone into a place. That one is an easy adjustment.
On the other hand, the other day I went to the immigration office to get my work visa paperwork started. I was asked to bring 2 passport-sized photos. No problem, I went to the little automatic photo machine. The machine took 3 pictures, and I picked the best one. Alright. However, upon presenting the pictures, I was chastised for smiling. "Japanese people don't smile in these pictures. It's not right." When asked why, I got a shrug. They didn't make me re-take the pictures, so I guess this will be just one more way in which I will stand out.
Even the things people say to each other when coming and going from work are ... different. For example, I'm used to mutual "bye"s when someone leaves. Yet here, the people who are staying say something which is loosely translated as "You must be tired." Because the work ethic is so strong here, if you leave, even if you've put in 10 hours and your shift is up, it's almost as if you have to have an excuse for leaving.

Now, I don't watch that much television. Simply because I don't understand any of it. However, a couple nights ago I was pleasantly surprised to come back to Pat's place to find Shrek on TV, in English. Happy to have an American comedy to watch to round out my day, I sat down and enjoyed it.
It was on network television, so it had commercials. Now, I'm not quite sure how to describe the way of the Japanese television advertisement. When they have live actors, they are quite... animated, and the style is very child-cartoonish. For instance, there was a commercial for a local electrician / handyman. A woman and her son had some problems with an appliance, so they called this number (all done very cartoonishly). The electrician receives the call and then flies to her home. Now, I don't mean "flies" as in he goes there very fast. No. He actually flies. In the air. With a cape. And this was a relatively calm commercial, from what I've seen. But it's the easiest to explain in words here.

Some searching on YouTube yielded a small sampling which can better illustrate what I'm trying to describe...




After seeing commericals like this, I turned to Pat and said, "What's up with Japanese commercials being pretty... insane?" He replied, "I'm not sure. But I wonder... what year, exactly, did Japanese people, as a whole, start smoking crack?"

Experiencing something a little stronger than culture shock...