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Curious Japan:Understanding Japan, Comprehending Yourself

Gerald "Mutu"Froehlich
Jul 26, 2016
2 min read

Welcome to my first Blog, yeah my first, like first ever.

I was thinking a lot about this, what to write, how to write it and so on.

But.... in the end doesn't it all come down to what you are really passionate about and at least think you know, doesn't it?!

So here we are,

hope you are still with me,

Lets Talk About Japan,

the curious, strange and seemingly unique Island and its People.

But why is it like that?

Why does Japan seem so different to us?

Have all the Anime and Manga changed our perception of this country into something hard to understand?

Or is it just that the values, moral and behavior of the people living here is just so different from our own and in conflict with our standards, that it makes it hard to comprehend?

In my time living in Japan, now almost 10 years, there have been quite a few misunderstandings and even fights, broken relationships and happy surprises, that all helped me understand a little bit more.

It helps a lot if you have someone to share your thoughts with and compare values.

And by comparing these new experiences, these new values to my own, I also felt like I was understanding Japan better and also a lot more about myself in the process.

We all need mirrors to reflect ourselves, to see and understand not only things and people around us, but even ourselves.

For me that was my wife Mutsumi and of course my friends.

So why does Japan seem hard to comprehend at first?

Because it is so different to what we are used to !!!

Japan is a country with its own identity, its own standards and values and while some seem logic to us and very similar to our own, others are quite foreign to ourselves.

It is a country full of seemingly opposite, seemingly not even remotely compatible values, things and even people, living and breathing and coexisting right next to each other, with each other.

There is the new hospitality android working at the front desk, while the human staff next to it uses a Windows XP computer.