After being in Japan for 2 months or so I had diner with a group of people including an American man who had written a couple of books on Japan and lived there 20 some years. I made some generalization about Japan and he said that in his 20 years of living there every time he thought he had figured the place out something would surprise him.

I think you are being a bit unfair to the Japanese and way too judgemental. You can not go to a new place and “understand” it after being there less than a month- and not speaking the language. Isn’t that we are always trying to tell conservatives? One can not judge everything through our own culture.

I was bullied in school, too, but while you get sort of hazed here, you get destroyed there. Crushed. It’s not just the kids that make fun of the weird kid. It’s the adults, too.

They have a ridiculously high suicide rate. 30,000 people in 2005.

Uh–Adults do it here, too. In fact, they’re the ones most likely to set in motion a nasty destruction bomb. I’ll give you a f’rinstance:

My son was being bullied at his new school. The teachers pretended not to notice. He finally had enough and tore into the bully. In the heat of the argument, he said that he was gonna kill the guy.

The school suspended him as a “terrorist threat.” While he was out, one of his friends called and said the TEACHERS were speculating that my son had threatened to bomb the school (he hadn’t), murder people–you name it. Of course, when confronted, they swore they hadn’t said such things in front of other students. But a Mom knows certain things about people when she’s toe-to-toe with them. They were lying. I told them they were, and I knew they were. They got defensive then, and said that maybe the problem was that my son hadn’t TOLD them he was being bullied. I asked them if they had eyes, ears, or, better yet, hearts. People know who’s being bullied at a school. It’s patently obvious. They stammered and hemmed and hawed then. I kept repeating that they needed to understand that a bullied child might be afraid to tell a teacher, for fear that something worse will happen to him. They had to put themselves in his shoes and do their motherfucking jobs. At last they apologized for not paying more attention, but they hoped the kiddo would trust them now, would come to them if he had a problem, they really did want to know if such things were going on blah blah blah. They were lying. Again.

That afternoon, after dealing with those morons all day (and at the “juvie” school he would have to attend for a week as punishment), my son and I went home. I hadn’t been there fifteen minutes when someone knocked on my door. It was the city COPS. Someone had planted a fake bomb near my son’s locker. The school had named my son FIRST as a suspect. Even though he had been with me the entire time he was at the school. When the cops came in the house, my son had his Hot Wheels out and was playing with them on the floor. That’s how young and childlike he was. The cops were mortified, and spent more time calming him and me than they did questioning us. My son was weeping, and telling me he couldn’t go back to that place, ever again. I couldn’t blame him.

I was back at the school the next morning, without my son (left him with his stepdad). I fucking hit the roof with those assholes. The thing that made me the angriest was their exhortations for my son to trust them, then stabbing him in the back, even before the day was out! And I told them he could not come back to that school, ever again, if they would accuse him first if anything went wrong there. Too many kids constantly harassed that way eventually believe they might as well do something to get in trouble, since they’re going to be blamed for it, anyway. And they never stop being in trouble after it. I wasn’t about to let that happen to my kid.

THAT’S how bullying by adults against children works in America. That’s what makes criminals out of kids who would have been just fine if they weren’t pounded into the dirt everytime they turned around.

I yanked my kid out of school and he never returned. He’s now a normal person (angsty and a bit self-centered, but that’s normal for 19).

So it’s ridiculous to say that the Japanese are worse to kids. They’re not. They’re probably about the same. At least there, you don’t have to deal with so many crazed religious fanatic parents, who are absolutely horrific to kids here, even ones who aren’t theirs! Don’t even get me started on the horrors a Southern Baptist from East Texas can inflict on a young mind. Especially a female’s young mind. [shudder]

They loved it and I loved spending time with them there.

It’s a fascinating country where honor means quite a lot. I like that.

It’s an ancient civilization and it’s amazing to experience the juxtaposition of the old and the very new and innovative. We could learn alot from them, actually.

We are a very young and sometimes brash country. :>)

And homesickness is all your posting is describing.

It sounds like your 3 weeks in Japan were the first time you’d left your own home nation, and if that were the case then Japan would be a real challenge.

Apart from the cultural differences (food, manners etc) hardly anyone outside of Tokyo speaks English and *none* of the signs are – they don’t even use western characters so you have very little hope of recognizing anything.

That’s before you get to things like the incipient racism that will lead you to situations where you’re surrounded by colored people who (in some cases) treat you as badly as a black can get treated in the good ‘ol USA.

Don’t worry – you get over that sort of stuff pretty quickly.

The thing is this:- it’s a foriegn country, they do things differently there (sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always different).

And you, as a first time traveller, are all alone in a situation where everything you know is wrong. Feeling upset about this is called “homesickness”. First it starts with uncertainty, stress and fear and then it descends into sarcasm and bitterness. That lasts about a year until you get over it.

After that you realise it’s all just difference and start to enjoy it.

From experience I know that the first time you move overseas can be very hard. I did it moving to England, and that was easy – I understood all the signs and mostly understood the language (that’s supposed to be a joke). But I still went through that first bad year. Afterwards was fine.

And a couple of years ago I moved to Japan and found the transition not nearly as bad. I still can’t speak Japanese, but I had a wonderful time.

Try it again.

with a skosh of whipped cream

I don’t know if you made up that word, but I think I love it.