🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2786@aegis.or.jp> davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) writes:
    >>
    >>>To persuade people that you have a good character,
    >>>you may have to act, or pretend to act,
    >>>in accordance with Japanese Conventional Wisdom.
    >>Naturally.
    >>>I think this sometimes causes lack of freedom for foreigners.
    >>IMO, a lot of the perceived lack of freedom comes because people
    >>don't realized that their own conventional wisdom only applies to
    >>where they learned it. Each culture has it's own CW; if you want to
    >>get along, it's useful to learn what it is. 
    >>
I believe many troubles in surviving in Japan
come from innocence and/or misunderstanding of the Conventional Wisdom,
rather than deliberate negligence of it.

Now, note:
1) it is not easy to learn local Conventional Wisdom,
because local people are so familiar with it
that they do not properly explain it nor even notice it.
2) networking will be a powerful communication tool
to learn Conventional Wisdom
because you can put in any questions from any place any time
and can get answers from any place any time.
You are likely to have helpful answeres.

So it is beneficial to many netters to discuss Conventional Wisdom here in fj.

Let me present an example that innocence of Conventional Wisdom hurts people:

I remember a friend of mine, who is a Japanese German in Munich.
She is a part-time guide for Japanese tourists.

She complained to me that
men of Japanese travel companies were unkind;
they often asked her to apologize the tourists
for delayed planes, lost baggages, bad hotel service etc.
She said that they disliked her and were deliberately unkind to her
and that it was very uncomfortable to apologize what was not her fault at all.

I was very surprised;
after living in Germany for a quoter of century, she forgot
Japanese Conventional Wisdom.
In Japan, it is quite common that a tour guide apologize the tourists,
"we are terribly sorry the trip might not be perfect pleasure for you,
dispit our hard effort to make it absolutely wonderful,"
or something like that, representing the travel company.
This is one of those diplomatic phrases;
travel companies continue apologizing all the time.
No one think the guide is responsible for any fault,
nor the company is unkind to the guide.

It is sad that travel-company men offended a lady
merely because they assumed she is familiar to a Conventional Wisdom.

Moreover, this is an example how it is difficult to learn
Japanese Conventional Wisdom even for a Japanese
when she has little communication to her Japanese friends.

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