For our Communication Skills presentation on culture and communication, we chose to do our project on Japan.
The Japanese culture was very weird for us. They do things very differently in their country when compared to the more Western countries.
They appreciate distance between themselves and hate personal contact of any form. Gestures such as a pat on the back or a high five is not present at all in Japan because of this. They also view silence as valuable as words expressed. They prefer to talk to little than too much. Shouting and talking loudly, especially on a phone in a very small, enclosed area is also seen as rude. Compared to our culture, this is all very weird because most of these things are normal to us; their culture is basically the opposite to ours.
A great form of respect is to take off shoes when entering a building (house, restaurant etc.) as a sign of respect. When I was growing up, and even today in modern times, persons still take off their shoes when entering a house as a sign of respect. In a sense, Trinidad may have adapted this tradition from Japanese culture. Another sign of respect, however, is to slurp noodles when eating them. In our Western culture, this is seen as very rude and we usually try to avoid slurping noises by all means necessary.
Unfortunately, I didn't really learn anything new in this project because I already had a hands-on experience of Japan last year when I visited my aunt. The only new thing that I learnt was that persons in Japan usually use the same bath water to bathe all members of the family (to be economic). As a communicator with this knowledge, this will encourage me to communicate to my mother how grateful I am that I don't have to use second-hand water when bathing.
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