Heidi11 comments

Posted in: Lawson store closed after employee puts photo of himself in freezer on Facebook See in context

oh come on, closing the shop is just too much! how will the poor lad ever recover from the tragedy he brought over this family just out of a simple joke - nobody got harmed! was this really necessary?! I think it's over the top..

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Posted in: The importance of social etiquette in urban Japan See in context

Politeness can also be an armor to keep people at distance. After some time and lots of effort, I managed to become an in-group member and observed quite a bit of rudeness, discrimination against "lower" group members, mean parody, nosiness, gossip - just as everywhere. Also, japanese have no problem at all to command you around when they hold some sort of administrative or supervising office (and there are maaaany!) and have no problem in being demanding and pointing out your wrong-doings. I often sensed that people felt obliged to help me even if they didn't want to do it, which made me feel very uneasy with time, feeling like my pure presence caused additional trouble in this society already overloaded by mutual courtesy. Being Austrian, I have been treated very politely most of the time, but this also made me sad because I ran into this wall so many times without being able to really get to know my "friends" and colleagues. But this all changes once they let you in - and here I see the most difference to my home country. We tend to be impolite to strangers (because we dont care about them) but polite to people we know.

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