Re: Please be careful!

[Manuel Bilderbeek]

> Manuel wrote: > >CONCLUSION: Be VERY careful when asking a favour from a Japanese person. > >Maybe you should first make it VERY VERY VERY clear that there is a > >difference in culture/attitude regarding favours and that you mean a > >different kind of thing than the Japanese person would assume you do. > >Otherwise you will have a chance that you ruin the Japanese person, without > >even knowing/realising it! > > Haha, you found out too. Let me add something to this: this is but ONE of > the many differences in attitude between Japanese and non-Japanese. Besides, Of course I know that. > you will not really ruin the Japanese person (Japanese are very polite, but > they're not exaggerating this to the extent of ruining themselves), but you I know someone who almost ruined himself... > do run the risk of ruining your own relationship with someone. When you That is for sure. > haven't been in Japan for some time, it's very hard to find out if someone > really likes you or not. Basically, you will think most Japanese are very > kind and nice, but mind there are certain people who follow the Japanese > manner of politeness, but on the other hand think you're quite a lousy > person, asking for so much favours :) Yup. Unless you have a very good (that means, seeing the person every day, talking about many personal things with him) relationship with the person you will NEVER find out...! > >This whole thing may sound very strage to non-Japanese people, but today I > >had an experience and an extensive talk with my Japanese collegues here > >which made me write this e-mail. It is really TRUE! So be VERY VERY > >careful! > > Seems to me your colleagues are quite the kind of people you'd wish for, > since they warn you for such things before it actually happens (or, DID > something like this actually happen?). I don't think it's a problem either Well, it kind of happened, but one of my collegues was in Germany for 2 years, so he has quite some experiences with foreigners. So he became kind of excited (sort of angry) and said I PROTEST! Or I COMPLAIN or something... He said that I should not demand so much things. Then I said I NEVER demand something. Well, then we started talking for a long time and I explained what I mean with 'if it is no trouble, can you please ask blabla-san if he possibly has time to arrange this-and-that for me' (or something alike). I asked some other collegues and they were very surprised that Europeans do NOT mean that they should do those things immediately. > to ask some of your colleagues about several things, since it occurs to me > that they are willing to take the time and effort to explain it to you. They are, but then they first have to recognize that there is a difference too. By default - about this issue - they don't! That is the danger. INdeed, Japanese who have somewhat more experience with foreigners will easily recognize it, but especially with Japanese who don't have such experience: I warned you. (OK, not YOU Rieks! ;) Best regards, Manuel --------------- PS: MSX 4 EVER! (Questions? See: http://www.faq.msxnet.org/) PPS: Visit my home page at http://bilderbeek.cjb.net/ **** Problems? contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] See also http://www.faq.msxnet.org/ ****