Chapter 3

I do not agree with the author's idea of East Asians not thanking people for doing obligations like Americans do. Top of all he should not generalize just one person's comment. And, in fact, I quite frequently hear customers thanking waiters at restaurant in Japan for the good service such as bringing food, which obviously is their obligation.

On the other hand there is something that I do agree with in his statement. That is, Japanese people tend to anticipate people's feelings, and to pick up what's meant behind the conversations rather than just accepting right away what the speaker says. To enforce this idea let me tell you about a lecture I took at one open campus event. The professor doing research on cultural differences amongst countries or races showed an example of American using verbal method when arguing something and, in contrast, of Japanese adopting anticipation and implication at such situations. First she played on a screen 'Shall we dance?' of Hollywood version and then of Japanese. At one part of the movie a man, the main character, and his wife has a serious dispute over his going to dance lesson secretly from his wife. In American version the wife gets mad and starts shouting at him and the husband argues back. In Japanese one the wife keeps quiet and successfully express her disappointment and sadness through atmosphere.

In my own life when I was still in South Africa I often felt amazed with people's attitude and even the way they talk which sometimes sounded too demanding and pushy, more or less and got me somewhat frightened. When people described me those words like 'polite', 'hard-working', 'modest' or something like that. I achieved this compliment merely by being quiet and I was so due to the lack of ability of speaking English.

You can see in these comparison how Americans and Japanese, of course not always, think and express their feelings and how his argument makes sense.