The other day I found an article in the Japan Times ( our school subscribed to it, and we get it delivered every morning) about friendships here. First I didn't know what to think, as it was written by a person who usually writes about Japanese culture pointing out bad things mainly. He wrote how difficult it is to make real friends here, and he basically have no Japanese friends at all, only foreigners.
However, the next day issue featured a number of comments from readers on this topic, and it was very interesting to read. Other foreigners (British, American, Indian, etc.) wrote about their own experiences, and suddenly I realized it is not just me, who feels so terribly lonely in this country, being unable to make friends with Japanese people. They pointed out a few things, such as friendships tend to have an expiry date. I think they called it "natural shelf life". Such occasions, such as we NETs changing schools, or Japanese pople getting tranferred to different branches of their companies, often terminate friendships, simply because it will become troublesome to meet outside work. Also, in Japan, people make most of their friends throughout elementary, junior high and high schools and colleges. When they become work force, it is difficult to make friends at the workplace, due to this superior and subordinate relationship thing, that people take very seriously here. Even if you don't like your superior (senpai) you have to show great respect, and basically do anything he/she asks you to do.
It is just so true. I've thought many times that I finally succeeded making friends, but when I got transferred somewhere else, even if it was in the same town, those people just faded out...every single one of them. Another thing mentioned was that sharing private information is quite different. Some topics I could freely discuss with my best friend back home, I would never be able to talk about to a Japanese friend, no matter how close.It happened to me many times that I was asked some personal question (they often think here it's all right to ask some blunt questions from foreigners, because our culture is more opened), I answred and asked back "So, how about you?", and what I got was often awkward silence or some vague answer I had no idea what it actually meant. Or for example, if they get sick, they don't get in touch with you about, not to cause incovenience by making you worry or something. I have first hand experience in this field as well.
Then there is the lack of actual meeting. I have a number of Japanese acquaintences, whom I originally thought were friends, but kind of graded them down, we were close while working or studying at the same place, but after that, even if we occasionally keep in touch, and if I would ask to meet up, I wouldn't get a straight answer, just a kind of maybe. Then usually we don't meet. Keeping in touch seems to be fine for them, but the lot of overtime work and stress makes it just stressful for them to actually meet their "friends" more often than a couple of times a year. If I had a real friend living in the same city, we would meet up like, what?, every weekend, or once or twice a month at least.
These are things that I learned from those comments and my experiences. I bet many people would agree with me when I say that this country is the loneliest in the world. After spending 5 years here, there is only one person that I would call my true and close friend. We met on the internet, when I was in high school, she let me homestay at her place when I first visited Japan, she is like a big sister to me. But even with her, we keep in touch online, and for different reasons, we usually don't meet more than once or twice a year. I wish we could but again, I believe it would be considerable stress to her nag her all the time to meet me. So, I have to accept it. Yeah, it is very lonely most of the time, but that few hours we can spend together are always so enjoyable that it makes up for the loneliness of waiting. Therefore I'm glad to wait. But believe me, there are very few people that are worth this waiting. I'm glad that at least I found her. One of the people commenting on the article was a woman, staying in Japan for 20 years, without any real Japanese friends. And her situation seems to be quite a common thing. I guess we are just not supposed to measure friendships here the way we measure beck home. If there would be a switch we could push to change attitude, that would be grate. But we don't have, so we have to put up with our misery. Accept that we will always be foreigners first, and not friend material human beings for most people. There will always be people out there who just want to practice English with you, and fade out as soon as your Japanese ability improves, and allows you to do everyday conversation in Japanese.
So, if you want to come here, don't really hope for long-time besties, because most likely it's not gonna happen, or not in the way you want to. Make sure you're on facebook and try to keep in touch with the other foreigners here, if you want people you can hang out with outside work.
I hope this information helps you guys and gave you some insight into the difficulties of life here. Although I believe, this is not a phenomenon true only in Japan. I guess it is almost always the case when cultures so different meet.
