Talking with the teachers of my workplace has afforded me ideas I'd never come across before: both in general Japanese psychology and physiology. On occasion, a teacher talked with me about the instability of the tall gaijin (foreigner) stereotype. After explaining my vegetarian preferences, he expressed how much he felt meat changed the lives of the Japanese. Eras before, Japanese actually ate little meat beyond fish; now it is clearly abundant. Body types, he says, have changed accordlingly: I hold an average height for an American -- usually assumed taller than the average Japanese, which is still more or less true -- but I am yet only considerably taller than a select handfew. Japanese today are taller, bigger, and (as the menu's size options are indicating) hungrier than times before. Another ostensibly globalized effect.
On a more traditional note, another teacher, my supervisor, revealed the distinction between what is known as uraomote and honne-tatamae. The latter is similar to our characterization of 'saying one thing and doing another.' It's often felt necessary for business matters, where one must convey complete respect for their superior, even at the risk of being dishonest to or about oneself. Its negative connotation is the kind we're probably more used to: an intention or habit that contrasts the pretense. Uraomote, however, is synonymous with honesty. There are no disparate levels of saying and doing: it is singular in dimension. In a sense, the word directly antagonizes the concept of an inside and an outside, or an inside-out, and praises one who 'means what he says and says what he means.'
That even a native concept like this one inclines to reach out beyond the imaginary boundaries of culture and location, and touch those accustomed to an only slightly different gestalt, is well evident in the attempt of a gaijin, as I am, to contemplate and share it.
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