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Suzu

Images of Japan and Japanese people

Posted 2007-03-27 19:24:50 | Comments (2)

alc.co.jp did an interesting research about how foreigners think of Japan. http://www.alc.co.jp/eng/feature/070326/index.html

They got 315 replies including 128 from Korea, 26 from China, 22 from America, 18 from England, 15 from Thailand, 12 from Taiwan, 12 from Canada and less than 10 from many other countries. There are 164 women and 151 men and all of them have been living in Japan for at least 3 months or longer.

The first question was "what kind of images of Japan and Japanese people did you have before you came to Japan?"

Some of their answers were:
<Japan>
- peaceful
- clean
- safe
- country of "sumimasen (i'm sorry)"
- Oshin (old TV drama about a poor girl)
- beautiful nature
- value traditional cultures
- strange festivals and customs
- high technology
- video games
- anime, manga

<Japanese people>
- kind
- earnest
- stylish
- what one says and what one think are different
- work like a robot
- always busy
- open
- respect elders
- business men, solid teamwork
- organized
- very polite and strict about time
- Otaku, Yakuza, Samurai
- Women stay in their houses and obey their hasband
- wear Kimono and eat raw things

I'm pretty surprised that some people still think that we wear Kimono all the time!

Do you agree with those images?
If not, i would be happy to hear what kind of images you have on Japan and Japanese people.

The next question is "did your images become better or worse after you came to Japan?"
I'll write about it later!

I'd love to know how the images are broken down based on general region ;>
My image of Japan/Japanese people agrees somewhat with the responses above: very hard working and work long hours, polite, advanced technology, beautiful nature areas but mostly huge cities, tiny apartments, women discouraged from working, vending machines everywhere, very crowded, hilly, respectful of elders and tradition, large variety of foods...
I don't know how accurate my image is as I haven't visited Japan yet!

Posted by nifwlseirff Apr 17th 2007

"vending machines everywhere" - this one made me laugh! yea, that's true, you can sometimes find over 5 vending machines at one spot, and all of them are selling beverage XD

Posted by Suzu Apr 30th 2007

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