Kultur2...Mimi Minagawa

I have lived in many places through my life, and have experienced different kinds of Asian culture and American culture. Personally, I prefer Japanese culture where people have more class and do perfect business. However, I'm not really comfortable with fancy elaborations and praise that Chinese culture has. People are always writing emails from 3-7 paragraphs to communicate with each other (from my experience with people in age  40-70s). They mingle things like "Oh, how I missed you lovely face!", "I really appreciate what you have done, and I'll never forget your great blessing!" Those are nice things to hear, but essentially, those don't matter with the core topic of the email.  My German friend told me that none of German people think that they are similar to Japanese people, but in this case, I do think that we have common life style. We, Japanese, write short and sweet emails to focus on main subject and be done with it. German likes yes or no answer. I do like it a lot!


I've heard a saying that Germans complain all the time, even my German friend told me. He said, "In Germany, we have to complain. It's like a custom. Even when we have pleasant time, we complain. Just get use to it!" Now that's not like Japanese. We fake all the time and hide the real thinking behind. I think how German people handle this everyday issue is pretty smart because no matter how you like it or not, you'll understand what the other people are thinking, and you'll most likely know the realm of the others.


The article about staring nanny was so weird. I understood the reason why they are staring, it's just to keep and watch out neighbors, so that they know they are safe. But still... It's creepy!