Japanese Culture - Saving Face and Obligations

Japan is a society of complicated relationships and obligations. I feel really scholarly writing that, but the truth is that even after living here for more than six years, I barely have a clue how it all works. It can drive you crazy, but sometimes you catch a glimpse into the Japanese mindset and if you're lucky, you can even take advantage of it.

For example, in the spring of 2007, my seven-year-old daughter, another English teacher and I took a bullet train from my little town near Okayama on the main island of Honshu to the famous seaport of Kobe (also the site of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake). Our experience with the conductor is a great example of saving face and obligations in Asia.

We got up early and walked about 10 minutes to the train station near us - me dragging my suitcase behind me and my daughter with a very full My little Pony backpack on her shoulders. We took the 9:10 local train from the tiny village of Tamashima to the bustling metropolis of Okayama (about a 25 minute ride on the local train) so we could catch a shinkansen to Kobe.

The irony is that we live near "Shin" Kurashiki station, which is the shinkansen stop for Kurashiki. But it is such a small stop that there is only a train going through once every one or two hours and these trains stop at all the small shinkansen stations on the way to Kobe. These "slow" bullet trains are called Kodama. They actually go about 200 mph, but they make so many stops that it takes a lot longer to get to your destination. So if we hopped on the shinkansen here, it would take us almost 90 minutes to get to Kobe, but if we caught one in Okayama, we'd get there in 35 minutes. Needless to say, we went to Okayama.