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I enjoy exchanging emails between my blog readers and online friends, besides the comments on each post. The other day, my online friend Ivy from Nanyate.com mentioned something very interesting in her email, and I’d like to write about that today.

Ivy is my first online friend as far as I remember. She visited my former blog, “Japanese Cuisine Daily Recipes and Something Kawaii From Harajuku?” several times and I started to exchange comments between her. It was when I started my first English blog and there was very small number of my blog readers at that time. So she’s been someone special to me since I started blogging in English to the world, and also someone I’d like to see in person if I have a chance. Ivy speaks 9 or 10 languages and Japanese is one of them. She says she learned it from Japanese anime and I am so much impressed with her ability and potential. Anyway, please go check her cool blog for more!

That was a little bit about Ivy. She has lived in various countries in her life, and I don’t know if I should call her Singaporean just because she lives there now. But let’s say she is Asian. It was a surprise to me when I read she mentioned Japanese culture was something very unique, because I thought it was only Western people who might think in that way. But Asian people, too? So I asked her for further opinion. Her reply was something very interesting to me and it was too good to be left in my mailbox, and so I’d like to share it with you, as she agreed with me.

Ivy wrote:
“I think Japan has done a good job preserving its own customs and culture. And being an island nation, it also has a history that is less affected by other countries (as opposed to Europe where the countries are all next to each other, so they share similar language, values, cultures and/or religion. And with Britain and the Netherlands colonizing almost the whole world at one point, even the colonies share similar culture to Europe. Singapore has a lot of roots in England for example). So to the rest of the world, Japan seems to have its own value system and mindset.”

“I don’t see any other country preserve its culture as well as Japan today. In university, I did some research on intercultural communication and there are quantifiable data showing that Japanese people think differently from others. I didn’t really research into Japan so much (since my research focus was on China) but I remember that Japanese people don’t like to deal with
uncertainty (rank #1 in the world). If you’re interested in seeing the data, I suggest you read Geert Hofstede. He has a website showing the statistics for each country but he doesn’t really explain what it means.
You have to read his books to interpret the data. I think one of his books is translated into Japanese.”

“Statistics and history aside, from my interactions with Japanese people, from watching anime and from listening to Japanese music, I can *feel* that there is something fundamentally different in Japanese people. They have more emotional depth and understanding, maybe? I haven’t really figured out what it is, which is why I am so interested in Japanese culture. If I have the chance, I would really like to live in Japan for a while to find out
what this difference is.”

Wow, how academic she is! I might wanna read the book in Japanese. (It’s nice I can read it in Japanese!) It’s convincing when she says things like this because she’s been brought up in several different countries and people. She has seen and spent her life in various places and various cultures. But she says this. I was born, raised, educated and employed in Japan. Except 1 year in the U.S college, and another 1 year in Australia for work and travel, I have been spending too many long long time in Japan only, and there’s NO WAY I realize something is unique about our country. It’s very difficult for Japanese people like me to realize any uniqueness of Japan, because I’ve soaked up Japanese culture from a date of birth and everything I see in Japan is just very natural.

Thank you, Ivy for your insightful email!
So how unique Japanese culture is to you? Let me hear what you think!