Living in Japan as a foreigner, the hidden struggles of outsiders.

I work with Japanese businesses and the thing that infuriates me the most is that nobody

will disagree with you in a meeting, even if you're wildly wrong and about to make a huge

mistake, even if it will wreck their business, even if it's objectively a terrible idea.

If you have a meeting coming up with 30 people in it,

you need to have at least 30 one-on-ones ahead of time in order to get everyone's true thoughts.

And you can't mention any other one-on-ones. If you say, oh, I met with Bob and he said XYZ,

then you've just missed out on getting any kind of real opinion out of the one person you're meeting with.

They'll shut down. They're terrified of disagreement. Someone told me Japanese companies have a role

called the Loud American whose specific task is to disagree with people publicly. I've always wondered

if it's true because if it is, I find it very funny. Oh, it's true. I study Laar in Japan, and one of

my professors jobs before working at my school was to be the American during mediations and negotiations.

Apparently many American bought Japanese companies that were meeting with regular Japanese companies, started to realize that people kept doing roundabouts during negotiations, which made meetings that should have been one hour take more than three. Thus,

Americans were being hired to be obnoxious and cut through the niceties. The Americans were told not to be rude, but to stop the talk and consideration.

I've lived in Japan for 12 years and counting. Deep relationships are hard to come by. People don't often ask inquisitive questions for the sake of protecting

someone's privacy. A big negative of that is that most relationships are very surface level. In addition to

this, people usually don't hang out at each other's houses. All gatherings and meetings must be

planned well in advance, and things feel more like events rather than casual get-togethers.

Ultimately, the lack of deep connection where you

really get to know people is hard. People are so good at putting an outward face on and covering up

their true selves. Once I started dating there, I felt I was more engaged and invited to small

gatherings and hangouts that weren't events. But it did take finding and meeting a partner and

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