Edit : I’m just curious to hear everyone’s unique experiences 😭
by [deleted]
What’s Your Biggest Culture Shock Dating a Japanese Person?
Edit : I’m just curious to hear everyone’s unique experiences 😭
by [deleted]
Edit : I’m just curious to hear everyone’s unique experiences 😭
by [deleted]
35 comments
This may not apply to people younger than 30, but the fucking married men. If they haven’t or won’t provide a 独身証明書 don’t date them. Seriously. I’m mixed and came back to Japan after graduate school and it seemed like over half of the men I met when I was trying to date were married looking to fool around.
Why look for weirdness if no weirdness exists? People are weird. If you guy doesn’t seem weird to you, then you seem like a good match.
People talk a lot of shit. Don’t let it influence your view of the world, of Japan, of Japanese people.
Eeh, when we got any issue he preferred to not talk about it at all (not addressing the issue) and just pretended time will heal it. Talking & addressing issues in our relationship felt like I was the one being too aggressive.
Ghosting, friend zoning, passive messaging.
Until I met someone who actively reaches out to me, this was the case for about 2 years. Then, once I met the right person it went from casual dating to thinking marriage and children in a few months.
My biggest culture shock was no hugs and kissies in public when me and my now husband started dating. I’m very european, so a hello-hug or a goodbye-hug was very fundamental, especially in a romantic relationship. I knew that showing affection in public is not that normal here, but I was still a little bit shocked at first.
A year or what later, he didn’t care anymore. I think he just wasn’t used to it or to the thought of it. Now he’s very fine with hugs and kisses, although we often joke that he might explode if he’s been seing being kissed in public.
I’m sure it might get a bit heavy in here, so I’ll share a funny one.
Brushing their teeth.
I’ve had two exes brush their teeth for like, 20+ minutes. They’d bring their toothbrush to the couch and watch tv and just scrub away. No conversation could change their ways. Was always funny to me
My husband is definitely less affectionate than the average male from my home country and he used to prefer washing dishes by hand 😀 (we have a dishwasher now and he changed his mind).
But other than that nothing crazy.
She hates most of what it is to be Japanese.
they don’t like to give things continuity, like, they do what they think every human has to do, once, then move on, hate that, I love doing things I like more than once (that thing your thinking too). Also, why the heck their only “in love” emotion is being toxic and jealous tspmo
The celebration of sacrifice, men and women both. You might be the most important thing to them, but they will gladly sacrifice you for work or family and people will praise them for it.
The amount of times my dinner plans fell through just because “people at work needed me” is more than I can count.
Idk what you talking about? Don’t generalize.. men are men just like women are women. Anywhere in the world
For me, I think personal relationships. I come from a very warm and affectionate culture. I sometimes cannot wrap my head around the fact that he doesn’t hug his family or say I love you to them. It feels strange that they aren’t close and don’t talk frequently. Like he talks to his family maybe once a month, twice if there’s some big news.
His friendships seem genuine and they talk daily and are close but still not like how I would expect someone in my culture to be. I asked him who on his side should we invite to our wedding. He said maybe his family and I’m like MAYBE??? Hes like yeah if they’re not busy. Which is mind boggling because my family would cross the seven seas to come to my wedding. Thankfully his family is accepting and have even hugged me! Its just one of the craziest differences to me.
Been married to my wife about half a year, together for two years. So far, nothing crazy, she’s mostly quite open-minded. If we ever argue, it’s about small stuff that doesn’t matter, like sharing drinks from the Denny’s drink bar, or sitting in the Starbucks without ordering something.
You deleted your OP with your edit.
No stomachs out! Laying down and shirt comes up a bit? Fixes it. Laying on floor and shirt up a bit? Blanket. Pulling off a sweater and shirt goes up a bit? Fixes the shirt.
Oh and can’t hear a word you are saying in an argument unless you are on the same level, ie both on floor, both in chairs, etc. Try to talk while you stand up and they sit in a chair? Not going to get anywhere until both of you are sitting down.
My biggest shock was finding out that my husband is a very normal, sweet, kind man, and that his family loves me after hearing horror stories from people online and the people already commenting on this thread unfortunately. I’m going to tell you honestly: you hear horror stories online (which I know are real I’m not downplaying that) BECAUSE they are horror stories. People who are in happy relationships with their partner aren’t posting online because they are living a good life with their partner lol. But I am taking the time to dispel the myth that all Japanese people end up being terrible partners and post about my relationship because I’m sick of only seeing negative stories about dating Japanese people. Again I know they are real stories, but you need to hear good ones too. People are people. I’m from America, and all the men I dated were selfish dickheads. That doesn’t mean all American men are selfish dickheads. My stepdad isn’t. It just means you have to wade through the bad to get to the good. It’s the same in Japan. My husband, his brothers, his friends ALL have never said or done anything strange to me simply because I’m not Japanese. And nothing changed or got bad after we got married. In fact we are closer than ever. He is my best friend. The weirdest thing is my brother in law always speaking English to me… but it’s because he’s fluent in English and it’s easier for us to talk that way while I’m learning Japanese lol.
TL;DR: You don’t need to try to prepare yourself for what could be strange about them BECAUSE they are Japanese. All countries have some bad people. All countries have some great people, too. 🫶🏻 like my hubby 🥰
Edit: wait I did want to add one actual “culture shock” moment for me was seeing my mother in law naked in the onsen the first time I ever went to a Japanese onsen I was like “oh this is definitely different than anything I would experience in America” 🤣🤣🤣 but I got over it in like two minutes lol
SEX EDUCATION. I met a Japanese woman and we talked about a lot of things including the massive cultural differences regarding sexual education in school. There seems to be a lack of knowledge about a lot of important things regarding this topic among a lot people.
When my wife and I started dating our first 3 dates were all a month apart, lol
Konkatsu season is 4D chess.
There are lots of Japanese parents that are cool with whoever their daughter/son are dating. They just want to know who they are.
My ex was great and he deserves the best. I was the “Japanese” in our relationship actually, I was “colder” and didn’t communicate my feelings to him.
We never had a single fight though, we’re still in good terms and meet from time to time.
He broke up with me because according to his words “you feel like family” and “you make me feel too safe”
Exchanging LINE by their request and getting 既読無視’d after sending a message
We built our home next to her older sister, however her husband is going on 13 years of 単身赴任. Loneliest fucking drunk on the planet. Preciously, mildly amusing, yet seeing her in my living nearly daily, slightly frustrating. So, I guess the idea of personal space here is defined differently than that back home(US west coast). And while I have been here for some time, she really has become more a nuisance than entertaining, as she was at first. Would like to tell her fuck off, but family is accepting good and the bad correct. Lord knows I have a few big issues that my lovely wife accepts without complaint.
I used to date one.
1. He did not always respond right away, once it even took six business days. He did apologize, though.
2. I’m not sure if it was just him, but our conversations were always quite serious and conservative. Whenever I tried to flirt or joke around, he did not really know how to keep the banter going. Tbf I had more experience with romantic relationships.
3. He never said ‘I love you.’ In my culture, that is something we say often to family and friends, so it was a bit of a shock for me.
He also tried to adjust with my love language but I guess it took a toll on us. I hope he is happy though he is a nice guy we just weren’t for each other 😄
A lot of ghosting and instant blocks. If you’re gay and fat, gay dudes who are into that will message you and immediately tell you that you’re fat and it’s hot.
My now wife telling me when we first started dating that prostitution isn’t cheating in her mind and she wouldn’t be mad if I went as long as I was honest about it with her. Floored me.
Ghosting and the passive way that Japanese men like to communicate. Ghosting is rather normal here. I got ghosted by a long term boyfriend once and was told that Japanese people (assuming they weren’t married) do it because they don’t like conflict. Also, I had another long term boyfriend who would only text me once a day on purpose and when I finally confronted him about it, it’s because he “didn’t want to bother me.”
Thread doesn’t disappoint.
The weird obsession with cleanliness. Every time my ex came back from anywhere, he’d gargle his throat and clean his hands with soap… Couldn’t really get used to that.
Food safety. My then-girlfriend-now-wife would leave pots of food or rice in the rice cooker out on the counter because it’s winter and it’ll be fine in the morning. In my one room apartment. With the heat on.
Meeting parents. It is a huge huge deal. And, if you do meet them they may think it’s because you plan on getting married.
He was always more shocked about me. When we first started dating once we bought a bunch of reduced price supermarket sushi late at night and brought it back to my place. The little plastic fish of soy sauce was not enough for him. He asked if he could use some of my soy sauce from my kitchen. I didn’t have any. He was so SHOCKED someone could exist without a bottle of soy sauce in their kitchen. But I’m foreign hey and I didn’t yet know how to cook Japanese food then. We had to put our jackets on again and walk back to supermarket for soy sauce lol.
Not drinking water during meals. Honestly there’s been a lot of culture shock things overall but the not drinking stuff is just wild to me. When she’s the one setting the table she never puts glasses on it, nor a bottle of water (or even mugicha or anything). Then we start eating and she often makes comments like あ、喉詰まってる yet does nothing to prevent it other than wait for the food to go down instead of just… drinking water. She will drink water after the meal, or otherwise she’d take any other liquid like soup etc (which is fine I guess)
As someone who loves water during meals, this is so weird and I just resigned to get up and serve myself my own water (we take turns when setting the table so it’s not like I leave everything on her ofc).
Some inaka girls are really kind, but way too motherly in my experience. Don’t need you to push your way on me about every little thing. Still got love for you though
Everyone felt like a generic NPC ngl
Not a necessary bad thing. Just not my cup of tea
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