Annoyances – Part 2 – Bureaucracy and Conforming

Thanks to all the friends who's been in touch after 'Part 1'. I'm definitely luckly to have such good friends. A little more to vent out my system and hopefully back to happy-to-be-in-Japan John.

Japanese people generally follow the rules and that's a good thing. They conform and those who don't still conform in their own ways. This makes a better society as everyone works for the 'greater good', which historically comes from when communities had to work together to grow enough rice to survive. The darker side of this comes from the Japanese phrase "the nail that sticks out, gets hammered down," i.e. conform or get hammered. I like the sense of community, but what gets me is there is no 'bending' of the rules for the greater good. Rules are rules, even if they are stupid rules, and Japan has a lot of stupid rules and no one wants to question the rules as they don't want to be the 'nail that sticks out'.

In the same vein I feel no one wants to be the one making the judgment call or the hard decision as everyone is so scared of being wrong and then having the community judge them. A perfect example of this in my view is the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. They spent so long before it blew trying to make the decision of what to do because no one wanted to be the one to make it in case it was the wrong one. Granted, no one wants to be wrong, especially over something so serious, but when making no decision is the deadliest option, surely any decision would be better.

I like to debate, I think it's sensible to question people sometimes and sometimes the Dutch view on rules does make more sense (it's a not crime unless its affecting or hurting someone else). I have been dealing with conforming and just accepting Japanese culture, after all, I'm the foreigner. But while sometimes the way the culture works does make sense, sometimes I just want to scream “THIS IS CRAZY!!!”.