“Everybody here apologises for everything, whether it’s good or bad.

“For example, if the phone rings and someone other than who it’s for answers, the other person will say ‘Oh! I’m really sorry you went out of your way to answer for me. I’m really sorry? I just found that strange,” said Jewel.

Surprisingly it was simply communicating with her co-workers that gave her initial feelings of ‘culture-shock’, rather obvious things like the different foods, bowing instead of shaking hands, using chopsticks instead of a knife and fork or even removing one’s shoes indoors.

Both taught themselves to use chopsticks by just observing how others around them handled them.

On Japanese food, Shawn had this to say, “at first you just couldn’t imagine people eating octopus and squid and raw seaweed! But once you acquire the taste, it doesn’t seem so bad after all.”

Jewel says she can actually cook a few Japanese dishes now. “Sushi is okay, but sashimi is a different thing. Sushi is raw meat or raw fish, you can use octopus also. You use seaweed to wrap rice and fish inside and it’s beautiful!”

As far as learning Japanese, the JET programme and their workplaces provided some amount of language skills but a lot of it is acquired just from everyday interactions.

At first glance, Japan would seem to be very, very different from Jamaica. Few if any ghettos and there are apparently well organised public services.

Shawn and Jewel both had visions of Japan being a technologically advanced place, where most people were computer savvy geniuses.

But the technological revolution is primarily centred around the big sities like Tokyo and Osaka. In the same way that trends tend to trickle from Kingston first to the rest of Jamaica, in Japan everything comes from Tokyo first.

In this and other ways, the two countries are alike and despite the stereotype of polite, computer-literate workaholics, there are lazy and rude Japanese.

And they even have crime there too including well-organised mafia-type gangsters called Yakuza. In fact, as unemployment figures approached five per cent recently, the country’s crime statistics were increasing in almost all categories simultaneously.

But it still remains one of the safest places in the world. It’s also one of those rare places where you could leave your keys in the car unattended, with money in a purse on the seat and probably have a better than 70 per cent chance of coming back and finding everything as you left it three hours later!

While both admit that Japan is a far less stressful environment than Jamaica, neither Jewel nor Shawn would choose to live there for the rest of their lives. There is a sense that Japanese are no more intelligent or creative generally speaking than the average Jamaican, but as a nation they’ve managed resources more successfully.

“To go in to some business places in Jamaica turns your day upside down — you’re getting the worst treatment. We can definitely learn from Japan, the simple things. There’s no trick to it. It’s nothing scientifically advanced. It really doesn’t hurt to be polite.”

Both would encourage young people who want to grow as individuals to join the JET programme.

“Besides many Japanese, I now have friends from Phillipines, China, USA, Australia, New Zealand — people and experiences I wouldn’t have gained normally,” says Shawn.

“You can’t pay money for this experience. You’ll find an inner person and strength. It’s all about cultural interchange and learning that there are different ways of doing things — you aren’t always right,” Jewel said.

copyright 2002 Wayne Bowen