In all honesty, it has not happened for me. Never once since I returned to the US have I experienced
culture shock while readjusting to American culture. I don't even know what would be so shocking. I mean, I could imagine being re-exposed to your own countries' food being the core of the shock. Maybe politics, and even transportation. For me personally, it was a little strange not being around a convenient way of travel like trains and Shinkansens. But after the first two days, I was already used to my good ol 96 Mazda. On a national level, culture shock has yet to occur due to my Internet sources keeping me up to date on politics, pop culture etc. While Skype and Facebook helped me keep in contact with friends. Although I tried not to keep too many tabs on what was going on at home out of fear that it would rob me of my experience abroad. I tried to steer away from American TV shows, movies etc.
However, if at all,
culture shock did occur on a more personal level, which is what they don't tell ya. For example, readjusting to old personalities and habits. For example, if you are not so loud and all your friends are, and you have been away from them for awhile, then you might be a little slow on getting used to them, and vice versa. This kind of thing happened with me a few times. References to old jokes that I have forgotten, elaborate jokes flying over my head, etc. are the kinds of culture shocks I had. That ranges from being the butt of a joke and not really even realizing it and being annoyed quicker than I should have over something I shouldn't have.
Example #1: Smash Bros.
I have seen this game turn tiny voices into Aretha Franklins
Anything competitive can quickly turn into a hollering match when playing with the right folks. Monopoly, Risk, even chess can turn in to a battle of who did what to someones mama the night before. For my group of friends its Smash Bros, Marvel vs Capcom and various board games. When I first got back, I played Smash Bros, the game above, and Marvel vs Capcom 3. Both games I have either not played in about a year or haven't played at all. And it Showed. Hard. Believe me, there were quite a few hollering matches. Something that I will learn to re-love.
The other thing:
I cannot begin to tell you how many times someone has sat me down to watch some video I "missed out on" while I was in Japan. Sometimes its used to show music, other times its used to show songs. But most of the time its used to blow through an hour of your time. Don't get on your high horse just yet, because WE ALL DO IT....sit down. What people fail to realize is that the Internet is a world-wide thing so if "Hide ya kids, hide ya wife" is famous in the states, it is probably popular on the Youtube front page when I go abroad on my computer.
Also, no one else show me the cat on the keyboard because that's just old all together.
Villainy.
I agree. I never felt jetlag or 'culture shock' (as they were described to me). I think the only things I really noticed were: food, public transit, general volumes of peoples' voices, body language or physical behavior, and maybe the widespread-ness or 'open spaces' feel of TN, which is strikingly different than the landscape of many other developed countries because even our developed areas feel wide and open (at least in Tennessee).
ReplyDeleteI definitely felt, on a personal level, a weirdness about fitting back into my 'persona' in the states, but that was mostly due to so many comments regarding the summer and the expectation at having gone through some major change or metamorphosis, which also didn't happen. The comments/questions are sometimes annoying and try my patience.