Directness

It’s been said that Japanese people are indirect, passive aggressive, and will never say exactly what’s on their mind. I've found that that is often true, especially among coworkers and older people. However, I have experienced some surprising exceptions. First of all, with diarrhea. O.o I guess in Japan, having diarrhea is just a normal thing like having a headache. For example, when students are in class, they will sometimes raise their hand and say, “Excuse me, my stomach hurts. May I use the restroom?” That’s the nicer version. Another example of the nicer version was when I was teaching with another teacher, and he got really sweaty and looked sick. He said he had to go to the bathroom and that he’d be gone for 5 minutes. When he came back, he said, “Sorry, I have an upset stomach,” and then he went to the bathroom again. Some examples of not so polite times are as follows: Once when I was walking to class with one of my JTEs and we saw a student holding his stomach standing outside the bathroom. I asked my JTE what was wrong with him, and he said, “I think he probably has diarrhea.” ^^;; Another time was when my supervisor came to my school for an assembly. I said hi to him to which he replied, “Hi. My colleague was supposed to come to this, but he got diarrhea so I had to instead.” Hahaha! It’s just weird hearing these things from such reserved Japanese people.

The next thing I've found to be surprising is about drugs. We had an assembly (the one previously mentioned) about drugs. That same day, two of my JTEs came up to me, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m a foreigner or not, but they came right out and asked, “Have you ever done drugs?” I was startled and said, “I thought Japanese people were supposed to be indirect?!” They laughed and said that they have never done drugs but were curious about how it feels to smoke marijuana! >_< These are the two particular situations that stood out to me…