Cultural Confusion

Last week as the kids and I were driving to base for swim lessons, we had an unsettling cultural experience. As we approached the base, we noticed a lot of cars parked on the side of the road. I thought that was a bit odd, but just kept driving. As we rounded the corner, the kids immediatedly noticed a gelato truck parked on the side of the road. While they were begging to stop for gelato, I noticed a huge mass of people in front of us. They were waving flags and it all seemed so festive...gelato, flags, lots of people. I told the kids it looked some kind of festival. And seconds later I announced that it actually looked like a race. The mass of people waving flags were actually in some sort of formation. But then as I started to realize they weren't in running clothes, I also realized they didn't look too happy. And before I knew it our van was surrounded by people shouting. A small wave of panic start to well up inside my gut, as it began to dawn on me: this was not a celebration. This was a protest. Luckily, the crowd parted and seemed to shrink from around the van as quickly as it had initially swelled (I think the kids and the car seats helped to facilitate this...I can't imagine Italians hurting children, especially in such a public way). We were able to get on to base without any further problems and we learned that the protest was in response to some recent job losses.

The protest incident was upsetting, especially since it truly caught me off guard and had me spinning in multiple directions as I tried to make sense of what we were seeing/experiencing...it never occurred to me that a protest situation could look so festive from a distance (in my defense it really was the gelato truck that threw me off). It also reminded me of a similar moment of cultural confusion that occurred during my first month of living in rural Japan as a young teacher for the JET Program. One afternoon on my bike ride home, I pulled over to watch a series of flowers and large decorations being set up in the yard of a neighboring house. Big, vibrant, and colorful...I assumed they were preparing for some sort of celebration. With very, very limited Japanese, I attempted to ask about the occasion. It wasn't until I got home and looked it up in my dictionary did I understand the festive public display was actually part of a funeral display. Not the celebration that I had mind. Actually, cultural assumptions about death would become the source for further confusion as that year progressed. We had an Australian exchange student in our school who attended the funeral for her host family's grandfather. She came to me in tears the next day because no one had warned her about the Japanese rituals surrounding a death. She was shocked and unprepared when the family (including the student) was escorted into a room, handed chopsticks, and expected to sort through the cremains to remove the bones from the ashes. That's not quite one of those cultural exchange moments that gets highlighted in the glossy pamphlets seeking foreign exchange students, is it?

One of the things I love most about living and traveling overseas are the opportunities for learning about different cultures, but sometimes those learning experiences aren't always enjoyable. Sometimes they are confusing and unsettling. Flags, and gelato don't always mean it is a celebratory occasion and chopsticks are not always used for food.