An Experience of Culture Shock -- Seiya

      I’ve felt some culture shocks in New Zealand. I was born and raised in Japan, so I knew there were some differences between my country and others, so I will introduce some of them in this essay.

The culture shock that I’ve felt here is the definition of words native people use in some ways. For instance, the word “Deadline”. There is the word for deadline in Japanese, but even if I cross the deadline, I’m not actually dead out of Japan or in western culture. That is sort of a milestone or something like that in New Zealand, so I’ve crossed the deadline several times, but I’ve never been the butt of criticism. However, when I was a university student in Japan, there was a certain deadline, and a lot of uncertainty came up from nowhere, but if I couldn’t make it by the deadline, teachers got mad at me. Additionally, the definition of the word “Definitely” is also different from my country. If you say “Okay, I can definitely do that”, then how definite it is be a question. If a Japanese person had to evaluate your task, he wouldn’t give you good score unless you make it perfect, so in the Japanese work environment, I wouldn’t say “Definitely” unless I am certain that it’ll be definite. In contrast, I think it’s more likely that people use the word more casually, and it comes out naturally even if it’s not definite in western culture. Therefore, the definition of words can move and shift depending on which culture that you’re in.