06/02/2002   English German
  Edition # 40  
San Francisco, 06-02-2002

Busy Bodies

Michael A bothersome issue in Japan is what I call "busywork." In Bavarian, there is the expression "Gschaftler" — someone who pretends to be extremely busy (gschaftig) with something but ultimately just produces hot air. This seems to be a constant state in Japanese professional life. The salespeople are frantically busy, literally running from one place to another, and bewilder the startled tourist with wild torrents of words, which Japanese customers, by the way, let bounce off them without comment. Even if you know some bits of Japanese, like we do from our course, the staccato of the salespeople and servers is so confusing that you can hardly understand anything and, due to stress, can hardly say anything in return. Strict hierarchical thinking also prevails: it can happen that an employee frantically busies himself on the subway so that his boss, with whom he is going to lunch, gets a seat.
Figure [1]: Construction worker busy bodies

Another mass phenomenon is what I call the "people's run," a group dynamic that occurs when a crowd of people suddenly starts running. I first noticed this peculiarity when we were standing in line at airport immigration upon entering the country. For Japanese citizens, there were about ten lines open for queuing, which the steady stream of arriving people distributed themselves evenly across. Suddenly, another counter opened at one end —- and as if pulled by a string, the arriving people accelerated really fast to the speed of a "people's run" to line up at the new counter. Everything proceeds in an extremely controlled manner, and it is very rare for someone to be jostled. (About as often as in West Germany, a little less than in East Germany. In the USA or Great Britain, however, it *never* happens that someone jostles you; that is considered a mortal sin). However, people in Japan do not aggressively insist on their right of way; in case of doubt, they will let you go ahead just before a collision. You also often see people, even those of advanced age, in suits running through the city, probably because they're late for something. In the USA, on the other hand, no one ever runs -- except for joggers and criminals on the run. If someone in the USA is running in non-sports attire, you'd better take cover because there might be a shootout soon.

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