About one year ago I visited friends with a new baby in South Korea. This was an amazing experience for me because I hadn't been to that part of the world much since 1985 and 1986 when I and my family (older kids then 10, 12 and 14) and wife traveled through Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal for 4 months time.
So, returning to Asia I sort of expected to find something in Seoul, South Korea something like Bangkok in Thailand in 1985 and 1986. Nope.
It was more like an Asian version of going to the Northeast Coast of the U.S. in maybe New Jersey or something like that so I found this quite surprising.
Except 99 percent of the people there are Asian or South Korean and not like here in the U.S.
The most remarkable thing I found over there was never did I see even one homeless person. Even today here on the coast a bedraggled girl about 20 sort of dragging her sleeping bag tied to her back with feathers in her cap from birds she had found likely on the beach walked by sort of out of it and asking me for a cigarette. I said I didn't have one (because I don't smoke) Because if I did I likely would be dead already with the health problems I have been through since 1998.
So, all the time (10 to 14 days) I was there I never saw one homeless person. And I only saw one drunk who was even then being watched over by a friend who wasn't drunk. So, I was quite impressed by the culture in this way.
However, when I visited a South Korean Doctor for my hernia caused by my laproscopic surgery for my burst appendix last spring, he said there are homeless people but likely they were hiding which also likely would fit in with the culture too.
We are just more open here about our problems than some other cultures I guess who cover them up more. (This is just a guess).
I found everyone there quite polite and yet extremely direct in the way they communicate. I was a little embarrassed by people my friends introduced me to saying how handsome I was. As an older man I'm not used to be talked to in this way anymore whether it is true or not. So, differences in culture often caught me off guard.
Things we would be polite about were not what politeness was about there. The hardest thing for me is that you can't complain about anything there. Everything is supposed to be okay and everyone is supposed to pretend they are happy with everything all the time. I found this sort of crazy.
For example, no child in pubic school is ever given a grade lower than a C because this would be losing face. And losing face usually isn't allowed there. My friend's wife also said she had had an employer hit her so there are disagreements. But, most of the time people pretend everything is fine whether it is or not because complaining isn't allowed in this culture.
I still haven't figured this all out yet. It still baffles me just like the type of politeness I experienced at a wealthy wedding in North Carolina where someone died a lake green next to their home so people wouldn't be eaten alive by mosquitos during the outdoor wedding. The southern level of politeness is so beyond anything else in the U.S. that I was taken aback and didn't know how to respond to it. A guy from Boston there said, "I understand. I'm a Yankee too Fred."
We both laughed.
So, there are different U.S. versions of politeness in different areas of the States. But, politeness takes on something completely different in South Korea, Japan and China and each have their own variation of all this that baffles me completely.
I don't understand how they get anything done at all with this level of politeness. However, the people generally were very lovely to me and I felt and was physically safer than I would have been literally anywhere in the U.S.
Taxi drivers are known in Japan and South Korea to go miles out of the way to return wallets or purses or possessions left in their cars or dropped on the street. You wouldn't find that here as much here in the U.S. so you are physically much safer there than you would be here.
So, that is something to think about too.
At one point I was waiting to board my plane home to San Francisco and my friends' wife was holding her male baby. The lady (no one knew here) got really excited about the baby and asked to hold it. Then she got up from the table and walked away with the baby. I said, "What is going on?" And my friend and his wife said, "This is the way things are done here." I finally said, "I don't think she should go out of sight with your baby at the very least." So, my friend finally got up and found his child.
So, you can see things are very different there culturally than in the U.S.
There is a much higher sense of honor in people where civility is not only demanded it is expected of everyone. Does it work? I felt safer there than anywhere I had ever been before on earth. Yes. The sense of honor about everything seems to work because people take pride in this honor. So, it works.
Then I got on the plane and found it to be the single roughest ride on a plane I had ever been on for 9 of the 11 hours returning home because we were flying over a hurricane (they are either called typhoons or cyclones in that part of the world).
This time I didn't see stewardesses fly up and hit the ceiling and fall back down on people and get hurt (this is common flying to Hawaii by the way so be sure to wear your seat belt loosely all the way there and back by the way.
However, when they brought me soup, the soup was splashing out from the bumpiness onto the tablecloth at my business adjustable seat. It didn't get on me but trying to get the soup spoon into my mouth without injuring myself was very difficult. And it was like this for 9 of the 11 hours returning to San Francisco. Later I didn't want my silverware injuring me, so I put my water glass and silverware in the adjoining seats tray that I set up. But soon, the water glass the silverware and the table cloth had fallen into the seat next to me and then fell down inside the electric seat mechanism. I tried to tell the stewardesses what was wrong with the seat next to me but I don't think their English was sufficient for good communication on this level.
So, whoever used the seat next to me likely was going to see electric sparks or something whenever they adjusted electrically their seat for sleeping on that plane. But, if people can't understand properly or enough of what you are trying to tell them, what are you going to do?
They had the seat belt on sign on so very long I was about to wet my pants. So, when I got up to go to the bathroom rather than wet my seat the stewardess said to get back in my seat. I said, "You've got to let me go or I'll wet the seat." she laughed politely and said, "Be careful!" But, I didn't hit my head on the bathroom ceiling but I did bang against the walls a lot it was so rough and then made it back to my seat by grabbing onto the walls and seats to get back. It wasn't any harder than staying on a surfboard surfing a wave or staying on a motorcycle in the dirt both of which I have done a lot in my life.
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