Days in San Francisco are coming to an end. I miss San Francisco. People are kind. The city is beautiful. That’s why I have a slight hesitation to start today’s topic, people’s suspicion in public. But anyway, I want to express my feelings, as a Japanese who stayed in the US for the first time in his life.
My observation is that people in the US have a suspicion to the anonymous in public. We come across a number of anonymous people everyday. But many of them come into two types. One is pedestrians who are walking around you. The other is service providers such as a train conductor. People seem to have suspicion to both types of the anonymous.
First of all, people are cautious of the passers-by, the first type of the anonymous. That may be why they never leave their belongings in cars, never keep much money with them, and never sleep in trains. Japanese people are more off-guard. I reconfirmed this when I talked with a man at the book club last weekend. He told me what he had felt when he had been in Japan. He saw an old woman counting money in a train. She was as if inviting crimes, he said. In the US, such behavior does invite crimes.
People are also cautious of service providers, the second type of the anonymous. People seem to be prepared for troubles. Here is my small experience. I used Amtrak first class compartment service when I went to Lake Tahoe. Unfortunately, my room had scratches all over the window. So, I asked the conductor to change the room. His answer was consisted of only one word: “No”. The case was closed. But this was not the end of the story. The guests at the next room also had a trouble in their room. They requested the conductor to change the room. He seemed to have rejected or at least hesitated. This was same as me. The direction changed when they mentioned the right for a refund. I did not hear all, but they seemed to say that the room did not meet the standard which Amtrak promised somewhere. This worked. They moved to a new room. So, they had done their homework beforehand, mentioned what they knew effectively, and won the service.
I confess that those aspects of American life consumed my power. In fact, I used to be a person who enjoyed a nap in trains and used to assume standard-level-service anywhere. I needed to be more conscious here.
However, this may be one side of the coin. The fare of Amtrak is way less expensive than that of Japan Railway. Also, people in the US make more efforts to know anonymous others than people in Japan. People use small talks often to break the ice.
Posted by hfuruichi at September 15, 2004 11:59 PM