Different types of people I met since I began to study here

Haruka Morita

Have you ever experienced culture shock? I have been experiencing a lot of culture shock since I came to Canada in a good way. I am going to talk especially about different types of students I have met in UBC ; humorous people and active people.

First, I met humorous people a lot in UBC. I found out that many people in the world say jokes. However, Japanese do not often say jokes and we communicate from empathy with each other. This happens because Japan is geographically limited but have huge population. In the past, Japanese people had to live in a house which is really close to others and we lived permanently the same home. This means that we cannot make conflict. Therefore, we do not say something bad to others and we speak in a neutral, harmless and inoffensive way. We use a lot of energy in this way, so we do not often say jokes or something.

Second, I met many active people. I was surprised to see people participate in class so actively. In Japan, many students sit politely and listen to what the teacher say. Furthermore, we do not say anything in the class, this means if teacher ask something to students, sometimes we do not answer to it. However, teachers feel nothing by that behavior because they know this often happens in Japan. Therefore, they are different from Japanese.

In conclusion, I found out two different types of people in UBC and I feel that I should change my way of thinking and attitudes.