By Angel Njoku

While taking this Japanese class, I learned a lot about respect. Respect is a very important aspect about the Japanese culture. Learning about the different ways respect is shown in the Japanese culture has shifted my way of understanding in a world’s eye view. Since respect is already a prominent part of my upbringing, I can say that the respect in the Japanese culture is very different from the way Americans view and see respect.

This has impacted my thinking of the world view of respect, because Japan intertwined respect within many aspects, like staying at work to help a coworker even though your hours are up, or taking off your shoes when you are in someone’s house, and even giving people presents when you come back from a vacation or going to someone’s house.

Learning how respect plays a role in everything they do helps transform my knowledge about how my version of respect is different from the Japanese style. This has changed the way that I feel about the world, because it shows that while respect is important to other people, there are different places around the world that take respect into a more knowledgeable way.

This also made me realize that respect in Japan revolves more around the society being respectful rather than the individual aspect of respect. This has also made me understand that as a homogenous society, respect in general is under the iceberg, while the different aspects and ways of showing respect is on top of the iceberg. My former knowledge about Japan was that they are similar to other Asian countries that bow as a sign of respect. By now I know that there is more than bowing, and that respect is something that is built within their culture.