What do Japanese people do?

When I heard this topic, “what do Japanese people do?”, サラリーマン(sales man) first came to my mind because I had a teacher who always said that “Japanese people work too hard that Karoushi  became universal language.” So I took this picture that my friend, Tatsuya, is working in suit which relates to this stereotype. However, I thought there are more to this topic.

As I think about this deeper and deeper, I came to the conclusion that Japanese people tend to adjust to people around them by forming a group or by 空気を読む(reading the air in order to keep harmony in relationship). For example, Japanese people try to line up and form a line every time. Even in 3.11, Japanese kept patience to form a line for gasoline or food.  

This gave big impact to the world. However, as native Japanese, I think this is natural because we get trained in the school such as in elementary school or in kindergarten. Like this (please see the picture below) .

When we’re doing physical education, we first learn the correct way: 1. the first person in line should put their hand in the waist 2. People after that should make fist size space between the person in front. 3. People should have their arm stretched forward so that they can make a straight line by adjusting to shoulder bump in front. Therefore, I observed that it is education and culture that have big influence on Japanese in forming the line.

Moreover, Japanese like to have fun with group member by going to karaoke or izakaya. This picture below is famous cheering that people do when going to izakaya. Sometime I feel that I adjust to too much to other people but I think that’s what Japanese people do.

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More interesting information(movie) of forming a line and adjusting to the team is linked below. I took a picture of アルゴリズム行進(algorthim march) because I thought this is great symbol of Japanese people.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYJ-eVDH6OE