Kyori

Kyori

Noun

Meaning: Distance

Kyouri, kyouri, kyouri.... I hate this word. As an American, I feel the need to erase distance and become close to people as soon as possible. If I just sit with you at a table for five minutes I'll call you a friend. But my friend and room mate Ellie, has nothing but distance.

After Ellie blew up at me and specifically requested that I give her this, and I shudder to say it... kyori, I was so confused. Her grievances toward me were that I was childish, needy, a crybaby and relied too much on others. OUCH!

All of these statements are true, but I never thought that they were strong enough traits to get under anybody's skin.

To say everything in a positive way, the way I considered myself: I am a child at heart. I am good at delegating and willing to accept help. I properly communicate my feelings, even when it's hard. I am a people person who loves to spend time with the people I love. 

Another Japanese culture lesson, the big one- the shocker!: expressing strong emotions is very immature. People are brought up here, to hold back their feelings, all feelings!

You're so excited and you want to do the happy dance - chill out.

You're super stressed at work and you just want to cry - go home and cry to your mommy.

You're so angry you want to hit the table - what are you, two?

In America too, it's not always appropriate to show your feelings in certain circumstances, but it's definitely not looked down upon to have those feelings as an adult. But I am an adult, and I am in Japan. So, now there are these aspects of me that bother my roommate which I am attentive to change. Not for her, but for me. Now that I know how my actions are looked upon, how they've been looked upon and I didn't know.. It's very embarrassing. Even Ellie told me, it's my personality and I can't change it. But, I can. It's difficult because being home schooled and not every having close friends, I'm dealing with the emotional problems of non-family relationships only just now and I gotta say, it's so rough. When the kids at my school are crying because their friend doesn't want to hold their hand, I just want to say, I know how you feel!

I love, love, love my friends, especially Ellie, but Japanese people don't express love by talking all the time, being super excited or coming closer and closer like I was.

Little did I know, Ellie is super introverted and the more I behaved like this the more worn out and irritated she was getting. 

For Japanese people, silence, calmness and distance is not a bad thing. 

The day Ellie died.

One year ago I began living with my Japanese roommate. I love her! From the first time I met her I thought she was such a cool girl, beautiful inside and out. She would hang out with me, talk to me and cheer me up when I was down. One year later little by little there started to be a chill in the air. Her attitude towards me became cold and brass. I thought maybe something was wrong that she couldn't talk to me about. We hadn't been in a fight or anything and I couldn't understand why suddenly there was this friction between us. 

Then... she exploded.

Things that had been bothering her about me, how I live, how I act, things I said all came up and she said the words that would mark the end of any relationship from an American standpoint, "I want you to give me some space!"

I was devastated, but I wasn't about to just let our friendship fall apart.

I had to step back, but it was a good thing. 

Now I really began to see the differences between our cultures. 

Let me go back a bit, before things started to get tense. 

The longer we lived together, the more happy I was. I was so grateful for her friendship. As a foreigner living alone in Japan my friends are my family and she is such a dear and important person to me. Her dream, though, is to get married and start her own family and business. This means that inevitably be moving out someday, probably soon. So, at some point I decided that as long as we were living together I wanted it to be the best time for her; that she would be comfortable and happy and have only good memories of living with me.

I started to bend my living habits to match hers, she likes things to be really clean so I put in more effort to be neat. Me doing things with my feet, like closing doors or blocking the rabbit from bouncing around where she doesn't belong, really bothered her, so I tried my best not to do it. I even started trying to fold the toilet paper into a little triangle after going to the bathroom... AND closing the lid. 

It's a good thing that I really started practicing these habits before hand because it was these kinds of things that had been bothering her. 

Her culture, Japanese culture; the emphasis is on the whole, not the individual. Keeping things super neat and clean, using things only in the way they were designed for, using a different towel for every kind of surface, asking permission every time, even when you know the answer is yes... all of these things and more are done out of consideration for others health, ease and well-being. Neglecting these small details is like saying you don't care about people. 

Now I am trying very hard to learn and practice Japanese manners and habits out of consideration to my still dear friend.

I truly love my room mate in the purest sense. But that was the other problem...