Learningful
Where to start? How can I summarize the forty days spent with OutwardBound Japan on a "Winter Japan Adventure Leadership Training" course (JALT)? The main value was not learning technical snow skills - that could have been done much cheaper and much more thoroughly elsewhere - rather, my biggest learning, and what I use to justify the cost, was what I learned from spending 40 days *totally* immersed in a completely Japanese setting.
Aside from three days when an instructor from OutwardBound Canada came to visit, I used no English. It was not a business situation involving a western home-office, or where a "western" point of view or management style is sought after by clients. It was not a one-on-one relationship with a single Japanese person, where both are equal and must strive to understand the other equally. Instead, I was the single outsider among a group of people who shared the same cultural norms and values. The pressure to conform to those norms (not explicit though somehow "understood" by the others) was enormous.
Unlike my experiences this summer in a similar course with OutwardBound in Washington, where people looked up to me (I was on average 10 years older) as a role-model and someone to learn from, in Japan I often felt not as a role-model, but as an alien - that person who always says something strange and is never quite on the same page as the rest of the group. I was someone who hindered their progress by raising issues they didn't care about or didn't want to confront.
In the past I have known people who always seemed to be living in a different world and I always wondered what it must feel like to be them. Now I know. Not so good.
While I stand by my own actions and behaviour, believing that the "western" way is the most effective and efficient ;P, I am also willing and eager to accept new theories about how people should behave. Everything I learned here was something I already "knew", but this was so much more concentrated. It was great. Maybe someday I will write about it. I am just trying to figure out how to fit so much into a few posts.
