Tokyo: A venture into deep culture


Photo courtesy of travel.nationalgeographic.com

Photo courtesy of travel.nationalgeographic.com

Along with program planned trips and “survival Japanese” lessons, my time in Tokyo so far has been divided between getting to know the Keio University students joining us for the Keio Future Leaders Program (KFLP) and learning about how to immerse oneself in deep culture.

Without much consideration, “deep culture” can seem like a wishy-washy, gimicky phrase, but as Professor Shaules explained, deep culture is what allows travelers to have complex and immersive experiences during their time of travel. Culture is a concept that describes a society, and to truly appreciate new cultures, it is not enough to simply observe and marvel at the novel practices, sights, and sounds of the new environment. If you imagine culture as an onion, getting to deep culture involves peeling back the layers of the onion until you reach the center of the onion — the point where you come to an understanding of cultural practices because you are able to get behind the thought process of the culture’s underlying values.

Throughout three days of discussing deep culture and comparing (mostly) Western culture with Japanese culture, one of the most memorable moments was seeing the shock on the faces of the Keio University students when they learned how nonchalant the exchange of business cards can be in America and the U.K. The American students (myself included) and British students were equally surprised to learn that exchanging business cards in Japan is a serious ritual, mainly characterized by a two-handed presentation of one’s card to the other person.

The takeaway for the lectures I had on deep culture was to dissect why such contrasts exist between one’s own culture and that of another society. In the case of the business cards, prominent differences exist between America and Japan partly due to differences in the way the two societies show respect. While a single blog post is far from being enough space to adequately discuss deep culture and how to experience it, a starting point to deeply understanding culture is keeping in mind that different societies can have conflicting methods of achieving the same goals.