Mind, Brain, and Behavior

Published 10/31/2022 in Scholar Travel Stipend

Written by Angela Oh | 10/31/2022

I was in awe by the amount of culture and traditions preserved in the country and am so blessed to have experienced both working and living in Japan.

After my sophomore year [2015], I spent ten weeks of my summer in the city of Wako-shi in greater Tokyo, Japan. My college had a summer internship program through the neurobiology department, so I worked on a voltammetry project at Thomas McHugh’s Lab for Circuit and Behavioral Physiology at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako-shi, Japan. I heard about this program through the neurobiology department’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior program and decided to apply. During the “interview”, Dr. Hensch, organizer of the program, asked me to come with a list of researchers at the Riken Institute with whom I wanted to work with. He matched me with Dr. McHugh’s lab, and I was given dormitory housing and told three other Harvard students from Harvard would also be there that summer.

A total of six undergraduates lived at the research institute with me. Most of the post-docs in my lab were actually not Japanese. It seemed to me that the institute recruited researchers all over the world to work in their facility. Many of the researchers could not even speak Japanese but decided to live there. This resulted in many half-Japanese, half European/American families living in the facility. My post-doc was one of the many American male researchers who married a Japanese woman. Their son, now half-Japanese and half-American, only spoke Japanese. He told me in broken English that his father, my post-doc, did not speak much English at home. Although my post-doc’s wife spoke both English and Japanese, their son attended Japanese school and was the token HAPA student. I learned more about my post-doc’s decision to move to Japan and wondered whether or not he missed America or ever thought of migrating back. As a daughter of two Korean first generation immigrants, I was curious to see that there were Americans who migrated to other countries permanently to start their lives and families there. This is seen more commonly as international parents moving to America, where they look for the land of opportunity. However, these other families moving to Japan would primarily come for educational reasons and immerse themselves into the Japanese culture’s stable and determined work ethic. Interestingly, my lab had the most number of foreigners but they had all moved to Japan with the intention of staying.

The first thing I noticed in Tokyo when I arrived was how everyone dressed. Professional work encompasses everyone’s lives in Japan. Men are in black suits with briefcases, speed-walking around the subway to get to work at 7am. Women show little skin and are usually in dresses. Even in the humid summer days, girls wear stockings, leggings, and long-sleeved shirts. It is a wonder how they do not sweat in their clothes as much as we did. After work, men go out to eat, dance, and drink at izakayas. This was traditional: men are seen intoxicated and sleeping on the floor of the stations in their suits even on Wednesday nights. Tokyo’s work hard play hard mentality was to a dangerous extreme. Even we had to sometimes go into our lab at midnight to finish up projects and post-docs expected others to stay for 12 hours at a time with a short lunch and dinner break. Researchers were expected to stay for more than 40 hours a week but surprisingly, nobody arrived tired or complained about their lives. I realized that compared to Americans, Japanese people were in a way, more focused and had a one-track mind. They studied hard, played all night, and were ready to come back to work after only two hours of sleep. Even with this type of schedule, few of them complained. They even sped their way through lunch and dinner to get back to work quickly.

This was highly contrasted with the more relaxed American lifestyle. The Japanese rarely eat at fast food restaurants, but rather found a way to eat meals just faster. Ramen and udon restaurants have many standing areas. This means that people come and eat very quickly in between meetings and events, emphasizing the fast-paced Japanese lifestyle. Men are often seen eating alone, something that is not as frequently normalized in America. The idea of solitude and independence is exemplified in habits of eating out alone and valuing personal space on public transportation. The integration of technology and food is also mesmerizing to see at sushi restaurants. You never speak with a waiter or waitress and everything is ordered and placed using a small computer or Ipad at your table. We would use the touch screen device to choose the sushi we wanted and sushi plates would come around a conveyer belt. The plates for your specific table would come and stop directly at your table for you to grab. All empty plates were counted at the end for pricing. Some sushi restaurants even had games you could play on the computer to win more sushi or get better deals on specials. Technology in Japan is extremely advanced and updated constantly. In this type of working environment, it is no wonder why the Japanese are highly organized and efficient.

Overall, Japan is an extremely nationalist country. There were very few foreigners and compared to other countries I have traveled to, very few people spoke English. I was forced to adapt to the Japanese lifestyle of working late and starting the night past midnight, eating while standing to be the most productive, dressing conservatively even on the hottest summer days, and speaking only Japanese. The amount of cultural sites and traditions that were still practiced amazed me. Coming from the melting pot of America, I was accustomed to diversity. Everyone in Japan however, seemed similar, consistent, and not necessarily inviting of other cultures. The streets only sold Japanese food, clothes, and products. Nothing else seemed to be imported, emphasizing the amount of national pride Japan has. It was truly the best opportunity Harvard ever gave me during my four years. I am incredibly thankful for my experience and was at one of the happiest points of my life. I am excited to return and hope I could explore as much as I did when I went there the first time.