Bad Japanese manners / Where are the polite Japanese ?

[Maciamo]

But it's funny you should mention the movie theaters... because just this weekend I went to a theater and couldn't help but notice how quiet everyone was. I mean, I've seen comedies in Japan and no one laughs. It makes me feel like a jerk when I'm the only one in the theater laughing his *** off.

I think that is simply because they do not understand the jokes. That's sad, but Japanese translations are horribly bad, or at least we could say that it is often impossible to translate jokes. I have seen movies with Japanese whose English was good enough not to care about the subtitles (and they are few and far between, even among high TOEIC scorers), and they were laughing as they should (like me ). But others kept quiet. When the movies are Japanese, or dubbed and easy to translate (like the Disney's), or when the situation (rather than what is said) is funny, then the Japanese laugh quite a lot.

Humour is also a cultural thing. I often watch TV programmes with my wife (because she wants me to or because I am bored), and whereas she laughs all the time, I can't understand what is funny ; it's just plain stupid to me, eventhough I understand everything they say. Japanese people laugh when they see a celebrity eat pasta like a pig, or when someone makes a strange face. I guessed I would have laughed when I was 5, but not ever since for such stupidities. That is one of the reason why I find Japanese TV so puerile (Golgo, what do you have to reply to that ?).

Compared to Westernern, I think the Japanese a pretty quiet wherever they go. I would talk to gaijin friends on the trains and would constantly be shushhhhhing them because it was a little embarrasing how loud they were.

Are your friends American ? Again, why saying "Westerners" when there is such a big gap between each country. Europeans usually Americans are loud (and indeed louder than Japanese in average, which is why I mentioned it in the intro). But even inside Europe, an Italian or Spaniard will definitely be louder than a Finn or a Norwegian. Interestingly, French and Belgian people tend to be quite intolerant to noise, contrarily to their other Latin neighbours.

And J-people are usually pretty good about keeping the cell phone conversations down (or at least better than a lot of people I see at home).

That is true indeed. One good point for them.

What about things Japanese find rude that gaijin do?? For example, I couldn't get used to the fact that I wasn't supposed to eat in public, and I broke this rule a lot.

I guess that will be answer by reading the article regarding Japanese manners and etiquette. As I said there, not eating in the street is one of the most difficult thing to adapt to for foreigners (of about any nationality) in Japan. That one really doesn't make sense to me and I criticize Japanese would criticize me for their illogicism, narrow-mindedness and slef-contradiction. They can't even tell me if the problem is eating outside (they eat in "yatai" during matsuri), eating while standing (like in some ramen-ya), or eating while walking (like Japanese do for ice-cream or other snacks like "tai-yaki" or "tako-yaki"). I like eating while standing (even at home) and get scolded by my wife for doing so. But I rarely eat while walking.