Culture shock in the reverse...

This was one of those posts that I had to go back and check my earlier posts to make sure I wasn't repeating myself too much and realized that I had touched on the subject about a year ago (post here) but now after ~10 years of life in Japan I find myself getting more of a culture shock when I get back to the old country...

Apart from the physical shock I talked about in the earlier post I also find that I no longer automatically understands how everything works and have to sometimes ask friends. 10 years seem to be enough to make even Sweden change a bit and returning home around once a year doesn't seem to be enough to make sure that I keep up with the changes.

Among the things I find myself shocked with is in particular the slowness, inefficiency and generally lack of politeness when shopping. Also, since I moved from Sweden to Japan after graduating university I find myself excessively cheap back in the old country; this is not due to a lack of money or such but simply because I never really had access to any real amounts when I used to live back there. That means that I am permanently stuck with the notion that 100 Swedish Kronor (~$14) is quite a large amount of money, but the same amount in yen I do not consider a particularly large sum at all since I have lived in Japan on both smaller and larger budgets.

Not a particularly funny post I guess but it's more one of those things when I start to realize how I am now beginning to "fall between the chairs" in terms of cultural and national identification after spending so long time in Japan. It's not really a bad thing as such, but the feeling of "going home" has now really shifted compared to just a few years ago.

Meeting up with my old friends from way back is now starting to feel less like a meeting within the Justice League of America and more of the special annual cross-over between the Justice League from Earth-1 and the Justice Society of America from Earth-2...