Walking Together

We had a big culture bump when we talked to a student at the UH. We were doing a survey and she answered our questions nicely. So we thought she will take a picture with us, but she said, “I’m busy, sorry”. She refused indirectly. We knew she wasn’t busy because before we talked to her, we asked her if she had time and she said she did, so it was strange that suddenly she got busy when we asked her if she could take a picture with us. We just said,”Thank you.” and left because we were disappointed, shocked, confused and also sorry that we asked.

After speaking with our teacher, we realized that it was because of her religion; she explained that some Muslim women don’t have their pictures taken. We discussed this and discovered that a universal situation was that all people belong to some type of a community. For us Japanese, we have a “super-polite community” and the woman has her religious community. We know that all of us belong to some communities. It brings us comfortable feelings. We came up with a question “What kind of communities do Americans belong?” So we asked some questions to UH students. As expected, a lot of people said, “Family, friends, job, religion and ethnicity”. America is a multi-ethnic nation. People can find the same ethnicity easily and make a community. It is good to be comfortable in community, but we think that we should experience more culture bumps like we experienced in the beginning to expand our world and to be global leaders. Check out our video here!

-by Ai Tamotsu, Honey Mika Monteroso, Marcella Sakura McDonald, Minori Nakamatsu