Gesture Confusion

Since my Japanese is appallingly bad and most people around me hardly manage a few sentences of English, I end up communicating through gestures quite a bit. Even when people are able to communicate in the same language, the nonverbal aspect is a very important part. However, just as people in different parts of the world speak different languages, so they also use different gestures—sometimes with much room for misinterpretation. This is the case even for similar cultures (flash the ‘peace sign’ to some Brits or Aussies and see if they get angry).

I’ve started adopting some of the Japanese gestures, although at first they really threw me off. In the West we typically point to our chests when referring to ourselves. In Asia however, the common method is to point to one’s nose. This seemed really odd at first, but appears that I’ve adopted it quite freely now. (I was happy to find that I was gesturing correctly when I visited Malaysia).

If you find yourself in Japan and want to signal to someone to come toward you, hold your hand out, palm-down, and wave your fingers back and forth. To an American, this will look like you’re shooing them away. Unfortunately, before I figured this out, some of my students who were trying to get me to come over and help them were quite rudely snubbed. Oops.

Just yesterday I had an interesting conversation with one of the English teachers I work with regarding various mental and psychological disorders and learning disabilities. I said the word “mental”, which she repeated and put her hand on her chest. I looked at her, confused, and repeated the word, pointing at my head. Because clearly mental problems are those in the brain, which is in your head. But the Japanese like to think of their heart as the seat of mental reasoning….perhaps. I’m not sure why they do that, but it made me doubt even more that the terms my coworker and I were discussing were the same in both of our heads (or hearts?).