Hello everyone! It's Manami. This time, I attempted my first English interview. I spoke with AP, who was born and raised in New York and has also had the opportunity to travel to Tokyo. AP shared insights into the advantages and disadvantages of living in New York City.
When did you visit Tokyo?
I’ve been there twice, in 2013 and 2022.
What do you think the difference is between New York and Tokyo?
Tokyo is a lot cleaner, and a lot more structured, or at least people follow the structure of the city, which makes things a lot easier. Both cities are big, and they try to make life easier, but in New York, people tend to be on their own time and in their own way, which ends up making things harder because nobody is following the rules of what they should be. In Japan, even if it's not a law, it's just a general rule of etiquette – you know, don't crowd a place, everybody comes in, everybody goes out, no loud music. Everything should be on time, and people should take pride in what they do. In New York, you kind of have a tougher crowd, so not everybody follows that. It makes for more conflicts, noise, and less order.
Some people also say that because Japan is very structured and organized, you have to follow a lot of rules and that there’s not enough freedom.
Well, I guess that's the difference between living there and visiting there. I only know it from visiting, not from living there. I'm pretty sure that if I lived there for a long time, I would probably find that it's too structured or too polite, where people just don't want to mess with the social norms or laws.
What is the rule for speaking out loud in New York?
New York follows the idea of freedom from America, like 100%. So you have the freedom to do whatever, you know, sometimes people even have the freedom to hit each other, which is not good. But people follow that. "I don't like this, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to do my own thing."
How does the society work like that?
It does and it doesn't. It does because if everybody kind of agrees that everybody's going to do their own thing or be as individual as they possibly can, then everybody knows what to expect in certain situations. So you really have to hope that there are more individuals who are calm or more respectful than the individuals who are louder and might create conflicts.
If you know you're going to the subway and there's going to be loud people, you wear your headphones and you just ignore them. If you know you're going to a restaurant and there are probably going to be people complaining, you just kind of ignore it unless it bothers you or unless they're going to attack somebody. But other than that, you just accept it.
If that’s the case, it takes forever to get some problems fixed.
I mean, eventually, it gets fixed by laws, by new mayors, by new people appointed to the city, whatever. It somehow gets fixed. But you have to be persistent, especially in New York. If something's not right, you persist until it's fixed. Whereas in Japan, if you complain once or twice, it's fixed right away. So you kind of get used to everything being fixed right away, which is nice. That's a nice city to live in. But New Yorkers are kind of used to fighting for their change until it's fixed. You just keep complaining, keep trying, keep doing it until it's fixed.
Like, you call customer service and then they say, "We're going to call you back." They never call us back, right? That's why you wait an hour or two and then you call back. You never really rely on what they tell you, especially in New York. If they say, "We're going to call you soon," you tell yourself, "Soon is two hours. My limit is two hours. If after two hours, they don't call back, I'm going to call back because if I don't, they may not call back today and it may not get fixed until next week."
Again, that's the freedom. You get hired, you've already won the job, you have freedom of speech. The good thing is there are more options here. So if one place or one company is not doing good, as big as it may be, you can always choose to go to another company. Your question is, "How does that work in New York?" The answer is, that you just accept it and you're persistent. If you can't stand it, you've got to change the service or something. And if you really can't stand it, then at that point, you've got to tell yourself, "Either I leave the city and go upstate or leave the state and go somewhere else."
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