Living in Taiwan vs. Living in Japan Part II

Part 1 here

A lot of people ask me whether I liked living in Japan or Taiwan better. I have to say, the circumstances and motivation for each were so different that I can't really compare.

I went to Japan for the chance to teach English in a foreign country and try my hand at living abroad. Before this, the longest I had ever been away from home on my own was a 6-week stint in England during a travel-study program in college. Prior to arriving in Japan, I knew no Japanese and very little about the area in which I was placed. I had gone to Japan once before with family, but it had been a long time ago and the place I went to was more rural and lesser-known, not close to the big city like Saitama was (and yes, despite what some Japanese and foreigners say, I believe that Saitama was not far from Tokyo).

I chose Taiwan because after leaving Japan, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back to the States or stay abroad, and also because I developed a strong interest in learning Mandarin Chinese while living in Japan (I studied Japanese there too, but nowhere to the extent that I needed to if I wanted to become fluent). Lucky for me, the stars aligned and I got a scholarship to study Mandarin for six months in Taipei shortly after my contract in Japan ended. 6 months ended up being a year, but that's another story.

So I was a worker bee in one of the largest English-teaching corporations while in Japan, and a language student while in Taiwan. In Japan, I had money but very little free time. In Taiwan, I had very little money but plenty of free time, except during one quarter, when every day after class consisted of working on a talent show and studying for the unending tests we had every week. That was an intense quarter, but probably when my Chinese improved the most.

Some things Taiwan and Japan have in common:

1) It is very easy to get around. In Japan I took trains everywhere, from my little suburb to the city and from one major city to the next. I didn't utilize buses as much unless it was during long trips, such as from Tokyo to Hiroshima, and they weren't necessary for moving around Tokyo at all.

Taiwan's trains and buses were also very convenient. I took buses more regularly on an every day basis, because they were cheaper and often more direct than taking the MRT. Taipei is an easy city to explore even if you don't know where you're going, because they have a limited number of metro lines, and each line is very clearly marked in English. In Tokyo, it's easier to get lost because some of the signs (for older, not as frequently used train lines) are only in Japanese and there are so many different lines that even Japanese people get confused sometimes.

For example, if I wanted to get to Taipei Main Station, Taipei's downtown, there are maybe two ways I could get there from almost any point in the city. If I wanted to go to Tokyo Station, however, depending on what subway and train lines were available, there were a lot more than two ways to get there, many of which involved changing to another train on another platform for another line. I got lost in Japan way more frequently than I did in Taiwan, but that was fine. It was all part of the fun.

2)  Both countries are among the safest places I've ever been to. I once read an article about the dangers and annoyances that female runners face in almost every city they run in: catcalls, leering, or even straight-up harassment. This doesn't include the obvious dangers of being kidnapped, physically assaulted, or raped. The article made me feel sad and angry, but I felt like adding something: Asian cities seem to be different. At least the two that I've run in have been different.

Both in Taiwan and Japan, I've gone running alone, late at night or early in the morning, many times without feeling the least bit worried about my safety. Japan is so safe that you can fall asleep on the train and wake up with all your possessions intact 4 hours later (true story, a friend once told me). I once left my wallet on the platform and was able to retrieve it from a station attendant an hour later, with everything still inside. When you're running, people barely look at you, much less say anything.

During one quarter of my time in Taiwan, my friends liked to throw small parties at their respective apartments on the weekends. I lived a little further than everyone else, and sometimes the parties would end very late (or very early), around 3 or 4 a.m. There would be no buses or trains running so unless I wanted to spend an hour walking back home, I had to take a taxi. Most of the time my friends and I would walk back to the university, where most of them lived, and then I would hail a taxi from the university back to my place (about a 10-minute ride and not very expensive).

Once the taxi driver asked me what I was doing alone so late outside. I told him (in Chinese, of course) that I was coming back from a friend's party. "Is it dangerous for a girl to be outside at this time?" I asked. He replied that no, it wasn't dangerous but it was still a little weird. He didn't see it happen often. "But Taiwan is so safe," I told him. "I often walk alone at night and nothing's ever happened to me." He agreed that Taiwan was very safe, probably one of the safest places in the world, but I should still be careful. "Of course, not as careful as in America," he later thoughtfully added.

One thing I learned very quickly while in Taiwan is that taxi drivers (and bus drivers, and sometimes random people you meet on the street) are generally very friendly and love to talk to strangers, especially in the south. This is very different from Japan, where the people servicing you always keep a polite distance, as though wanting you to forget their presence altogether.

Some things that Japan and Taiwan differ in:

1) Taiwanese university students are much more serious than Japanese university students. In Japan, getting into university is the hard part. Once you get in, however, college is more of a time to let loose and have fun than to actually buckle down and study. This is because after university, most Japanese students enter into lifelong contracts with big companies that require them to be at the beck and call of work 24/7. So college is their last chance to relax, go out with friends, and have a good time before bowing to the never-ending pressure from their jobs.

In Taiwan, however, and I'm not sure why, students seem to study just as hard as when they were in high school, when they were trying to get into the prestigious universities in the first place. I went to the library a lot while studying and it was always, always full - on the weekends, late at night (the basement section was open 24/7), and during school vacations. People would have these huge textbooks and laptops with them and pound away at what I assumed were solid solutions to global problems around the world, judging by the intense looks on their faces.

I once asked a Japanese friend of mine how NCCU compared to her university back home. "NCCU is much, much better," she told me without hesitation. "In Japan, a lot of people don't even attend class and they still get a good grade. The professors don't demand much and they don't ask a lot of questions like here. Here, there are often group discussions and I have a lot of papers every week."

When I asked a Taiwanese friend why universities were so intense, she responded, "I think Taiwan likes to copy America, and American universities are known for being intense."

2) I think as a culture, Taiwan is much less shy about interacting with foreigners - and with strangers in general. I met a lot of Taiwanese people, who after meeting for the first time, invited me to go to a club together or stay over at their house or just hang out. And they would actually follow up on these invitations days later, so I knew they weren't just trying to be polite. Japanese people, while also friendly, are much more reserved when it comes to spontaneous invitations.

In Taiwan, everyone will talk to you - old ladies waiting at the bus stop, taxi drivers, people living in the same apartment building, grocers, etc. They don't care who you are, they just want to talk. "Oh, you're foreign?" "How long will you be staying in Taiwan?" "You're too skinny, you should eat more. Here, have a peach."

For some reason, whenever I mentioned to a Taiwanese person that I've lived in Japan, they always wanted to try speaking Japanese with me, even though my Japanese started deteriorating rather rapidly the moment I left Japan. I guess a lot of them have studied it before, during the occupation, but I always found it funny (and a little exasperating) because I'd be wanting to practice my Chinese and they'd start busting out random Japanese phrases instead. (Oh yeah, and Taiwanese people LOVE Japanese culture, like love with all capital letters. Even more than the way most Asian countries love Korean pop culture.)

Whenever I went shopping in Japan, the only conversation people working would have with me would be "Welcome!" and "Do you need a bag?" If I started speaking English (or a mix of English and Japanese), they would almost always immediately direct me to someone else, after apologizing profusely for their bad English. Japanese service is amazingly efficient and hospitable, but also distant and removed. It's part of their "Customer is God" culture, which doesn't seem to exist as much in Taiwan, if at all. Japanese friends in Taiwan would often tell me how shocked and appalled they were by the service (or lack thereof) they got in Taiwan, where you would sometimes see salespeople in high-end stores checking their cell phones in front of customers or (god forbid!) eating on the job.