Personal Narrative: My Experience With Seniority Rule In High School

When Kotaro told me about how he had and is struggling with seniority rule (i.e., custom of respecting the elders) in Japan, I remembered my experiences in junior and senior high schools. As opposite to two participants, I did not have problems with keigo. Maybe that was because I watched many Japanese drams that contained characters to use keigo very often (e.g., campus-life stories). However, for the first few months at my junior high school, I could not understand why many of the seniors were behaving bit bossy or spoke down to younger ones. I recalled one circumstance which one senior pointed out my attitude during lunch time. My school only had one cafeteria so both juniors and seniors shared the tables during lunch time. That day I had a cold so while I was having lunch with my friends, I blew my nose. I was not conscious at that time, but afterwards I noticed that I blew my nose like Americans do (i.e., blow hard with a squeaking sound). After I did that, one senior who was sitting at the same table said, “Don’t blow your nose in the middle of a meal!” with a clear and cold toned voice which everyone at that table could hear. The moment I received that comment, I was shocked and embarrassed. In terms of table manners, I did something unpleasant, however, I felt frustrated by the tone of that senior. I wanted to talk back to that senior, “What? Are you my teacher or mother?”, but I did not want to standout any more, I bite back that retort. As reflecting to …show more content…
I realized that I had acquired or picked up behaviors and styles that were unusual in Japan. From the above and similar kind of experiences, I tried not to stand out in front of people and tried to behave like other Japanese. However, in my mind I felt uncomfortable in situations where I had to care so much about the seniority rule, especially when I encountered seniors who spoke and behaved bossy to me and