Boring Lunch Talks
Happy Valentine’s day! I wrote a blog entry about Valentine in Japan as long at 4 years ago and you can read it here.
So, different topic today. Last week, I mentioned an interesting lunch talk with a German colleague about the calculation of the worst day of the year. Such interesting lunch talks are actually a grand exception.
What are lunch talks in Japan usually about? Food and the weather.
Let’s take a look at why that is so. It’s rather simple: Food and weather are „non-dangerous“ topics that everyone can contribute to.
Now what is a dangerous topic? The classic dangerous topics are politics and religion and for some people it’s also sports. I am living in Japan too long now to give any educated guess on what colleagues for example in Germany talk about during lunch. I vaguely remember from my three years of working in Germany that we mostly talked about the job and related issues but that we surely had a wider range of topics than food and the weather.
This food and weather talk here in Japan is in my opinion a tiny peek into how the Japanese society works in general.
In school people are not taught how to discuss and argue. It goes back to Socrates vs. Confucius. In the European style of learning you challenge your teacher, discuss with him, raise your hand and are generally encouraged to say your opinion. In the Confucius style of learning your teacher is an honored elder who spreads wisdom and you listen and absorb and do not challenge him. Discuss with him? Oh, how can you dare!
Colleagues do not debate at lunch over whether they agree with e.g. Mr. Abe’s questionable policies, since they never learned how to do that and they do not want to hurt anybody’s feelings. They are desperately maintaining „wa“ – the Japanese magic word for harmony. Thus all potentially offensive, delicate and interesting topics that invite a split of opinions are carefully avoided and the lunch discussion is reduced to: food and the weather.
Needless to say that the food and weather discussions bore me out of my mind, even though I can see why they are happening.
Among friends of course more delicate topics are being discussed, but due to the reasons described above lunches and dinners with colleagues are usually a pain consisting only of empty blah-blah.
There is one variation: As a long-term foreigner in Japan I have of course been asked a thousand times and more why I am living here. I am extremely tired of having to tell that story and can perfectly understand famous people who are being interviewed a lot and every reporter asks them the same bloody questions. After a while it truly gets tedious.
I do not know how to break the spell of food and the weather. It’s only partially a matter of how close you are to your colleagues, some of the people from my floor know each other and have lunch together for many years. They just don’t wish to engage in „real“ discussions. I suppose that what I find boring, they find relaxing and it’s a form of stress reduction for them.
The one advantage I have is that I am not every day in the same office but at least once or twice, sometimes more, not at my main desk but touring through our various locations.
Nevertheless, I’m groaning inwardly at the mere mentioning of the word „oishii“ = tastes good.
No! No more food-talk torture please! 
