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During the course of my 7 years in the U.S., I had come to dilute my near-blind loyalty for my kind. One reason is money; as a poor (relatively speaking, of course) study-abroad student, I simply couldn’t afford top-of-the-line import electronics from Japan (did they actually travel from Japan or from some South East Asian countries, or were manufactured stateside? I don’t know, but I guess that’s beside the point). And unsurprisingly, this caused cognitive dissonance. I found myself having to reconcile my desire to buy them with the hard fact that I couldn’t. It’s amazing how human beings can rationalize just about everything. Mine was this: why don’t I switch to cheaper alternatives? It did hurt my (unearned) pride, sure, but what can you do, right?
So, by the time I came back to Japan in 2011, I was a “convert”, a man no longer afflicted with this compulsion, that I had to buy everything Japanese. I was more relaxed, and thus able to see beyond the obvious choice. At the time, I had been eyeing the HTC (a Taiwanese brand) EVO (note: pictured above is HTC One, by the way) since a few months prior to my return, and that was the choice of my first ever smartphone. I’ve only run into several other individuals on the train or at a café who were just as brave to buy the foreign variety, but as far as I can remember, most people owned phones of domestic brands in Japan. It didn’t surprise me at all; after all, the Japanese could be very close-minded (now I sound really arrogant, I know) and for them, it wasn’t worth going outside their comfort zone and into the unknown.
And when you are a “convert”, people might as well think of you as a traitor; it is really that dichotomous on my home turf. No, people won’t call you any names, but the unspoken sentiment is there:why risk it? Luckily, to this day, I haven’t had to explain myself. (Well, wait. Today I am, at last.) But then, virtually everyone—my students, some friends who’ve never been overseas—raves about how their purchase is superior to the foreign equivalent…which warrants an inviolable atmosphere.
To be continued…
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