Caught Between Two Cultures

In preparation for a trip to Japan, I’ve been reading Canadian writer, Will Ferguson’s novel: “Hitching Rides with Buddha”. It’s been a light and wonderful story of his adventure hitchhiking the entire length of Japan. It was chapter 6, however, that provoked me.  

Here Ferguson accounts for his experience of the Spring Festival at Uwagima Castle. He speaks of the gathering of Japanese people, their colourful clothing, their laughter and their music. He then goes on to say, 

“I never feel more like an outsider than when I attend a festival in Japan. Here is a Japanese culture full gallop, and all you can do is stand aside and watch it pass you by. As I left the castle ground, the last of the drums were beating out a message, and the message was not for me… The problem is not that you aren’t welcome. You are. You are welcome as an outsider… It is not that I want inside and can’t that bothers me. I do not want to be Japanese. What rankles my Western heart is that it doesn’t matter what I do or do not want. I could not be Japanese, anyway, even if I wanted to be, and this is so hard on the pride. We want to reject, but we do not want to be rejected.” (Ferguson 110) 

This narrative of feeling like an outsider in another country is one I know the taste of. I can recall feeling this way as I watched the fandangos of Veracruz, Mexico. People singing, tapping their feet to the music, and living their culture so richly, as it has been done years and years before them. I can recall feeling this way in the busy markets of Thailand, as the people laugh and gossip, and fill entire halls with life. 

When I first began travelling, I left suburban Barrie down to Oaxaca City where my Aunt and Uncle live (A Greek man and a Canadian lady). I’m not sure what led the conversation, but I remember my aunt saying to me, “No matter what you do, you will always be a tourist. We’ve lived here for 10 years and we’re still tourists.” I remember these words in the times where I find myself feeling like an outsider. And then, reading Ferguson’s experience of the same feeling I realize that this will be true for any country I ever visit. It does not matter how much time is spent, or how much of a language is learned, a foreigner is a foreigner. 

It’s an unfortunate experience of unrequited love. I often become enamoured by the places I visit. And perhaps it’s due to a lack of culture in my own upbringing, but I admire so much the affluence of family, of tradition, and of all the things people hold that weaves their culture together.  I admire these things, but always at a distance; always as an outsider looking in.  

Culture is so deeply wired into our beings, that it really does go beyond anything one person can learn in a lifetime. I can never learn to be Mexican or to be Thai. And Will Ferguson will never learn to be Japanese. It’s not that these cultures have rejected us, it’s that we don’t fit into them. And the skills required to fit in, cannot be learned. Of course, you could say I am an outsider because I look like an outsider in these cultures, but I think it goes beyond that. 

 In a book on various studies of neuroplasticity, “The Brain that Changes Itself”, Dr. Noiman Doidge writes about the effects of culture on our brains. He says, 

“Cultural differences are so persistent because when our native culture is learned and wired into our brains, it becomes “second nature,” seemingly as “natural” as many of our instincts we were born with. The tastes our culture creates -in foods, in type of family, in love, in music, often seem “natural,” even though they may be acquired tastes… When we change culture, we are shocked to learn that these customs are not natural at all.” (Doidge 299)

The activities we partake in, on a day to day basis, shapes our minds. People of different cultures, therefore, have, even on a physical level, different brains simply based on the differing of our daily routines. This is why culture cannot be learned. 

Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change and rewire, even after development. If a person changes cultures, by spending time in another country or immigrating to a new home, their brain will begin to rewire as a reaction to the change. But Doidge explains why this process is slow, and difficult on our minds. He writes, 

“Immigration is hard on the plastic brain. The process of learning a culture – acculturation- is an additive experience, of learning new things and making new neural connections. Additive plasticity occurs when the brain’s changes involve growth. But plasticity is also subtractive and can involve taking things away… Every time the brain acquires culture and uses it repeatedly, there is an opportunity cost. The brain loses some structure in the process because plasticity is competitive.

Immigration is usually an unending, brutal workout for the adult brain, requiring massive rewiring of vast amounts of cortical real estate. It is a far more difficult matter than simply learning new things because the new culture is in plastic competition with neural networks that had their critical period of development in native land. Successful assimilation, with few exceptions, requires at least a generation. Only immigrant children who pass through their critical periods in new culture can hope to find immigration less disorientating and traumatizing. For most, culture shock is brain shock.” (Doidge 299) 

Successful assimilation requires at least a generation… So, with that, Doidge confirms my suspicions: we cannot learn culture. I’m doomed to live as an outsider. And what happens then, to the person who leaves home to travel? I have spent so much time outside of Canada that surly my brain has begun to rewire in different ways. Not enough rewiring that I can fit into the new countries I explore, but just enough that I no longer feel at home when I’m at home. I am between cultures, I suppose. 

And finally, perhaps this is why the traveller is drawn to other travellers. The nomadic have different minds. We are neither here nor there. We don’t fit in where we came from, and we’ll never fit in where we end up.  

Ferguson, Will. “Hitching Rides with Buddha.” Vintage Canada, 1998, Toronto, Canada 

M.D. Doidge, Norman. “The Brain that Changes Itself.” Viking Penguin 2007, USA M.D. Doidge,