Culture Shock

So, whilst watching Ninja Warrior recently, there were some intense changes. The reason for these changes most likely falls on the shoulders of Makoto Nagano. He is the man that in Sasuke 17 achieved Ultimate Victory. This lead to a complete overhaul of the courses used in the program for the 18th competition. So, that puts us at watching Sasuke 18 on G4 the other day.

Now that we're caught up, we are watching Stage 3 of the competition where 2 instances of different culture revealed themselves.

The first was when a competitor failed on a section of the course. He graciously said that the section had gotten the best of him. In fact, I paraphrase him when I say he thought he trained enough, but his failure on the day of the competition shows his training clearly was not enough. He said this even though the obstacle had be redesigned.

The second was when Makoto disqualified himself from the course because he broke a rule. In fact, the officials hadn't disqualified him because either his mistake wasn't caught or they were going to allow it. He would have most likely completed the stage had he allowed himself to continue along.

So, what do these two instances say? They show a culture of intense respect and honor. My feeling is that here in the States, people would have a far bigger problem with losing. In fact, we would blame our loss on the course. It's not our fault the course changed. Why should we be penalized? And in the case of the self-disqualification, it seems like that took such guts and honor to do. If we can get away with something, we do it. The phrase, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying" is an indicator of the American attitude towards victory at all costs. I even consider a guy Terrell Owens or other professional athletes with historically bad attitudes and can't imagine a similar outcome.

So that's the culture shock. We in general in America seem to be more concerned with victory than honor. It makes for an interesting conversation for sure