🗣️ 🇯🇵This video is in English with Japanese subtitles

As a Polish woman living in Japan, I was shocked by how the cultural rule of 迷惑をかけない — never causing inconvenience to others — actually means people often ignore you when you need help. Politeness here doesn’t always lead to kindness or support, and this silent expectation can leave you feeling isolated and invisible.

In this video, I share my honest experience of being a foreign wife trying to navigate a culture where asking for help feels like a burden to others, and how that unspoken rule affected me emotionally.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:51 Background
1:54 What is meiwaku o kakenai
2:51 Location
3:33 Being helpful
6:52 Example 1
8:06 My unfortunate experience
10:56 Asking for help
13:08 Why I started crying
14:50 Easy solution
15:35 What do you think?
16:08 The aftermath
18:30 Tokyo/salaryman culture
20:24 Japanese countryside
20:45 Society purpose
21:53 Aikido philosophy
22:30 Japanese mindset
23:25 Foreigner true opinion about Japan
25:24 Japanese tradition
29:37 The biggest culture shock reasoning
33:33 Countryside experience
35:00 New York city vs. Tokyo ppl
37:08 Outro

Hashtags:

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#日本生活 #外国人妻 #ポーランド人 #ヨーロッパ人 #国際結婚 #海外生活 #文化の違い #迷惑をかけない #心の健康 #日本に住む #ポ妻 #本音トーク #日本社会の闇 #タイで出会った夫

The Angels Weep by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/