Bill Belew has raised 2 bi-cultural kids, now 34 and 30. And he and his wife are now parenting a 3rd, Mia, who is 8.

Reverse Culture Shock

The people at Panera are in need of some Amazing Grace.

Or, make no mistake, my daddy is suffering from reverse culture shock.

There is an, ahem, song that is played twice a day at Panera that daddy says has the purpose of pushing people out the door.

They should use an announcement –

“You have been here long enough. We don’t want you here any more. Please leave now or you will be annoyed to tears by this song.”

It’s a girl, he thinks, that goes, (this will be terribly difficult to spell) – uohh, uohh, uohh … over and over again and again and again. 37 times she repeats that 3-sound phrase.

My calculator says – 3 x 37 = 111 times she says ‘uohh’ and nothing else. Then it fades out with the effect of sticking in your head … until you leave the coffee shop and replace it with something, anything from music on your Pandora account.

Great song for getting rid of people. But is it music? Do people tap their feet to it? Do they sing along with it when they do NOT have a belly ache?

If it’s not reverse culture shock, there is definitely a generation gap and daddy is on the other side somewhere.

Daddy asks, “When did music not become music?”

Come to think of it, his daddy used to ask him the same thing.

Talk to Bill and others about their experiences raising bi-cultural Japanese-American kids.