One goodbye v. another
There has not been enough text about the store goodbye, anywhere. In France, you’re supposed to say goodbye when you walk out of a store. The owner expects it, people do it, it’s basic courtesy. The thinking, I suppose, is that you entered someone’s territory for a little bit, took the time to ruffle through their wares, maybe even bought something, and so there was a relationship, and you should acknowledge the relationship.
Japan operates the same way. You always at least say thank you, bow lightly, walk out. If you bought something, the owner may walk from behind the cashier desk with your merchandise, hand it to you, bow, and show you out, bowing again at the door. Sometimes they stand at the door and wave or bow as you walk down the street, so if you just went somewhere, you should absolutely turn around and check to make sure someone is literally leaning out of the doorway, waving to you, recognizing that you, text reader, are likely coming from several thousand miles away.
This is not a conditioned expectation in America, and it only becomes more absurd to think about the more impartial the relationship gets. In Japan, if you leave a massive department store, nobody is bowing and waving to you at the exit. In America, you don’t get the Wal-Mart greeter doing the same, either. But you also don’t get it with the 5 or 6 remaining mom-and-pop stores on small-town Main Street, nor do you get it at the fine dining spot that you just blew mid-three digits on, nor do you expect either.
France does not telegraph the store goodbye. After you speak a single sentence of English to them, they sort of expect that you will walk out, back turned, in silence. Japan, however, absolutely loudly telegraphs the store goodbye. It is unignorable at a certain price point, at a certain level of hospitality, at a certain remoteness of location, and those thresholds are much lower than you think. There is a deep recognition of the dignity of all other beings in that country, and centuries of cultural precept are wound up in the goodbye.
The first few times it happens, you don’t really know what to do. “Uh, bye, I guess?,” your body says, as you avoid eye contact and shimmy down the sidewalk. Eventually, after enough time out there, you see others doing the right thing and realize you must do the same. Then, after enough doing of it, you start to interrogate why the goodbye happens, what within a society leads people to do & expect it. In what ways are we taking care of one another? In what ways will we honor the ways in which we are connected to one another?