Thanks for sharing this.

It sounds like you have your hands full. That depressing attitude you describe could very well be partially attributed to this “illness.” However, I should point out that it is very normal in Japanese culture to play down your own abilities. Humbleness is virtuous. You might say, “your English is very good.” To which every Japanese student will say, “no, no, no…” Or you might say, “that’s a nice shirt.” And he will say, “Well my friend gave it to me,” as if to imply that he wouldn’t have enough good taste in clothing to buy it himself. So I would think it is somewhat normal to hear your student say that his music and art skills are not very good.

Hygiene is another story. We also had another student (not Risa) who exhibited some of these tendencies but I wouldn’t venture to say she was hikikomori – rather, I think that girl was simply a teenager with a lot of issues. She had trouble fitting in at her exchange school, she had issues with her parents, and she was constantly fighting with her boyfriend back in Japan (did you ever watch someone have a fight over Instant Messenger, it’s pretty strange). Over the six months she was with us, I could see her slipping into a more depressed state, I’m sure with a heavy dose of homesickness.

One of her issues was she lived like a total pig and she also didn’t bathe often. I thought this strange because Japan is the most bathing obsessed culture I’m aware of! I even had to twice threaten to kick her out in order for her to clean her room and herself.

I think your student, like my two students I’ve described, is a young man with some problems. Being a host family for about 6 years, we’ve seen over 100 (mostly Japanese) students, and I can say that we’ve only had these two that we had to worry about in this way. So as a new host family, please don’t use this boy as an example of what you can expect.

Most Japanese students we’ve had were simply wonderful. I will say that girls are generally more pleasant than boys, and the older ones (like late 20’s) are by far the best. The high school and college students are young, immature and generally not appreciative of the great life experience that a homestay opportunity provides (heck, I’d say the same thing of teens from any country).

Hang in there and good luck. Let us know if things improve with your student…

I am so glad to have come across this very insightful information.
I am a home stay host for the first time and have noticed that my boys lack confidence like crazy. One is a musician and has a band in Japan and still says he can’t play his guitar very well. I didn’t think much of it but then he said he didn’t do his animation work well enough to show his school here in Canada.
I rebuked him a little and told him that to him it may not be well done but to someone else’s eyes it could very well be amazing…… (sad was how i felt for the downtroddeness that seemed to keep presenting itself) reading this i believe this illness hikikkomori could play a part.
This same student felt comfortable enough to tell me he had not bathed in 3 days. I was not happy to hear that because he occupies my daughters room for the time being. (she is away)

What to do – i never dreamed I’d be encountering students with hygiene issues. I started to wonder if he was depressed.

I look forward to your response.

Deanne

OT : Could you please email me about adoption from Japan? Yours is the only blog that shows up when I do a search. I desperately need some advise.

I’ve written a (Dutch language) manual about the developmental disorder PDD-NOS. Normally this disorder is regarded as a mild form of autism but is used as a sort of ‘trashbin-disorder’ by doctors. If they don’t know what’s wrong with a child, the evetually stick a label on its head saying ‘PDD-NOS’.

I, however, have a new option: PDD-NOS should be seen as a collection of smaller disorders, like PDD-NOS, ADHD, dyslexia, anorexia, etc.

The diagnostic criteria for autism are used to diagnose someone with PDD-NOS and the main problems are the social and communicative delays, plus the will to leave everything the same and the ability to superfocus. But not every child suffers from these criteria in the same way. So, it is possible to imagine that children react differently to their symptoms.

Some researchers already have surmized that hikikkomori is the same as the Asperger’s Syndrome. But this syndrome is related to PDD-NOS as well.

So, my theory is that hikikkomori is ‘just’ another way of looking at the same issue: we could call it PDD-NOS as well. And that view makes it not uniquely Japanese anymore.

Fred de Vries – The Netherlands

In talking to some of the homestay teens we’ve hosted, it seems the parents of the bullied child will usually be upset with the child: “why can’t you fit in better?”

Contrast that with the response of the typical American parent. In the US the parents will go after the school: “you need to do more to protect my child!”

To sum, there is some belief that the bullying, and the lack of parental support regarding bullying, are major contributors to this problem.

About Risa, we heard that she had problems with her next host family and was moved again. We felt really bad about asking her to leave (she was the only student who we “kicked out”), but we needed to do what was best for our young child.