Abstract
In order to analyze the difficulties in adjusting to a foreign culture, three foreign student groups i ving in Japan (Mainland-Chinese-group, Taiwanese/Korean-group, and No-kanji-group) were selected and asked to rate their subjective difficulties in various social situations based on Furnham and Bochners (1981) method : Formal, Assertiveness, Friendship and Daiyliving. The degrees of the subjective difficulties were found to decrease in the order listed. Further, the relationship between relevent factors and social difficulties were assessed and the results were as follows. First, the longer the subject had learned the Japanese before they came to Japan, the lesser they experienced their difficulties in most situations. Second, the degree of overall adjustment was shown to increase as the difficulties in Assertiveness and Friendship decrease. Social difficuties in Formal and Assertiveness were found to decrease generally in the order of No-kanji-group, Taiwan/Korean-group and Chinese-group. However, this tendency was not found clearly in Friendship and Dailyliving. This indicates that the patterns of the social difficulties change with the differences in subjects' cultural backgrounds.
