In my experience, I make a decent first impression. It’s the second and third ones I have trouble with. However, here in Japan, first impressions are pretty much everything and you don’t always know which one you’re leaving. In my case the first impressions involved genetics and money.

Thanks to the crap shoot of genetics, I’ve pretty much been granted thin lips and denied anything resembling a bottom lip. (My other option, also coming from my father’s side, was a nose that points up.)  Because of this, when my face is “at rest” I have a naturally angry expression that tends to make me seem less than approachable to people who don’t know me. (People who know generally don’t approach me.) This all gets worse if there’s any tension, say I’m meeting new people. Mind you, I didn’t always realize this.

Soon after meeting all my colleagues at the Board of Education in Nou-machi, I’d often hear people say things along the lines of “Dwayne is very serious.” I didn’t think much of it at the time and would simply play along. “Yes, I’m very serious.)

Months later, during a drinking party, Mr. Komatsu, my supervisor got drunk and told me, quite seriously, that I “didn’t have a kind face” and always looked serious but that when he got to know me he realized I was a nice guy. I was shocked by this, and am still not sure if I should take it as a compliment. This opinion was later confirmed during our weekly trip to the hot spring bath. I told the story about being told I didn’t have a kind face and the men I was with both said, at the same time and quite strongly “you don’t”. Since then I’ve worked to become more aware of the impression I’m leaving, but I still don’t have a bottom lip.

I also left an odd first impression regarding money. Part of the reason I moved to Japan was to earn money to start paying off credit card debt. As such, after I got my first paycheck, I sent a huge chunk of money home and resigned myself to a month of little social life (situation normal, in other words). I did that again the second month I was there, but that time, right after the money had been sent, Mr. Komatsu (who hadn’t yet told me I didn’t have a kind face), told me that he needed money from me to pay for my July pension payment.

I won’t get into the long story of why he needed this except to say that it would help me in the long run. However, in the short run, I kept repeating that I didn’t have any money because I’d already sent a bunch home. He just kind of nodded and then went off an paid the money out of his own pocket without telling me. I was mad that he’d do this–and didn’t realize how big a deal it was for a Japanese colleague to intervene like that–but paid him back the first chance I got. For the rest of the time he was my supervisor, Mr. Komatsu would ask me “money okay?” every time I saw him. He did this even though I never had any money problems after that.

Three years later, as I was at the train station getting ready to leave Nou-machi and move to Tokyo, my second boss, who hadn’t been involved with the money situation because he wasn’t my boss yet, asked me “money okay?”

I tell that second story to trainees just coming to Japan. Your first impression is pretty much the only impression you’ll get to make in Japan. And even people you don’t meet will get that impression.