People who are in a different culture from their own often encounter and deal with various difficulties of culture shock in its broad sense. This ethnographic study of Japanese expatriates in the Midwestern U.S. delineates their culture change, concentrating on culture shock and its results. The problems in interpersonal relationships among the Japanese housewives whose husbands work for the same company in the community were found to be the source of their most serious culture shock. It made each housewife conscious of her previous cultural assumptions and those of the others regarding interpersonal relationships such as friendship, privacy, and the roles of housewives. These cultural assumptions were integrated into their new cultural order to support their solutions to the problem, i.e., changing the association with those belonging to the same company, or constructing new associations with those belonging to different Japanese companies. / Department of Anthropology