As Monty
Python would say: "And now for something completely
different." Let's say that your adventure in Japan
has worked out well. You've been here for a few years
now. You've gotten past all the start-up hurdles: You
found a real estate agent (fudosan) who set you
up with a place of your own though you may never meet
the landlord (oyasan). You've been fingerprinted
and are used to carrying your "Goverment of Japan
Certificate of Alien Registration" at all times when
you are not actually in your abode, however humble. You
know which video shops will rent to gaijins (you);
you may even have found a doctor and a dentist. You begin
to have time to notice little things like the empty train
seat next to you; rather more often than seems normal,
even on days when the train is packed to its standing-room-only
300% can-hardly-breathe capacity. But you shrug it off
as your imagination. Or maybe you do notice, but decide
it's no big deal.
As a minimum,
you will understand enough Japanese to catch trains to
work, order simple meals, and generally bumble through
your daily life. If you live in the city you may learn
less Japanese than foreign teachers living in rural areas.
Yet people will wonder why your Japanese isn't better:
After all you do live in Japan. Speaking for myself, I
found that when I spend all day speaking English - which
is my job after all - there is not much time or energy
left over for learning Japanese. In my case, English is
the language at home too. From time to time it is suggested
that foreigners who live in Japan for a long time, and
don't speak Japanese somehow look down on Japan. The truth
in my case is that there are only so many hours in a very
busy day.
Anyway, you
will know quite a lot about Japan, its culture, its political
and economic situation. You may completely baffle your
friends back home with your carefully thought out opinions
on the US-Japanese trade imbalance and the state of the
yen-dollar eschange rate - especially if, like me, you
are not American anyway! Yet if you stay here long enough,
your horizons may begin to narrow. True, you will know
a lot about things here. But sources of news in English,
although more widely available than before, have a certain
narrow focus that may eventually leave you feeling cut
off from the world you left behind.
If you stay
here long enough to raise a family bigger questions will
loom. What about the many foreign professors who suddenly
found themselves out of a job just a few years short of
their pensions? What about getting and paying for a house?
Can foreigners get mortgages from Japanese banks? Or even
credit cards? Did you know it takes five years of marriage
to a Japanese and of continuous residence in Japan just
to apply to become a Permanent Resident? There have even
been cases of foreigners becoming Japanese citizens. One
of the preconditions is that the applicant must surrender
their former citizenship and bring in the paper from the
former country to prove it. They must also give up their
former family name and adopt a "Japanese" name.
(There's a list.) By accident or design, Japan is not
considered a haven for immigrants.
Even if you
have a thick skin, how do you feel about the treatment
your children may receive? In my case, 12 of the 14 private
Japanese kindergartens in my Ku rejected my non-Japanese
son. When contacted by a Japanese friend, they said they
either had a gaijin dame (foreigners forbidden)
or a "Japanese only" policy. There's a difference?
One very nice place did take him. (The well- meant but
naive suggestion to send him to an international
school doesn't take into account the fact that tuition
and fees for these places approach those of the best Japanese
medical schools.)
I wonder what
the reaction of the Japanese press would be if a Japanese
three-year old was rejected by a dozen Canadian schools
for being Japanese? Discrimination against Canadians in
Japan (to name one example) is not news in Canada. It's
just one of those media mysteries: How do the media pick
their stories? Don't expect either understanding or sympathy.
There is no legal recourse. Shoganai. (That's the
way the cookie crumbles...)
The idea of
human rights may never be widely accepted in Japan. The
idea that foreigners in Japan have rights is even less
likely to be accepted.
When you're
in your twenties or early thirties and in Japan for the
adventure and the chance to pay off the student loans,
none of these questions are even remotely important. But
if you take some of the advice in this book, become a
professional and decide to make a commitment to staying
in Japan, then the special-for-gaijin-only-one-year-only-renewable-so-many-times
contracts may seem more ominous. If you stay at the chalkface
long enough, you will eventually master the art and science
of teaching. During that time, you will have to find the
comfort zone where you can exist as a "paid, professional
gaijin" on the one hand and a defacto
immigrant on the other. If you develop some parallel interest
in Japanese things - kendo, sado or whatever -
you will probably be comfortable in Japan over the long
haul. But if teaching English is just a means to make
money, the little things may really begin to grate on
you. And it may not be Japan's fault.
There may always
be an empty seat next to you on the train and you can
either be offended by that or revel in extra space - either
way it won't make any difference. Welcome to Japan! (When
are you leaving?)
