Japan is not a nice place....

"Japan is not a friendly place to live if you are a foreigner..."

"When push comes to shove, Japanese are not a very nice people..."

As it says in the little profile box to the right, I had never intended the pandablog to be a soapbox for any sort of firmly held convictions I might care to pontificate about to the masses. This was always supposed to be a fun, light-hearted blog detailing my merry panda adventures through life, and when I moved to Japan, I sort of assumed it would continue on in such a fashion, providing a glimpse for people overseas into the weirdness and wackiness that is the land of the rising sun and bean paste, and keeping a record for myself of the assorted inanity that seemingly occurs on a routine basis in my life.

Look, I'm not going to lie to you. This is going to be a long depressing anti-Japan entry. So might as well enjoy this cute panda now while you can.

The entire gig hasn't gone exactly as I had planned - the girl I used to think that I might someday end up with has gone a different way in life, my plans to spread the beautiful gospel of internationalisation and english to the eager school age learners of Japan were dashed the moment I stepped into the ghetto ass school I was dumped into by my superiors, and much to my suprise, I have stopped thinking of my time spent here on JET as a temporary lark and rather as my life proper - and adjusted my planning accordingly - no longer is it "okay I'm going to do this Japan thing, and then after my three years are up and I go back home, what should I do with my life", but rather "what should I do with my life - oh, and I happen to be in Japan".

The latter happens to have rather serious ramifications, one of the foremost being that those Japan "things" that foreigners can ignore when they're in "tourist" (this includes students and short-term eikaiwa teachers) mode suddenly have to be dealt with for what they are - significantly massive obstacles which must be dealt with in one way or another. Ignoring problems, unfortunately, is not a luxury we foreigners can enjoy in the same way as Japanese.

I have noticed that the marked decrease in post frequency in recent months - the bi/tri-monthly post schedule standing in stark contrast to the daily (and occasionally, several times daily!) frentic pace I used to set for myself when this whole affair started back in the day - has been inversely matched to an increasing size in average post length. My kittah friend (who just survived another deadly Hokkaido earthquake!) used to complain 6 months ago that she could barely make it halfway through a post before giving up and just looking at the pictures - now she barely makes it halfway through the exposition before giving up and just calling me for "cliffs" as it were. While I'm certain part of my verbosity is due simply to my need to talk until I run out of breath (an unexpected benefit of the digital age is that it takes a lot longer for my fingers to get tired of typing than it takes for me to get tired of talking - benefit, or perhaps, unfortunate side effect, depending on if you happen to be as patient as my long suffering girlfriend and/or have found ways of pretending to pay attention to me whilst simultaneously going over what you're going to have for dinner/do the next day), a significant part of it is related to the fact that in recent months, there have been more and more "serious" posts dealing with "serious" issues (hopefully in a non -angsty way) which neccessitate a lengthy narrative to elucidate some of their finer nuances. Gone are the days of 8 sentence posts describing in decadent detail the various toys contained in my package of HK kindereggs (much love to momo still to this day for those), and in their stead are 6000 word polemics dealing with the fragility of the web connecting us to those who have left this country, indignant anger at japanese racism, utter despair at the inexorable immutability of the japanese beauracracy, bitter sadness at the bleak environmental disaster surrounding one on all sides, cynical feelings of helplessness upon seeing former students go to work for hostess bars before their 17th birthday and so forth.

I never intended to have so many posts dealing with "the dark side of Japan", as one of my friends put it - I'm not a great activist, I don't have any sort of "agenda" and I most definitely am not a particularly great writer. Nonetheless, the longer I stay here - and the more my focus changes to the "what am I going to do with my life - while happening to be in Japan" way of thought and extends to making plans in Japan beyond the 3 year visa limit, the more these aforementioned "things" about Japan start forcing themselves into my life. Forcing themselves - and forcing me to deal with them. Thus I find myself writing about them, and growing angry about them, and revising my previously held opinions about all sorts of things "Japanese".

I used to laugh at people (and it was usually Japanese) who would claim that Japanese are "unique" or "special" in this world and that foreigners simply can't "understand". I remember I would have bitter fights with M over what I perceived at the time as her simple inability to stand up for herself or make decisions like an independent minded adult. The answer she would repeat to me over and over again was "you just don't understand what it's like - I'm Japanese - I can't act the same way you can". Of course, this would just make me angrier as at the time I thought it was nothing but a cop-out excuse - another pitiful rationalization to cover up an inherent lack of willpower and resolve. After all, I used to think - Japanese are humans, the same as the rest of us on this planet - propogandaist theories of nihonjinron not withstanding, in the end, they think the same, feel the same and ultimately must be the same as everyone else in the species. After all, despite the massive differences, a Frenchman would never insist that his culture was such that it was beyond the literal comprehensive ability of say, a Brazilian (or maybe he would? Besides the Japanese, the French have to be one of the most arrogant and elitist people around. Ahh, stereotypes abound in today's post.)

And certainly, my previous opinions were not without merit. As C once said, in one of the smartest things I've ever heard someone say about this country - "Japan likes to think of itself as spectacularly unique in ways that it is spectacularly ordinary". However, despite how very true this is in so many respects, the longer I stay here, the more I start to think that maybe that oft repeated mantra of Japanese uniqueness may not be so wrong after all.

Panda with a drunk Australian girl and a remarkably effeminate hair band. I make no excuses, the pictures have absolutely nothing to do with the post.

I remember once at a conference somewhere, a bunch of us foreigners had to discuss with our Japanese colleauges whether "stereotypes" could sometimes be benficial or not. While 99% of the people present quickly agreed - as expected - that stereotypes were always "wrong", I happened to state in an off-handed fashion that yes, I thought that sometimes stereotypes might be beneficial, an opnion which elicited an immediate indignant response from my perpetually opinionated australian friend, who decried it as heretical and as "an affront to basic human dignity". I have to admit, at the time, I was sort of playing devil's advocate - in my oh-so-liberal heart-of-hearts, of course, I still firmly believed the same leftist party line - that all the peoples of the world are the same beautiful butterflies, etc. etc. I used to shake my head at the Korean kids in the library back at college who would talk smack about the Japanese behind their backs, or roll my eyes at the vhement rhetoric pouring out of Beijing with every parlimentary visit to the Yasakuni shrine or Monbusho text book release. "C'mon" I would say silently to myself - "get over it! The Japanese are hardly these rutheless, heartless fucks you make them out to be!"

... but as it turns out, as they say, things change, and people change, and spending time in this country has a way of changing both these things in marked ways.

...

The call comes at 3:30 in the afternoon. Isobel and I have taken a hour of vacation and left school early to enjoy the rare opportunity to experience fine skies and sunny weather in late December. I have just flopped myself onto my futon to rest for a second before heading out for a bike ride to the ocean.

"I think I may have just really fucked myself". Her voice is distant, and resonates with a slight echo. My friend is prone to overreacting, but there was a certain hint of desperation in her voice that made me sit up and take notice.

"What happened? And where are you?" I ask.

"I'm in the bathrom right now. It's the only safe place I can talk at the moment."

The story quickly unfolds. My friend teaches at a senior high school (SHS). Like most senior high schools in the prefecture, her school had just finished administering mid-term exams to all the students, and like most SHS ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers), she is responsible - along with her partner ALT - for marking all the english tests for the first year (freshman) oral communication classes. With a total of 10 classes or so, this is around 175 tests she has to have marked by Monday (oral communication exams finished on Thursday and she is responsible for half of them). As this is a lot of tests to grade, she decides she needs to go to a quiet place to concentrate (if you have never worked in a Japanese school before, you might not realize but the staffroom is a horrible, noisy, disruptive environment which is extremely difficult to be productive in - winter is particularly bad as they bring in kerosene heaters to provide heat, and these heaters fill the air with thick, noxious fumes which make you feel physically ill, which again, is detrimental to productivity). So she decides to take her tests (half the tests for then entire freshman grade) and go off to a seperate room - the "language lab" (LL room) - to mark them. This LL room, while not technically part of the staff room, is nonetheless not an open classroom - it has locks on the doors and only members of the English staff - the two ALTs included - and a few other select individuals (the principals, janitor, etc.) have keys.

Panda and J.Wo, for some inexplicable reason, decide it would be a good idea to have some absinthe. Panda is already well trollied at this point, but agrees anyway.

So off my friend goes, and a few hours of marking later, it becomes time to go home. So she leaves most of her belongings (dictionary, cd player, etc) along with the tests in the room - locks both the doors - and then goes home for the day.

The next day she returns to work, and a little before 11 am, goes to the room to gather her belongings and prep the room for an exam she's supposed to proctor the next period. Upon opening the lockeddoor, she discovers, to her shock, that while all her personal effects are still in the room - the tests she was grading the previous night - ALL 175 of them...! are missing....! Stunned, but still hoping for the best, she administers the next test, and decides to ask around to see if one of the other teachers may have come into the room after she left and picked them up by mistake.

After a few hours of asking around and desperately searching all her belongings/the LL room/the staff room up and down, and having absolutely no luck, she begins to panic. Which brings us back to the aforementioned phone call.

"What do you think I should do? Do you think I should tell my supervisor?" she asks me.

Unsure of what advice, exactly, to give her, but (foolishly, it turns out) certain that this really wasn't as big a deal as she was making it out to be, I advised her to tell her supervisor. After all, maybe one of the teachers outside the english department may have picked up the tests, or perhaps the janitor, etc. At any rate, it was unlikely they were just going to turn up magically, so it was best if everyone was keeping an eye out for them - or so the normal, human rational would go.

"Okay. I'm going to go tell my supervisor then. What should I tell her? God, you don't think a student may have taken them, do you?"

This latter possibility neccessitates clarification. To any westerner following the story up until this point, this would be an obvious, foregone possibility that would need to be explored - I know it was my immediate thought when my friend told me the tests were missing, and it was among her first considerations when she walked into that room. Furthermore, the fact that the room was locked is hardly an obstacle - anyone who has ever worked in a Japanese staffroom realizes immediately that a master set of keys for the school are generally kept hanging up somewhere on the wall next to the door and students routinely duck into the staffroom and borrow the keys without permission to unlock a door - usually, say, if they need to use a particular room for a club activity or something, but in the end the entire protocol is predicated solely on the assumed honesty and trustworthiness of the students. Teachers never notice when keys are missing, and there is no defined method of signing out or otherwise ascertaining who has what keys and for what purpose they're holding them. Furthering this system - to western minds already a horrific logistic and security nightmare - is the fact that even teacher's desks are not regarded as "off-limits" in any way - students routinely go into teacher's desks to borrow keys, pens, pencils, get back their homework, and who know what else, even if the teacher is not present. It unnerves me whenever I look up and see a student casually waltz into the staffroom, open up a teacher's desk, grab some paper/etc. and then casually waltz back out - while no one else even so much as blinks an eyelid. Just another reason why I lock my laptop up in the drawer if I'm going to be gone for an extended period of time. Thus, far being simply just another option, the notion that a student may have stolen the tests was one that should be considered as a prime possibility.

I assure my friend that I think this is a possibility, but also, it's highly likely that some teacher somewhere just saw the tests laying out and decided to hold on to them for safe keeping. In any case, when I hang up the phone, I don't think much of the situation, but tell her to call me back later to let me know how it all turns out.

...

I meet up with her later on in the evening over coffee, and it turns out, that far from being over, things were increasingly getting worse. Her supervisor - in my friends words - "flipped out" when she told her about the tests, and immediately called a clandestine meeting of the english department to "discuss" the situation. I say "clandestine" because as it turns out, this was the first step what would eventually turn out to be an unbelievablely brazen attempt to railroad my friend in a way that you never imagine actuallyhappens in real life.

A key point that has to be made here is the fact that my friend speaks next to no Japanese - and of course, the so called "English teachers" at her school actually speak next to no english (sadly, an all too common occurance in Japan, and one which I can personally vouch for as I have once had the trying experience of listening to her supervisor slaughter my mother tongue). Nonetheless, she is whisked away into this secret tribunal, and forced to sit in the center of all the teachers (literally - she sits in a chair in the center, with the teachers arrayed around her in a circle, with the head of the department presiding over the entire affair like Julius fucking Ceaser holding court) and they begin to pepper her with questions - entirely in Japanese and entirely without translation...!

Finally, at some point, her supervisor begins a half hearted attempt at translating things to her. Only, it's more of a "creative interpreting" than anything.

"When you leave tests in room?" comes the mangled pseudo-question

"I left the room at 5pm" comes her reply.

J.Wo's expression tells you all you need to know about the joys of the drink the French all "La fee verte" or "The Green Fairy". We took ours straight, and without the sugar, which meant it was quite harsh and bitter.

"blahblahblahblahblah - "translated" Japanese response FAAAR too long for a simple '5pm' " spits out the supervisor and immediately the room is subsumed by fast pitched chatter completely in Japanese as the teachers discuss the implications of whatever it is the supervisor just claimed my friend said, but my friend very obviously did not...!

The first thing my western readers will be thinking at this point is - "Wait, you mean she was being interrogated and didn't have any independent counsel? No advisor, no neutral interpreter, nobody without a direct vested interest in placing the entire blame on her...!?" Yes, my friends, that is the way things work here, and as I'm explaining this ugly little truth about Japan to my friend, I find myself uttering the words opening the exposition to this affair:

"Japan is not a nice place, and Japanese are not nice people.."

(As an aside, lest you think that this sort of railroading doesn't occur in the Japanese legal system, I suggest you pick up a copy of Karel Van Wolferen's excellent The Enigma of Japanese Power and read chapter 8 ("Keeping the law under control"), or, if you have the time, Bayley's excellent examination of the Japanese police/legal system - Forces of Order. Otherwise, do a google search for Nick Baker, the latest in a series of falsely imprisoned foreigners unfortunate enough to discover that concepts of "truth" and "justice" hold very little weight in the judicial system in this country)

Unfortunately for my friend, things are yet nowhere near rock bottom. After a several hour long interrogation without any form of representation during which she understood nothing of what was being asked or discussed, and in which her actual answers were blantantly disregarded and substitute answers invented by her so called "interpreter", she was informed that the "english department will now search all the garbage cans in the school" (the exhaustiveness of which they hilariously, but sadly, in such a typically japanese fashion, decided to "prove" by bringing bringing all of the garbage bags in the school and piling them in front of the principal's office...!) and then have a meeting on Saturday morning with the principal to decide what to do.

"Michael" she tells me, as we sit methodically mauling the innocent plastic covers of our Starbucks White Chocolate Mocha cups - "I don't know what to do. I really get the feeling I'm getting railroaded here - after the meeting, my supervisor took me aside and told me that this might end up in the newspapers* and that I would be named and that they would have to apologize to all the parents and the students, etc. She told me I might get fired...!!!"

*(actually not as far fetched as it might sound, as all sorts of shit ends up in the Japanese newspapers, especially if it's a chance to pander to the idea of foriegners as irresponsible bastards - all sorts of shit, that is, except, you know, important things like foriegn affairs, world politics, factual articles, those sorts of things...)

"Well, have they done anything to try and find the tests besides just pile up all the trash bags in the hallway?" I ask.

"That's the thing!" she exclaims. "They haven't done anything! Anyway, I have a special meeting tomorrow morning (Saturday) with the principal, the vice principals and the entire department to decide what to do..."

The next day's meeting comes and I receive another frantic call from her in the mid afternoon.

"They think I've lost the tests" she sighs exhaustively into the receiver. Her voice is tinged with a bitterness and cynicism you wouldn't expect from somebody who's only been in the country 4 months - it took me 2 years for my voice to reach that point.

"What do you mean? You mean they think you actually lost them?"

Slowly the hapenings of the morning meeting emerge. Essentially, the meeting was sort of a preset inquisition. Her so called "interpreter" was no longer her supervisor (who had abandoned her the night before, quite literally separating herself from my friend, since the plot to make my friend the scapegoat had already been formulated in the previous meeting, all in Japanese and right in front of my uncomprehending friend's face, of course. So as not to be "dragged down" by the sinking ship, as it were.) but rather another teacher who later turned out to have a personal vendetta against my friend (to this day she will still literally call her from another staff room just to harass and insult her...!). During the course of the interrogation, my friend reveals, it quickly became evident that they were not interested in "the truth" as much as they were in trying to figure out exactly how to pin it on her and cover it up.

J.Wo inexplicably seems to be up for some more, but Panda seems a little distressed. Perhaps it the multiple tequilas and beers I had partaken in prior to the absinthe that's making me a bit hesitant. It should be noted that J.Wo's mouth remained wide open for the rest of the evening, which was a bit disconcerting.

"What about the students? Did they investigate that? Did they ask any of them?" I ask.

Her laugh is short and bitter.

"Ha. They dismissed that idea right away. When I brought it up, they immediately dismissed it, saying 'oh, our students would never steal...!' In fact, one of the vice principals swore up and down that in the 20 years he had worked at the school, no student had ever stolen anything from anyone."

(It is later revealed, when we talked to a 3rd year ALT who used to work at that school that just last year there was a huge scandal when a student stole a wallet from another student. Once again, the staff was clearly taking advantage of my friend's inexperience and lack of japanese ability)

Not only did they refuse to consider the possibility that a student may have taken the exams, but they soon move straight on to accuse my friend.

"They started asking me all these questions about when exactly I had talked to so-and-so teacher, and about what exactly. It was very clear they were grilling me to try and poke holes in my story" she continues.

"So they were obviously trying to pin this all on you? They think you're lying?" I ask.

Again, the short bitter laugh. "Obviously? HA! At one point, a teacher came right out and said it - "(my friend's name), we don't believe you. We think you lost the tests somewhere outside of school and are lying to us. Tell us the truth."

I push back in my seat, speechless. She continues.

"I kept repeating my innocence and telling them I wasn't lying - I mean, why the hell would I lie about this? Why would I lie and say that someone stole them from a locked room if I actually left them on a bus? I mean, this way is so much more fucking complicated! And why the fuck would I take the marked tests home...!? That makes no sense!!"

A deep breath - the words are being spit out with disgust at this point.

"So it was "decided" that the entire thing would be blamed on me. They are going to announce to the entire staffroom that I LOST the tests (presumably with the implication that they were lost outside of school, not that my friend would understand, since it will all be in Japanese, with her having no way of knowing what is being said) on Monday, and a formal apology will be made to both the students and the parents later in the week, during both of which I - and I alone - will be blamed. No mention will be made of the situation, or of the fact that the tests actually disappeared overnight while in a locked room in the school. No mention will be made of the time, or the circumstances - just... just that I and I alone "lost" the tests."

There is silence on the line. Finally, she draws in a breath and continues.

"I'm getting fucked up the ass here. They're going to pin this all on me, in a language I don't understand, and just totally blame me. They're going to cover up any chance that the students or anything else but me could be responsible and totally wash their hands of the entire mess and hang me out to dry. They're going to publish it in the paper blaming just me, and I might even get fired. And I don't have any way of contradicting them. Like, there's no way I can even tell my side to even just the other teachers. They're going to hate me forever."

The gap is leaden, the air puffing into the receiver slow and heavy with moisture. You can literally feel each syllable being hefted out of weary lungs and enunciated by a tongue almost too tired to care any more. The mixture of disgust, cynicism, hurt, anger and desperation is palpable.

I try to give the only advice I can. "You need to get your side out there. Why don't you write down your version of events and have one of the P.A.'s (prefectural advisors - special JETs who are tasked with dealing with these sort of things) translate it for you?"

"Like they're going to let me say anything in my own defense" she spits out

"Well, just couch it as an apology, but make sure that it mentions your version of events. They can't refuse you the right to make an apology to the staffroom."

After a bit more discussion, she decides on this course of events and hangs up to go sort out her speech. She calls me Monday afternoon.

"Do you have time to meet at Starbucks later on tonight?"

I hesitate. I have been to Starbucks 5 (FIVE...!) times in the past three days. They actually know me by name in two out of the three Starbucks in the downtown area, and I routinely go hang out and go for drinks (to Starbucks, naturally (^_^)!) with a girl who works there (from here on out referred to as "Starbucks girl"). I have become, as my girlfriend so kindly puts it, "a starbucks whore". Nonetheless, the lure of the winter-only White Chocolate Mocha is irresistable, and besides, my friend needs me, so really, it's okay to go for a sixth time in three days, isn't it? I agree.

The story unfolds.

You're probably well pissed off at the JET program by this point, so allow me to insert this picture just to remind you that it does have it's good points as well. Michibasco, at the bottom, is pumpkined beyond belief and Wombat appears to be having an orgasm/a really good poo. Lightweights.

"So this morning, there's the big meeting and they make their announcements blaming me to the entire staff room. No one will look at me, or even meet my eye. All the English teachers have physically distanced themselves from me, and I'm standing near the center all by myself. After they're done, I ask to be able to make an apology speech. They tell me no, and to be quiet. I ask again, and they say "uh-huh", but don't do anything. Finally, as the meeting is ending, I force my way to the front and ask again, and they finally aquiesce, but don't look happy about it. I make my speech (translated into japanese by the PA, the contents of which are technically an apology but also include her version of events which presumably contradict the "official" line). After I'm done, there's silence... I can't help it, and I break down and cry - no one comes to my side, or says anything, they just watch in cold silence.... It was so cold - I've never felt more vulnerable or alone in my life."

She continues.

"After the meeting, the woman who had been translating for me last week comes up to me, and very angrily and venomously tells me she is so disappointed in me, and that she can never trust me again and that she thinks I am lying about the whole thing and that I lost the tests. She makes it clear that I will continue to be blamed and that everyone is against me. I can't stand it any more, and when it becomes obvious that she has something personal against me, I realize I don't have any neutral or independent party in the school with me. So I don't know what to do, so I call the JET line in Tokyo (an independent support hotline for JETs which is designed to help them through problems). The guy on the phone listens, and then tells me to hold on for a few hours while he consults with his supervisors to find out what can be done - but says that it's fairly clear that I'm being unfairly scapegoated."

She pauses, and I take the opportunity to notice that my paper cup is sadly devoid of any further amount of White Chocolate Mocha. I stand up and make my way to the counter to order another one. The girl behind the counter looks at me with a knowing grin and I shamedly drop my eyes to meet her gaze, each of us fully cognisant of the fact that I have spent well over 4200 yen (~$40 US) at Starbucks in the past 3 days. I slink over and grab my coffee from a young guy with a great beard who thanks me by name. As I look around, it strikes me that despite the liberal amount of Christmas decoration brightly festooning the walls, once again Japan has failed to capture even the slightest emount of holiday "feeling". I idly finger a bright red fringe of tinsel taped to the front of the impeccably polished counter before grabbing my drink and heading back to my table.

She continues when I return to my seat.

"Anyway, so they call me back and the guy tells me that CLAIR (a sort of "advisory adminstration group" for JETs) has called the guy in charge of the JET program in this prefecture, and that he was shocked since apparently this was the first he had heard of it (the school had not said anything to him for reasons, I suspect, that it would be a lot more difficult to bully my friend if someone outside the school knew of the scapegoating plot underway). The guy in charge then called the school, where apparently the principal was very shocked and suprised that my I had told anyone - apparently they though they could just bully me and pin it all on me and I was just going to take it all. Simultaneously, apparently, the International Center - (where the P.A. she had consulted with earlier works) called the school, trying to figure out what was going on."

At this point, she sits back in her seat, baring the slightest hint of a bittersweet smile, the first emotion other than disgust and anger I had seen her show in the past 4 days.

"An hour after the guy from Tokyo calls back to tell me all this was going on, I get an urgent call to come down to the principal's office for a 'very important meeting'. I go down there, and when I arrive, I open the door to find the head of the english department, that bitch of a lady who translated for me before and later told me she thought I was lying, both the vice principals and the principal. And fuck me if everyone except that bitchy lady wasn't smiling from ear to ear like there was sunshine coming out of their asses or something.

The principal turns to me, and with that same smile, starts going on and on about how (translated via the english department head) everything was 'daijobu' ("okay") and how 'everyone makes mistakes and not to worry and that they believed me', yadda yadda. They told me that 'everything was taken care of, and that they were just - get this - concerned with my feelings and didn't want me to be stressed...!!! I almost fucking flipped out right then and there - I couldn't believe it...!! I mean, I was just like, like...."

She stammers for a moment, accurately conveying the extent of her disbelief.

"I mean, can you believe these lying two faced motherfuckers...!?? I mean, what the hell, didn't they think I would see through this farce? I mean, how can you treat me like shit and drag me through hell and back this morning, stand there all cold while I'm crying my eyes out and then a few hours later - after you start getting calls from your bosses asking you what the fuck is going on - bring me in here and try and tell me that "you're just concerned about my feelings...!?" I mean, I'm not retarded!! I see through that shit...!!!"

Her anger is palpable now, and her empty starbucks cup is bearing the full brunt of it, thin rivulets of diluted coffee juice leaking out of the creases of the crushed surface and the circular area along the bottom where the walls meet the cup base. I surreptitiously move the half-drunk contents of my precious White Chocolate Mocha outside the radius of her rage and into a safer zone near my end of the table, one hand hovering anxiously near it, ready to whisk it away to safety at a moments notice.

"So finally everyone else but the principal and that bitch who hates me leaves. The principal starts talking to me and she translates. According to what she says - and I don't really believe this is exactly what the principal was saying, but rather her own personal feelings she was inserting - "The school has decided I won't be punished, but" - and these are her exact words - "I have to shut my mouth and not say anything to anyone else outside the school"....!!!!"

I nearly choke on my coffee.

"W-what?!!!" I spit out incredulously.

"EXACTLY!!" she exclaims in a similarly impassioned manner - "I was so shocked, I asked her to repeat herself - and she says it again - "you have to shut your mouth about this and you may not talk about this to anyone else anymore. be quiet!"...!!!!" I couldn't believe it! I mean, it's like some shit you see out of a movie - I couldn't believe something they were trying to pull something so shady on me to my face - I mean, they were literally trying to cover this up and it's like, they didn't even care if I knew or not - they actually told me to "shut my mouth". It was unbelievable...."

"So what did you say?"

"What could I say? I asked them what exactly what happening here and what they meant by 'everything is daijobu (okay) if I just shut my mouth.' So that bitchy lady goes 'basically we're going to tell the parents and the students that "the english department" lost the tests and that's why they have to take the test again'. So I ask if this means they're going to leave my name out of it - and she goes 'Well, of course if someone asks who in the english department lost the tests, we're going to tell them your name...!'

And I'm like 'Well, what the fuck kind of deal is that...!?' I mean, there's several hundred parents - you're telling me at least one of them isn't going to ask who lost it?! I mean, that's a shitty ass deal - like, I shut my mouth and don't talk anymore to anyone who can potentially help me not get scapegoated or even just translate for me neutrally, and they still get to slander my name to everyone in the prefecture and basically treat me like shit for the rest of the year....!? I mean, what the fuck...!?? What am I, retarded!!?"

She takes a deep breath and stares at the crushed and tattered remains of her coffee cup for a moment. In the background, I notice the staff beginning to bring in the displays and wipe off the table, prepping the store to close in an hour.

"I mean..." - her voice wavers for a second - "like, how can they treat someone like this...? I mean... how can they treat another human being so badly...?"

I didn't have an answer for her, and I found my mouth unknowingly uttering the same tired mantra that it seemed I'd been invoking so often in the past few days:

"Japan.... japan is not a nice place. And the Japanese... man, sometimes in my heart, I really wonder if they're really just inherently just assholes...." My voice trails off, and for the first time in my life, I began to wonder if I did, in fact, actually believe that....!

And this is how the situation stands three days later, with no resolution other than the soul crushing prospect of sucking it up and working another 8 months in what can charitably be described as a "hostile work environment". The bitter reality behind the shiny recruitment brochures the JET program hands out, extolling the virtues of "grassroots internationalisation" and what have you.

...

In the past three days, I've found myself thinking a lot about my answer, and my friend's situation in general. There's a lot I still don't know, but nonetheless, the shockingly brusque and racist treatment she received struck me to the core and has had the unnerving effect of making me seriously reconsider what I am doing in this country and my prospects for ever finding "happiness" - be that what it may - in the future if I remain here.

There are three crucial points which I think need to be considered:

1. The first is why the loss of the tests was such a big deal. In America, if tests were stolen in a similar fashion, there would certainly be a certain degree of indignation, but nothing near the outrage and graven solemnity inscribed in every teachers face - and talking about publishing it in the newspaper...!? The newspaper, our way of thinking goes should be reserved for important things, such as world politics, international affairs, etc. The loss of a few freshman high school english exams would barely merit mention in a PTA meeting, let alone warrant a full fledged journalistic investigation.

I asked a fellow co-worker about why the loss of the exams was such an apparent catastrophe. He became very quiet and when pressed, hesitantly offered that "if the tests are lost, it's the teacher's responsibility - the parents would wonder how they could trust the teachers".

Gaijin show their rage. Here you can see ghetto 'hood panda and a very very angry veegan who looks a lot like a member of Insane Clown Posse busting out a raw, rough and rugged rap at karaoke. Yo when I rhyme's I's like an STD / Cuz I get on the mike just to burn MC's....

To understand why such an answer - and indeed, the very fact that people could flip the fuck out out to such a degree over a few freshman language exams (and as an aside, it's not like my friend works at a high level academic school - rather, she's employed at a commercial SHS, commercial high schools generally being reserved for underachieving students who can at best hope to go to a 2 year technical college before working in a dead end proffession for the rest of their lives) could fill me with such despair, consider this:

In Japan, notions of "accountability" are applied in the most random and arbitrary manner imagineable. It is generally common knowledge that all Japanese companies - banks and the largest of the large such as Sony or Toyota in particular - lie extensively about virtually all aspects of their enterprise. Not just little lies, but complete and utter fabrications that make things like Enron or MCI Worldcom look like drops in a bucket. Finance Ministry officials have essentially admitted that they have absolutely no idea just how much Japan's leading banks and trading companies are in debt, since they have not turned in accurate figures in the last two decades. Furthermore, Japanese companies are infamous for concealing potentially scandalous information, regardless of the harm it may cause to others, which in fairness, American companies have been known to do from time to time. The difference is, in Japan, the government - far from playing the role of a consumer advocate - is actually a partner in the duplicity, preferring to cover up, hem, hedge and haw, sweeping away damning evidence, hamstringing those who care to investigate and basically using the oppressive might of the beauracracy - filled with individuals who can look forward to a cushy retirement in "advisory positions" within the companies they are tasked with regulating - to allow even the most harmful of practices to continue with impunity, in search of the almighty yen. One need look no farther than the recent Mitsubishi scandal, where it was revealed that Mitusbishi had been concealing significant problems with their automobiles for decades, with at the very least a knowing wink from the state. Company officials only just very recently came out with any sort of apology after the massive press of bad news became too great even for the Japanese to ignore, and even then apologizing more for getting caught than for actually doing anything wrong, or you know, lying about it...!

Thus in a country where "accountability" seems to have no meaning when it comes to banks, massive corporations, politicians and the like, how can they possibly get so fucking worked up over a stupid set of freshman tests? As my friend so eloquently, but let's face it, honestly - put it - it's not like these kids are going to be brain surgeons when they grow up and this might ruin their chances of getting into harvard medical.

And that's the rub - there is absolutely no rhyme or reason behind this, no logic, no well thought out plan or plot - losing (and really, they were most likely stolen) a set of freshman english tests is supposed to result in the en masse loss of public confidence in teachers, but the fact that the entire LDP (Liberal Democratic Party - the ruling political party of Japan) routinely receives massive cash infusions from the Japanese mafia - and don't even try to hide it - is okay? How can one ever hope to keep their sanity in a place where logic clearly has never been applied...!?

2. The second critical point to consider is the question of why the students were never questioned - in fact, why the entire staffroom decided it was easier to completely railroad an innocent girl who had been in the country less than 4 months than to even contemplate the possiblity that a student may have taken the exams.

The answer to this is rather simple, and can be found in the vice-principals steadfast (and completely false) assertation that "Our students would never steal". To consider the possibility that the students might have stolen the tests would introduce two very destructive ideas into the universal myth of "wa" (harmony) that all Japanese seem to labour under.

The first would be the notion that Japanese people actually can do bad things from time to time. And this thought - this heresy - simply cannot be allowed to exist, since to consider the fact that Japanese might be just as human as the rest of us and be evil, or malicious or mean spirited, would shatter the arrogant myth of Japanese superiority and benevolance, and peace-loving and all that other bullshit crap they routinely spew to themselves, the rest of the world and whoever the fuck else is stupid enough to listen with wide eyed wonder and swallow the company line hook line and sinker. Of course Japanese people can do evil, but they'd like to pretend that this is not the case and that they all live together in this island in utopian fucking harmony, and this is why for the preservation of the almight wa, they will go to extrordinary lengths to discard reason, logic, and occasionally sanity itself to convince themselves that if something goes wrong, it can somehow be blamed on foreigners. The utter self-delusion scape goating job they pulled on my friend is no different than my landlord calling my workplace and trying to blame the five mountainous bags of PET bottles put out on the wrong day on me because I am a foreigner, rather than consider the possibility that one of the other 50 JAPANESE residents in my apartment might be the culprits, as I talked about in my last post. It is utterly inconceivable that I might be to blame for such a staggering amount of drink bottles (especially, as mentioned, since I was out of town the entire previous week and also had all my bottles stacked up in my kitchen), just as it is utterly illogical that my friend might have gone to all the trouble of marking the tests, then taking them home anyway, then lost them and then made up a cumbersome and decidedly unsimple lie to tell the teachers, but in both cases, logic, rationality and common sense itself was suspended in order to preserve the shared delusion of Japanese "superiority" and avoid having to regard themselves as being the same as "the foreigners".

The second thing such a proposition would carry with it is the fact that the students are considered to be a reflection of the teachers, and in turn, a reflection of the school. Hence the vice principals bald faced fallacy that "In my 20 years at this school no student has ever stolen anything", despite the fact that just last year there was a massive scandal regarding a stolen wallet. As far as he's concerned, that even might as well never have existed. The Japanese talent for self-delusion is unmatched in this world and when it comes to unpleasant truths that might reflect badly on themselves, this particular characteristic is in full effect. To consider that a student may have stolen the tests would mean that the teachers would be bad teachers, insofar as they had failed to properly educate and control the students. They would be just as guilty in the theft by virture of having failed in their task of rearing those they are responsible for. In turn, the school would be seen as a lawless "failure" for having an atmosphere or environment in which such an unspeakable violation of imagined Japanese civility such as theft might occur, and the blame would fall not only on the teachers, but on the principal and the vice-principals as well - as administrators responsible for all those under them, how could they permit such a thing to occur? The implications - both professional (especially for the top administrative members, it could affect their chances for future promotion) and personal (the newspapers would be filled with their names and they would be publicly shamed, senseless as that may be) are potentially tremendous. Hence the refusal to even consider the possibility a student might be responsible - to do so would be tantamount to examining their own potential fallability or failure in their task. And as anyone who has lived here for a while will tell you, despite all the heady b.s. Japanese will give you about "post-war revisionism and introspective consideration by Japanese society as a whole", self-criticism and analysis is something that Japanese have never been any good at.

They talk a lot about personal responsiblity here, but when it really counts, does such a thing really exist? I mean, why can't they just admit that maybe, just maybe, a student did something bad like stealing, but let the blame stop with him/her? I mean, can't 17 and 18 year old students be considered capable of acting on their own with implying some sort of failure or deriliction of duty on the part of the hundreds of teachers and administrators who happen to work at the school he/she attends? The babying and complete coddling of Japanese youth (well in to college) and Japanese society in general is something I could write volumes about (and others already have, extensively), but in short, how can one ever hope to live in a society where Japanese cannot be imagined to be capable of wrongdoing or acting independently, where rather than divorce themselves from an antiquated bizarre quasi-confucianist ideal of being totally responsible for the actions of those below you, people would rather frame and scapegoat innocent foreigners against all conceivable likelihood than consider the possibliity that some 17 or 18 year old japanese punks might have done actually - gasp - done something wrong...!? There is something very, very fucked up with that logic...

3. Which brings me to the third point, encompassed so saliently in my friend's plaintive final question to me in coffee shop. "How can they treat someone like this? How can they treat another human being like this?"

As I mentioned in the outset of this post, I used to react with scorn at the Korean or Chinese students who would accuse the Japanese of racism or arrogance, or claim that Japanese considered other races to be "below" them. Sadly, however, the longer I stay here, the more I am beginning to that far from being a way of thought left behind decades ago in the past, this idea of Japanese "superiority" and the notion of other races - gaijin - the "outside people" - as "barbarians" or "savages" is still very much alive and thriving even in so called "modern" Japan.

How can they treat another human being like that indeed? While it may be the pinnacle of cynicism, many would posit that it's because to them, we're not other human beings at all. Only, rather than expressing it in the brutal physicality of the past when Koreans were brought over as sex slaves and Allied soldiers were forced to work to death in slave labor camps, modern day racism has been cloaked in subtlety and deception. The modern day racism is the patronizing exclamations of "oh, you can use chopsticks" or "oh, your japanese is so good" whenever you say the simplest of things. It's the refusal of landlords to rent to foreigners "because they will cause trouble and break things" and it's the sole english signs outside of convenience stores reading "Police alarm and security camera system installed". It's 5 fucking year old children in this, supposedly the most fucking advanced country in the goddamn world squealing like they've seen a ghost and running away in terror every time they see a white face or a blonde hair - I mean, you'd expect that shit maybe if you were in the deepest reaches of fucking paupa new guinea, but here ...!? I mean, you have television fools! There's no godly reason on this planet why your children should act that way. None.

My panda army grows since the last post. These will serve me well it comes time to unleash my revenge on Japan...

We're not human beings in this country, we're english speaking monkeys, tall gangly curiousities to be poked and prodded, arm candy to be dangled like a fashion accessory off the arms of preening superifical japanese girls eager to show off their latest "piece" to their equally vapid peers, jesters to amuse and placate with our bumbling antics designed to reassure Japanese of their cultural "superiority" by our inability to "pick up" their customs. They can treat my friend as they did because to them, any residual hint that she might be even remotely of the same species was subsumed by the overarching conceptualization of her as "GAIJIN" - an outsider, a foriegner. We exist as nothing outside this box, lives devoid of meaning outside the artificial paradigm they construct for us - literally excised from time itself, as it were, having essentially no past before this moment, and having no future afterwards, considered only in the fleeting transitory essence of the present, here in Japan as foreign monkeys. It doesn't matter that I back home I was a trained geneticist and transplanted pieces of DNA between various plant and animal species on a daily basis, or that Tennis spent a significant amount of time abroad in Europe and can speak French and German fluently, or that my friend intends to go on to a job in advertising selling consumer pacakged goods to people after her year here on JET. All of these things are of absolutely no consquence and are not considred when Japanese interact with us - all they see us through is the prism of GAIJIN-ness which provides them will the essential information they feel they need to know about us, and this construct firmly delineates all that we can can and cannot do, invisible shackles that bound us in the zoo cages to dance around like the animals we may as well be until the time comes for us to go home. We are not individuals, we are not human beings, we are not even thinking, feeling sentient beings with hopes dreams and aspirations. We are GAIJIN and that is all that we will ever be. That is all we will ever be, and once they have removed us safely from the category of "human being", then all sorts of evil shit that would previously be considerd unthinkable - things you wouldn't even do to an animal - suddenly becomes completely plausible. Thus Japanese refused the tenants of the Geneva convention during WWII and tortured and abused Allied POW's in such a way that recalled the inhuman atrocities committed by Nazi's against the Jews in Germany. Thus Korean women were enslaved and forced into prostitution for the pleasure of the Japanese army. Thus Japanese soldiers massacred and mercilessly tortured millions of innocent Chinese (mainly men) in Manchuria during their reign of occupation.

Like I said before, in modern day Japan, the manifestations are more subtle, but still as potent. And thus, while they may not have tortured my friend physically, they certainly did so mentally and emotionally. And while they may have eventually agreed to abide by most of the stipulations of the Geneva Convention (though they are have still, conspicuously, refused to sign it), this didn't stop them from interrogating my friend without representation, an appropriate translator or in a manner which in any way could be considered even remotely fair, and was indeed only a few rubber truncheons away from a full blown Gestapo affair.

...

These things weigh heavily on me, and as I sit and think about them, I cannot help but recall two more recent incidents of some relevance.

The first had to do with the guest speaker for a recent JET conference I was responsible for coordinating. The speaker as a middle aged British man who had lived in Japan for 14 or so years. He was employed as an advisor in the Tokyo head office of the JET program and was married, with a wife and two children. He had a permanent resident visa and was for all intents and purposes, as "settled" as any foreigner could reasonably expect to be in Japan, except I was rather suprised to discover that his Japanese, while not bad, was certainly nowhere near fluent. I would have put it at a level aproximate to mine.

I was sitting down and having dinner with him the night before the conference when he mentioned that he was proffessor at a Tokyo area women's university.

"Oh really?" I asked. The suprise must have been evident in my voice because he anticipated my next question.

"Well, I only work for JET part time. Most of the time I teach at the university - I'd consider that my "main" job."

"What do you teach?" I inquired.

"English, naturally." came his response.

Two things really struck me. The first was, here was a man who was, as I mentioned, as "settled" as a foreigner can be here - married with children, a house, a resident visa. Yet, despite all this, despite the fact that he had been here more than 14 years, he was still employed as an English teacher...! I mean, yes, he had a part time job as a guest speaker and was fairly highly ranked in the JET administrative hierarchy, but still, even at this presumably lofty height, he had still not managed to escape the "English teaching trap". He was still trapped in that GAIJIN prism - that over-arching dictum that no matter what, if you're a foreigner, teaching English is going to be the only job you're ever going to be allowed to really have.

The next thing that struck me was the immediately sobering thought that if this man - who presumably was rather well "up" there in the hierarchy of foreigners in Japan - if this guest lecturer, JET administrator, husband, father, landowner, permanent resident visa holder - still had to teach English for a living... then, man, what sort of chance do I have? I mean.... none...! Teaching english for a living will not make me happy - it's not something I enjoy, it's not something I want to do in the future - I had always been assuming that it was this sort of temporary thing I'm just doing now until I can find another opportunity and move on from that, to a real job. But sitting there, half finished dinner cooling in front of me, I was struck for the first time by the paralysing fear - what about if I'll never do anything besides teach English...!? My heart sank and my appetite vanished, and I was left with nothing but the hungry cold knot of doubt and hesitation chewing away at my stomach.

The second incident came at the end of the conference. The closing speaker was relating a story of a man who I happen to know. This individual (whom the story is about) is a foreigner who lives in my town half of the year. The other half of the year he lives in a house he owns in a very rich and ultra-traditional section of Kyoto. This man is older, and more importantly, he is a master ukiyo - japanese woodblock prints - artist. Not only is he a master artist, he is also the head of the woodblock print association in Japan, an almost unbelieavable post for a foreigner to hold.

In my town, he lives in the eastern geisha (teahouse) district, one of the last holdouts of ultra traditional arts culture in Japan and a place you can still occasionally see real geisha going on about their actual occupations in everyday life. To put it mildly, this man is what may be considered a "japanophile". He wears an expensive and traditional kimono everyday, walks around in wooden geta slippers - even in the coldest of winter - smokes a traditional Meiji era smoke pipe - the whole 9 yards. His Japanese is utterly fluent and he speaks with a refined and elegant dialect rarely heard outside of the most rarified of art circles. He is utterly aloof to all other foreigners - if you were to pass him on his daily walks by the river and try to strike up a conversation he would glide past you without pause as if you were nothing more than a whisper on the wind.

"In short" - the closing speaker is saying - "this man is living like he's still stuck in the edo period."

A pause while he takes a drink of water. Swallowing, he continues.

"The thing of it is, I asked some of my students (Japanese students of English) about him one day. I was like - you know so-and-so.? And they were like 'yeah, we know him'. So I ask 'what do you think about him?'. And they, they like stop and get real quiet and look down at the floor or whatever.... And I keep pressing, saying 'c'mon, you can tell me! What do you think about him?'.

And finally" - the speaker leans forward onto the podium - "finally, one of them raises his eyes a little a says - 'hen na gaijin'".

hen na gaijin - he's a strange foreigner

And it strikes me - here's this man, a man who's been in Japan forever, who speaks Japanese better than most Japanese, who's achieved mastery of one of the most traditional of Japanese arts, who wears an actual kimono and lives in Kyoto, who is without a doubt one of the most learned people on the planet when it comes to Japan - a man who is quite possibly more Japanese than the average Japanese person. All of this - a lifetime of stunning achievement and a unparallelled attempt at integration into Japanese society in all aspects - all of this, and still... still ...! the best the Japanese can manage when asked to comment on this remarkable effort and achievement is a single, paltry, wavering.... hen na gaijin...

I can never hope to come anywhere close to what this man has accomplished. I can never hope to speak Japanese anywhere nearly as fluently as him, ever dream of owning a house anywhere in Kyoto, imagine ever owning a kimono, knowing as much about Japan or coming anywhere close to mastering a traditional Japanese art. And yet, if this man who has done so very much still cannot manage to win acceptance in the eyes and hearts of the Japanese - if he too is damned to an eternal life of being dismissed as a "hen na gaijin", never able to escaped that ever present cage of GAIJIN-ness, get out from under than terrible, terrible label with all the leaden baggage and chains it carries, then man, who am I kidding? What chance do I stand?

All of these thoughts swirl about darkly in my mind as I lay on my futon at night, eyes staring aimlessly at stars I can't see through the drab monotones of my ceiling, hands following along the outer circumference of the dim outlines of the still warm circular flourescent bulb hanging in the center of the room, feet sweeping rythmically back and forth under the comforter, feeling the brush of cloth against toes just recently liberated from the prison of thick woolen winter socks. I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do, and most of all, I don't know what the future holds in store for me and for my plans to stay in this country.

All I can do as I start to sink into the heaviness of sleep is to lay motionless and ask myself - what am I doing here...?