Boring update - new pandablog almost done though!

It's been nearly a month, and I apologize.  I have been hard at work on the newest incarnation of the pandablog, located at: http://www.michaelpanda.com/blog/. The main blog framework is finally done, including virtually the entire back end, layout, scripting and all that other mess.  Ignore the lorem ipsum dummy text currently populating the blog section and occasional broken links, I will be transferring over the old entries in the next two weeks (depending on how hard it actually ends up being).  My biggest concern is that since xanga doesn't generate valid code (and creates an html mess out of each entry to boot!), I'm going to have to go through manually and clean up each and every entry by hand...!  Given how verbose I'm prone to being, this could prove to be nightmare.  Not to mention I'm going to have to fix all the broken image links that have gone down over the years (stupid shitty old servers).  Anyway, anything worth doing is worth doing right and I am rather proud of the look of the new site, if I do say so myself. 

If nothing else, head over to the about page to find out all sorts of useless information about yours truely.

Things have been very busy with the work on the new page as well as trying to survive the winter.  Nonetheless, I'm very chuffed to be meeting up with my Pookybear friend in Kyoto this weekend.  She was sweet enough to send me a package of home made cookies in the mail for Valentines Day - what a wonderful surprise!  Anyway, lots of pictures when I get back!

Okay, that's it for the moment.  Enjoy more random pictures below - you can click on these for a larger image!  Oh and Happy Valentine's day!

Who's this poor unfortunate soul being battered and dangled about at the bus stop?


Closer inspection reveals it to be a poor frozen Namacha panda!  I quickly take him home where he can be safe and warm.


Brilliant blue skies on a rare nice day in midwinter make even concrete danchi flats seem nice.


Going crazy with the macro shot feature.  Here poor Bel has to put up with me snapping pictures of her lunch while she tries to eat.


Less than appetizing - a close up of someone's "spaghetti-like" bento mystery item.


My long suffering co-worker trying her best to ignore me.


Panda looking less than chuffed at the fact that he still has 3 hours of work left.

Now listening to: "Darude - Sandstorm"
(one of the classic trance tracks.  I never get tired of this one... just hearing those opening chords.... sends chills down my spine..!)

It's been a while...

It's been forever since I've last updated.  I apologize for the delay - the demands of real life caught up with me for a bit, and I just haven't had time to tend to the pandablog.  Not this one, at any rate.

The past month saw the coming and (wistfully missed) passing of winter vacation - with all the students out for a couple of weeks, hardworking teachers, one of which I occasionally pretend to be, got to take a well deserved and much needed break.  I made the most of mine, cleaning my frighteningly messy apartment (partially at any rate), ironing all of my clothes (the disapproving glances at my rumpled business garb were starting to get more frequent ( -_-);;...), visiting friends, and above all, finally sitting down and coding up the new and improved pandablog.

I have been talking on and off for some time about making my own website - various incarnations of which have existed throughout the past couple of years, but all of have uniformly been pale imitations of the often unclear image that's been floating around in my empty little panda skull.  I enjoy the blog format, but there's a lot more that I would like to do as well - first and foremost, make some contribution to the greater "sphere" of japan-related websites, with information for newbies and people with a passing interest alike, as well as continue to expand on the occasionally coherent ramblings aimed at fellow denzins of the land of the rising sun and bean paste that I babbling on about on this site.

(Some random sites I might recommend include:

A sign stating the usage rules on a train station locker.  Note article #2...!


Susukino, the red light district of Sapporo.  I stayed here one night in a hotel.  Got offered 4 massages while walking to the local convenience store for a drink.  *sigh*


Dropping by one of Kittah's old college haunts, we challenged a couple of Japanese people to a game of darts - AND KICKED THEIR ASSES.  Mmm mmm, free drinks taste the best.  Actually we just got lucky because a) this guy was really, really good and b)Kittah, and I say this as a friend, sucks unbelievably at darts.


The "famous" Sapporo Clock Tower.  Every Japanese person who visits Sapporo gets their picture taken here.  It's considered *the* definitive landmark of the city and has the distinction of being located at coordinates 0x0 on the city grid.  It is also incredibly disappointing in person, being little more than a crappy old 2 story school house with an equally crappy clock strapped to the top of it.  I was expecting something a little bit more... majestic?

10,582 words.  Panda has something to say.

"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.

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...?

Now listening to: "Poe - Haunted"
         
Ba da pa pa ba da pa pa...

Come here
Pretty please
Can you tell me where I am
You won't you say something
I need to get my bearings
I'm lost
And the shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted hea

Ba da pa pa ba da pa pa...

Don't cry,
There's always a way
Here in November in this house of leaves
We'll pray
Please, I know it's hard to believe
To see a perfect forest
Through so many splintered trees
You and me
And these shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the promises I've made
And others I have broken
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head

Hallways... always
I'll always love you
I'll always need you
I'll always want you

And I will always miss you...

Ba da pa pa ba da pa pa...

Come here
No I won't say please
One more look at the ghost
Before I'm gonna make it leave
Come here
I've got the pieces here
Time to gather up the splinters
Build a casket for my tears

I'm haunted
(By the lives that I have loved)
I'm haunted
(By the promises I've made)
I'm haunted
By the hallways in this tiny room
The echos there of me and you
The voices that are carrying this tune...

Autumn, Garbage and Racism...

I've always been very sensitive to my environment - the people, places, noises, smells, things and sounds that surround me have had a direct effect on my disposition and well being since I was very young, though I supposed I only really figured this out a few years ago.  In university, I noticed a direct effect on my "performance" - whether meaning productivity, academic marks or workplace efficiency - depending on the multivaried temperments and atmosphere of my roommates, friends and housing situation, something that seems to be a forgone observation in retrospect, but a significant revelation at the time.  What can I say?  I wasn't the brightest of pandas back then (errm... or now...)

A beautiful fall day outside a seminar building in Shiga.

Of all the environmental factors affecting my disposition, one of the most influential is the weather - or more to the point, the season.  Being of the panda-like disposition, I am rather averse to hot weather, which means that summer for me - especially in Japan - is a long, drawn out, sweaty, muggy 4.5-month marathon of torture and barely moving from my resting place directly in front of the precious, precious life-giving air conditioner.  Heaven have mercy on me whenever I have to teach, as it's always a tossup as to whether or not I'll make it for the full 50 minutes without passing out in a quivering, sweaty lump at the front of the un-airconditioned fourth floor classrooms (which is actually not an exaggeration, as students routinely pass out from the heat in Japanese schools every summer, a disturbing trend that the normally meticulous Japanese seem to be rather non-plussed about, preferring to just sort of move the body out of the way and then go back to the staffroom to talk about how kyo wa atsui desu ne...! (today's so hot, isn't it!?) with each other, occasionally going back to check to see if the poor victim has recovered consciousness or not so they can tell them their assignments for the next week).

Winter is little better, though coming from the northern Wisconsin wilds and having a significant amount of natural panda insulation I tend to fare somewhat better than the 50kg anorexic j-girls who walk around shivering under 17 pounds of scarves, jackets, mufflers, tights, pants, skirts (sometimes the last three all together at the same time, which is somewhat fascinating to observe) and what not with an intensity that makes me worry if they're not going to shiver an (impeccably plucked and shaped) eyebrow right off their faces or something.  The fact, however, that the preferred method of clearing snow off the streets is to pour river upon rivers of water onto it and not stop until spring comes does sort of make things a whole lot more asinine and troublesome than it really has to be (though it really wouldn't be japan if it was any other way...).

Fortunately, for those lucky pandas who manage to survive summer, and as sort of a "compensation" for the rapidly approaching winter, Japan is kind enough to toss my way Autumn, which as you might be able to tell from my very toasty warm and leaf- bespeckled fall themed website (and umm, the silly flashing "AUTUMN 2004" logo in the upper right), is most definitively my favorite season. 

These mountains, unlike the ones in my town, actually looked beautiful.

While I'll save the pithy adjective laden stream of consciousness gushing extolling the virtues of the Autumn season (which will undoubtedly use words such as "quintessential" and "transcedent" and favorite panda phrases such as "(leaves) slowly spiraling to the ground in rotoscoping symphonies of color" and "amber sheaves (of sunlight) filtering down in liquid cadences in the dust filled air") (as an aside, when I was younger (in middle/high school), my teachers would always praise me and my classmates look on enviously as I pulled such retardedly obtuse Faulkner-esque descriptors out my panda bum on the spot.  Unfortunately, the older I get, the less such things sound like profound glimpses into a noble vision of a trascendental moment, and the more they sound like what might result from the bastard mating of a thesaurus with a vat of Hippy sugar (I don't know what that is either, I just made it up, so don't bother ask), or, for example, any given page from Jewel's self-described "introspective" book of poetry "A Night Without Armor" (what more can you expect from a woman named Jewel or Moonbeam or whatever?)  *sigh*)  (as a further aside, Jewel's debut CD "Pieces of You" (a recording described by Amazon as "expos[ing] an unfortunate tendency to present trite, hackneyed sentiments as if they were oracular visions from a young prophet to a jaded world") was the first CD I ever actually bought brand new from a store, or rather, as a sign of what a loser I was at the time, had my mother pick up for me at the local Wal-Mart (Asda, for you british viewers).  Ahh, truly, who will save your soul? (that's the first track on the CD for those of you who are currently pretending you were too cool never to own it, by the way).  Fortunately for myself, some of my "fly- er", more "dope" (ahh, 90's slang, how I love you so...) soon set me straight by introducing me to the lyrical styling of the deadly trio of 'Pac, Snoop and Dre, along with lesser members of the West Coast gangsta parthenon (what more can I say / I wouldn't be here today / if the old school didn't pave the way...), which explains why today I have a copy of Pac's remarkable (especially given his age at the time) "The Rose that Grew from Concrete" instead of Jewel's latest literary foray "Chasing down the Dawn" sitting on my desk next to my copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry (which, as an aside, is not a particularly good anthology of poetry. seemingly designed more to satisfy "politically correct" sensibilities about being "all inclusive" in the literary world than actually present a comprehensive overview of the most influential and significant poets of the time, but in my defense, my high school teacher gave it to me as a graduation gift (see, writing bad adjective laden hippy poems in the margins of your homework sheets does have its pluses!), so bleh!  *sticks out tongue* ))

*whew*  Okay, so where was I?  Oh yeah, going about how I wasn't going to go on about autumn ;).  Anyway, the thing is, in Autumn, I'm at my best - happy, never depressed, uber productive (well, for a panda at any rate) and basically in tip top form - doesn't matter what comes at me, how many things I'm juggling, in Autumn, I feel untouchable amidst the showers of brilliantly colored leaves.  Nothing can steal my sunshine (as it were), and I feel like I can handle the world.  At least until winter comes and grasps me in its icy, cold, dark clutches, but anyway...

So that having been said, you'd think I'd have a lot more to write about on these pages - trips to far off exotic locals, pictures of assorted, fascinating panda adventures, paragraphs upon paragraphs of badly mangled improvisation verse harping on about the beauty of nature's masterpiece swirling on all around me (such as the titilating excerpts previewed above).  But instead, you get no panda love for almost two weeks at this point, and I know the singular thought going through all your collective, panda- starved minds and hearts is "WHY...!!!? "


(or possibly "I'm hungry, I think I'll go microwave a burrito".  But let's pretend otherwise.)


The fact of the matter is, I've been having a really rough go of it lately.  In addition to all sorts of private stresses you need not concern yourselves with, the empire of panda is literally SWAMPED with work - school is hammering non-stop (dispel all notions you may have of JETs as lazy, overpaid slappers with nothing to do all day but sit and twiddle their thumbs - the reality is, while some of our jobs are that way, some of us actually have to do A LOT of work to earn our keep), I seemingly have a business trip every other week (I just finished a grueling week long seminar over in Shiga prefecture) and as the excessively underpaid and overworked (I might be a little biased ;) ) person in charge of coordinating all the official JET conferences in the prefecture, I literally have my little panda panties (that's a disturbing image...) in a bunch over the upcoming midyear seminar - and by upcoming, I mean next freaking week! - that I am rapidly coming to realize will be little more than a resounding cataclysm of comedic mishaps and not-quite-so-comedic disasters.  (as an aside, I usually make it a rule not to single out 3 week old infants as a subject of my considerably withering panda rage and anger, however, one of the reasons why I am so busy is that the individual who is supposed to be assisting with the planning and implementation of the conference has conveniently gone off and had a baby, leaving me cowering behind truly awestriking mountains of towering paperwork and innundated with a frightening number of phone calls whilst silently cursing to myself "stupid newborn baby...!! "  Grrr...)

My coworker, without whom I would never survive my piles of work.

I can only imagine what an unrecognizable train wreck of a nerves I would be if it wasn't Autumn and I had all this coming down on my head, but as it is, at least when I leave the office (sometimes at 9:30pm, only to go home and do more work), I can feel refreshed and invigorated by the deliciously brisk breeze and that damply wet and earthy, but somehow brilliantly colored layer of leaves that blankets the grey concrete and softens every step and dulls every noise until the world becomes a muffled cocoon of sleep and hazy, obscated colors filtering in and around all sides of the periphery of your vision.  (cue bad poetry).

That having been said, Japan still finds ways of "quirking shit up", as one of my more linguistically "creative" friends once so aptly put it, and the recent weeks have not disappointed, as the forces of the House of Panda were called upon to do battle with the evil minions of yet another stunningly idiotic division of the Japanese bureaucracy - the garbage system.

Those of you who have never lived in Japan before might not realize the sheer horror and scope of the uneccesarily complex and nazi-like garbage disposal system - consider yourselves lucky.  In Japan, one never just "throws away" trash.  Rather, what one does is subject each and every component of any object being considered for disposal to an intense and complex analytical process that includes recursive algorithms, organic chemistry, material analysis, consultation of several rule books (or "guides to waste disposal" as mine cheerily declares in crayon-colored letters on the front) and a healthy dose of voodoo.  Afterwards, said "waste" is then disassembled into its core components which are then separated into appropriate bins and then, after further extensive consultation of rulebooks, various calendars, at least three different maps and quite possibly some brief telescopic observation of the current phase of the moon, said garbage is tentatively set out at a designated location marked only by cryptic coordinates on a GPS, and if you're LUCKY - if you remembered to pray for divine assistance and made a donation at your local shrine earlier that week - then your garbage MAY of MAY NOT get picked up.

Lest you think I'm joking, my current workplace has no less than SIXTEEN..!!! separate garbage bins:

But the truth is, racism isn't all exotic bullshit.  It's not apartheid, and it's not Zimbawian solider executing white farmers to steal their land, and it's not blunt nosed Hutus eviscerating aquline nosed Tutsi's with sharpened hoes.  That shit is human rights violations.  But rather, racism is this - it's ignorant, uneducated, insular Japanese salarimen, xenophobic immigrations officials, prejudiced police officers, wary shopkeepers - land lords wrongfully accusing you of something based on your skin color.  This is the real - this is the racism that is a blight on all of us as people, and the Japanese, far from being at the forefront of enlightenment, are rather one of the chief architects of this oppressive institution.

As a JET, they will tell you in the literature that your ostensible job purpose is to "teach english".  Any JET who has been here more than 3 months will tell you that that's bullshit, and that honestly speaking, the only possible justification for hauling thousands of college age kids into Japan and sticking them in the middle of the deep deep backwater is that vague and slippery concept of "internationalization".  To expose the Japanese kids to "the world that lies beyond their borders" and to "cultivate in them a deeper understanding of the world and other cultures".

In a way, I suppose that's as close to the truth as anything, since really, there can be no justification in using us as English teachers.  But the thing is, they got something wrong - it's not the kids that need internationalization - they already get us - they understand that Japan is not alone in the world and they eagerly open their minds and their hearts to cultures, societies and people outside of Japan.  Rather, it's the adults that need internationalization - the salarymen, the housewives, the politicians, the office ladies - the garbage men and the landlords...!  They're the ones who perpetuate this fucked, xenophobic, wantonly destructive system and in the end, unless they change, then really, Japan will remain the same as it ever was, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of 20-something year olds they bring through here.

I wrote a while back about the various stages of "adjustment" to Japan foreigners go through, and how, at the time, I was in that third stage - the critical stage of coping with the disillusionment wherein one decides whether they will ultimately accept Japan and stay, or reject it, and go back home, to their previous lives - to the "real" world.

At the time I thought that to "stay" would ultimately mean having to accept Japan with all its failings and shortcomings and reaching some sort of internal equilibrium wherein one could make peace with all of that and still continue on.  But I realize now that there is another way - that just because one is foreign need not mean that one must stay silent and accept all the injustices that are perpetuated onto them, ignore all the idiocy and evil surrounding and continue on without comment.  Rather, one can stand up for themselves and fight.  They can shatter that fiercely held fallacy of "culture" and call a spade a spade -  stand up for themselves and say once and for all what desperately needs to be said - "This is wrong, and culture is no excuse for it."

In a way, I wonder if this is not the "internationalization" that ostensibly I'm supposed to be here for.  Who knows - I've stopped believing the company line ages ago.  But what I do know is that regardless of whether they really want it or not, some Japanese are going to get a taste of "internationalization" tomorrow - it may not seem like a big deal, writing a letter to protest the way I was treated by the landlord.  But in reality, it's a first step, and more to the point, it addresses what must seemingly be a slight insult which others might readily ignore.  But it's these small, seemingly matterless affronts that pile up and pave the way down that long slippery slope that is racism and precisely these that conspire to make life in Japan outright hostile for foreigners.

When I think on it, there's a long line of foreigners who have chosen to tread down this path of daring to stand up for themselves and telling the Japanese to their face that what they're doing to us is wrong: Alex Kerr, Karel van Wolfren, Iris Chang, David Arudou, Alan Booth - just to name a few.  While my letter may be small, it is my hope that I can live up to the example which these brave few have set.

Now listening to: "The Coup - Taking These"

knock knock motherfucka let me in
i just wanna kick it in your big ass den
and if you dont like it take two to the chin
and show me to the kitchen cos my kids are getting thin
i dont have to talk shit about packing a gat in fact
you could get fucked by any other motherfucker
where i live at
hear that money here is crystal clear punk
fuck that fiscal year junk
meet the pistol gripped punk
pistol gripped punk meet mr rockefeller
we gonna take em out do em like ole yella
its been too damn long this proper day mutual
thats why today it wont be business as usual
call me the repo man
im a make you equal and
im get you if yo play my little sequel can
i know your down with the klan
but you must understand
you did the crime
so now its time to put this 9 in my hand.
so put the money in the bag and 86 the tricks
dont forget to add grits with those afro picks
and free licks on that ass
cos my ass is living fat
boots you got my back where the fuck you at.
im gettting ammunition out the pinto hatchback
refer to this as operation snatchback
because i got the bullets and the hollow tips to distribute equally
so whos the niggas thugs and pimps you mention frequently
take me with frequency now i know you got mail
and if my glocks fails
take a sip of this molotov cocktail
oh is that your rolls royce
come off up them keys cos we are taking these
even if you dont please
...
how does it feel when you got no food
take out the supermarkets so the people wouldnt feel the move
how does it feel when you got no cash
how the fuck you thank you for it when your pocket singing make it last?
i choose to rock the boat instead to rock the boat
and threw the mayors body in the bay
to see if it will sink or float.
you try to be anectomy you cant we got agility
we taking factories production plants and all facilities
we got a gang of motherfuckas who done eat their wheaties
no pipsqueaks you swimming in your own feces
proved us now you are through with us and dont need us
should i use the rubber cos this shit developing up like a fetus
16 condos packed full of chickens
i ride shot gun and my trigger finger's itching
this shit is real we got the info meal
is to drop it of fat the spot the 20 30 cubbile
i give a fuck if you the army navy or marines
aint seen the news cos you're bubblepacking uzi magazines
I see the po folks pull the trigger and flip the birdies 6 feet in the
dirt
cos I guess he hadn't heard that