Four Hundred Days Til Re-entry

No it's not the Mondays

One of those things that gets me down, and on this Monday morning I am incredibly down, is forcing my way through a foreign culture with my eyes closed.

There has been a never-ending debate about the Japanese race - Are they arrogant or are they insecure? I have read four or five books on the subject and not really come out any the wiser. From my own personal experiences I still cannot decide. Let me give you an example:

I am in the staff room at school and a woman walks in talking to the kids. She tells them I am going off to various places. She asks if it is hot in the UK. I say, not as hot as here and not as cursedly humid either. She says, "How about typhoons?" I say no. She asks about hurricanes and the rainy season, I say no. She asks about volcanos, I say no. Finally, she comes out with, "well, we have four seasons in Japan."

I don't know why this is such a source of pride for the Japanese but it comes up time and time again. "We have four seasons too, and what's more Spring and Autumn last more than two weeks. I could oversleep and miss Autumn here," is what I don't say, because I am supposed to be an ambassador for my culture and being rude is not supposed to be a part of the job description. I kind of mumble that we had them too, in a slightly embarrassed manner. So the woman has backed herself into a corner.

"Maybe England is better, then," she says. I am thinking, not so. And it wasn't what I said. You are asking the wrong kind of questions.

"We don't have skiing or snowboarding in the UK," I kind of half-lied. The stuff in Scotland is notoriously the worst in the world so it doesn't count.

Anhow, she seized on this and manage to draw some national pride from the situation. I was glad that I managed to get out of the situation without embarrassing her too much in front of the kids. Eventually, one gets used to things like this living in Japan. Either that or one goes home.

What has this got to do with my non-Monday Monday-morning-sulks? I had one of those weekends where the stuff just kept coming. I'll explain how it happens:

I occupy a rather strange kind of position or post at school. I do not work for the government or the local government. I work for a company contracting in a public school. That is a state-run school for those of you Brits reading. This basically means that though I do teach I am not a teacher in the eyes of the law and have to have another teacher present for insurance purposes and to help run the class. I could say more here but I won't. The other thing it means is that I am not a public servant and I get separate pay and conditions to the other teachers at school. This cuts a number of different ways. I get more time off, they get bonuses (boni?) twice a year. I get to go home at five most days, they get more time at school but they cannot be fired. If I was going to live here for ever I would be more bothered about this but I really have to choose my battles.

The upshot is that there is an imbalance. To whatever extent, and it varies from person to person, I am being seen as less of a teacher than everyone else. Add to this the arrogance / insecurity issue above. This usually manifests itself in innexpressive people who either can't or don't want to talk to me. The first bunch are the hardest to deal with because they often say something for the sake of it, which leads to various results. The foreigner-haters can be easily ignored and I know enough Japanese to put them down without too much hassle.

The penultimate ingredient for this pot is the local manner gap, as I like to put it. I assume this is universal, and you would see it in the UK and the US and anywhere else. The gap exists between what is right, what is easy and what acceptible. The the second and third are taking over because the Japanese do not usually speak out against individuals who don't follow the rules. Acceptable has recently become "whatever no-one checks me over" and as a reult the benchmark is getting lower. Many people have heard that the Japanese are extremely courteous. This is still true, though anyone who has ever spoken to an airline check-in clerk knows that whilst still using polite words and phrases a person can be exquisitely rude. In the UK manners change with education, area, job, etc. In Japan they don't.

So, it is Friday and the three things I mentioned came togther in a big meta-meiwaku (meiwaku is japanese for annoyance). The final ingredient in this coctail is, of course, me. If you wanted to be charitable you might say that I call a spade a spade, or I wear my heart on my sleeve. Generally, I get angry quickly and then get over it quickly. This is great for the kids, who I am here to teach and appreciate the consistency. They know that if I get angry with them it will be over fairly quickly and then we can be friends again. With the teacehrs, who I am not here to teach and who should know better, it is a different matter. I am here as a foreigner, and not as a teacher in their eyes. Ocassionally they try and push the envelope and I have to say something. If I don't it will happen again, and not just to me but to the next person, and so on.

Back to Friday - the whole incident, and it was small, revolved around a CD player that someone had borrowed and not brought back. I got angry, I soprted myself out, it was over. At least it was for me, though half of the staff-room are not speaking to me anymore. There are two ways of looking at it. My way basically revolves around the question, "do I really have to teach adults to ask to borrow stuff andbring it back?" Their way: "Who is this idiot that is getting worked-up about a CD player?"

So there it was, I went home feeling like a bit of a dick and having a hard look at the way I deal with people. There were a whole bunch of other isues roled into this and I don't think anyone involved, including myself, came out of it looking good. New leaf time for Nick. Again.

And so it rolled round to Saturday and I had arranged to go to out with the missus and some of their friends. M was driving so I was drinking. Incidentally, this was the last time 'til I get back to the UK, hopefully. We got there, went through the formalities, introductions, initial embarrasment and searching for common ground. At that time there were Aiko, who I had met before, and her husband and two friends who I hadn't. Beer flowed, conversation likewise. I enjoyed talking to Koichi, Aikos husband. In Japanese there is a phrase, "ki ga au" which basically means that spirits meet. A more meaningful translation might be, "we got on well."

Another bunch of people arrived, sat down and said hello to everyone. Down they sat and koichi asked them to introduce themselves, for my benefit. "I am Sadam Husein. This is Kim Jong Il. He is, er, Hideyoshi." Hideyoshi is a famous Japanese historical figure. He is just fucking about, fine whatever. Another of them asked Mariko if I could speak Japanese. Note, that he did not ask me. This is usual for Japan. Personally I would always speak to the actual person first. Innocent until proven guilty, sort of. I jumped in and told them I did. Then I went back to talking to Koichi about football. He eventually asked me, "Can you play?"

I said, "no, I've never been any good at football."

So he asked me what sports I did and I listed them off, ending with the fact that I used to play rugby at school. "I like Wales," shouts this guy from the other end of the room. "Great," says I. "They are very strong," he smirks.

"Oh, I see," I think to myself. "He is taking the piss because we lost our last game to them, some six months back. "Oh, well. Whatever," I thought. "They were really strong last year." After that I turned back to talk to the guy I was originally talking to.

A few minutes later, "WALES" is roared across the room at me.

"Mate, who is holding the world cup at the moment?" That shut him up for a while.

Next things the drinks arrive. On route to me my drink gets drunk out of by one of these guys. I just look at him as he looks at me whilst doing it. I think, "Fuck it. Don't worry about it." Next marikos drink comes down and the guy raises it. Something must have made itself plain on my face coz the guy doesn't drink and says something about my eyes. Someone else says, "don't you do that in England?" No, we don't do that in England.

I stop about a centimeter short of punching the guy. Litterally, my fist is hovering in front of his face. Everyone around said they really thought i was going to punch him. "This is what would happen if you did that to a complete stranger in the UK." I explained that it was rude. The one guy asked I would punch someone just for driking my girlfriends drink. I said no, that would be just for my beer though I don't really go in for that kind of thing. Gradually they explained that this was only something that friends do. This was their way of trying to help me into the group.

Things move on and I go off to the toilet. I come back and sit down. The guy next to me says, "Do you really love your girlfriend?"

My spluttered response to this was, "What? What is the meaning of this?"

The guy looked at me and apologised. The night progressed much in this vein. The second time I went to the toilet I heard my name four or five times while I was in there. "Nikku, sonna warukunai," came floating through. That means "He isn't that bad." As the night progressed I gradually got the impression that I was being tested. There were more of these "let's compare cultures and decide which is best" conversations that I hate, with barely veiled implications that England was not all it was cracked-up to be and it was my place to answer for it.

At about eleven I decided I had had enough and told M that I wanted to go as soon as she liked. She finished her drink. We discussed how much we owed from the total. We paid and left. As we were leaving I said goodbye and got my shoes. At this point these three guys who had been criticising myself and my country were all trying to shake hands and suchlike. I honestly thought they had been talking to me in the rudest and least sensitive way possible.

"No way," I said, "I'm not interested."

The guy that had been shouting about Wales and scowling at me all night was looking at me with a hurt "let's be friends look" and proffering his hand. "Do you understand how terribly rude you have been to me tonight? No? Well, have a think about it." We left, with me steaming about the whole affair.

The next day I was talking it over with Mariko. She was telling me that these guys just didn't know how to behave and that she had had a bad impression of them too. Later on she got a phone call from Aiko, who had invited us. She said that the guys had been genuinely shocked and that they had only been trying to be friendly. I said I was sorry for wrecking the evening. It seems that after we left they had a bit of an inquisition. Who said what? Did I do something wrong? It wasn't that much fun after I had left.

Mariko changed her tune after this phone call. These guys don't really know how to communicate. They were unneasy because I was a foreigner. They didn't know what to say to me. It wasn't their fault.

In all honesty, I asked if I was wrong. She said I should have told them if I wasn't happy. I told her I had. She said I should have told her so she could help out. I told her I had. She said, "Right, so you did." She said I should learn some new japanese phrases to deal with these kinds of people. I told her that would just deal with the symptom, not the disease.

In the end I agreed that I wouldn't get angry next time. It seems as though I will just have to keep dealing with this kind of thing til I go home. In about 240 days. If I don't get really angry then nobody takes any notice then if I get angry everyone judges me on it. If I just leave it then I feel like I have betrayed myself and let down all these other people who will come here after me. Hey, if you want to decide for me, go ahead.

posted by Between daisies @ 10:02