March 2003

The only way that I can write some concluding observations about Japan is to cast my mind back to twelve months ago and my list of Japanese stereotypes and my expectations of living in a new country. Japan has a ‘mystic’ about it. I grew up with images of samurai warriors, kamikaze pilots, an industrialized beehive of a country of non stop worker drones, strange groups of people on tour groups taking photos of anything that moved, and technological innovation that often left the West behind. I had expectations of a country that thought of itself as superior to anywhere else. With its long history, I expected to find a unique culture of strange rituals, festivals and behaviour. I expected it to be like the rest of South East Asia. I expected the country to be a difficult country to live in. I’d have to learn the language to survive and adopt strange Japanese customs to fit in. After a year of living and working in Japan, I have concluded (in no particular order)

1. Japan is the most industrialized country I have ever visited. The ultimate consumerists, most people seem to be sacrificing their historical heritage (ie the ‘mystic’ I imagined) for the need to own the best or latest items that they can buy. Personally, I found the culture a lot more ‘shallow’ than I expected. The festivals and strange rituals go on, but the younger generation seem impervious to it. The traditions are maintained by the old people. The youth seem disinterested apart from the most famous celebrations when family pressure forces them to participate.

2. The generations seem divided. I lived in a ‘space age city’ where the locals spent their spare time shopping and living the Japanese dream. Yet in the fields outside the city, the older people tended their small plots of land in traditional ways and little old bow legged women tottered down the streets. Modern Japan had seemed to have left them behind. Yet, any land owner in Japan is a wealthy person. They even got paid to grow grass rather than rice by the Government to keep rice prices higher.

3. The Japanese seem to want the best that they can buy, no matter what cost. Money seemed no object, though in their permanent recession, it was obvious that some people were cutting back. Spending money is the national pastime here. They seem to live in the world of a 24 hour Shopping Channel with a mantra of ‘buy, buy, buy’ (if not for you, then buy it for someone else; hence the constant gift giving here). One thing that did make Japan very different was the ‘cash only’ society. Everything is paid for in cash and people carry huge amounts around with them. My credit card sat in my draw all year once I got my bank account.

4. Talk about a `disposable culture`. I made a weekly visit to the local dump, a small clean concrete shelter where hardware was dumped. Over the year, I found decent carpets, a fan, a microwave, 2 fridges, a full set of golf clubs (which I posted home), a rice cooker, a toaster, a heated table, chairs, CD player, cassette radio, skies and ski boots. I was able to equip my flat for free.

5. The small country (one and a half times larger than the UK) and the heavily squeezed population has forced them to exist in tight spaces (usually in the flatter parts of Japan). The Japanese were always tribal and isolated, but industrialization has apparently brought the country together. In actual fact, the distinct areas still exist beneath the mass media of homogenization. It is based on the island mentality. Hokkaido for example is different from Kyushu. Nevertheless, there are some common traits about the Japanese; A group mentality with a collective attitude towards the good of everyone as opposed to individualistic behaviour in public which may rock the boat and alienate people; excessive politeness, which I could never criticize; a lack of crime and aggressiveness, non confrontation as the normal behaviour; this led to great patience in traffic jams but also a sheep mentality. People often seemed scared or paranoid.

6. Japanese behaviour is nonconfrontational. They would rather walk away than start something. I only saw two cases of roadrage all year. They are a shy and apparently gentle people. This conflicted with my image of Japanese World War Two Prisoner of War camps and their harsh treatment of prisoners (where their superiority complex went to town).

7. As an general observation, I would say that many of the Japanese are some of the most boring , paranoid and anally retentive race of people you will ever meet. Not a criticism necessarily, just my impression. There is a correct way to do things. Pedestrians would wait by empty roads until the lights turned green. It was almost as if they had been brainwashed into conforming. Noone should show individualism or stand out. when questioning some of my students, they would be at a loss at what they had done the previous week. Shopping was always the topic. Those lessons went as fast as the ice age. Japan also seems to be the ultimate `nanny state`. Everything is done for you from an early age and you learn to expect it. They love their comforts and consumerism so much it is hard to imagine them roughing it anywhere. Yet along with this impression, I found the Japanese to be very gentle and kind people who always tried to put you first and I could never knock the excessive politeness and customer service. That is something I will miss.

8. Customer Service. This is second to none. Whenever you walked into a shop, you were greeted with a smile and `Sumasen` to acknowledge your presence. Women cashiers would bow after ringing through your purchases. At garages, your windows/ashtrays would be cleaned and you would be handed a wet towel to wipe inside the car. They would bow as you left and they even stood on the roadside to direct you back out onto the road when it was clear. At road repair sites, where men or women stood directing the traffic, they would bow if they had to stop you to let the other traffic pass through.

9. Ignorance. The Japanese seem very ignorant about the rest of the world. Some would say racist. Despite a good educational system, they appeared very isolationist. Even within their own country, they rarely visited anywhere outside relatives` towns or the most famous sights, and even then, many did it on tour groups. Students were amazed to hear that I had driven around Japan and seen so much. The heavy traffic really put them off and they would only travel by plane or bullitt train. They seemed to rely on second hand information which was inaccurate. For example, I had been told that Hokkaido in Golden Week would be fully booked up. It was empty. Kyoto in August would be too hot to visit. It was cooler than Tsukuba.

10. Useless jobs; There is a real effort to give everyone a job no matter how menial and Japan seems to be turning socialist in a strange way. Overstaffing appeared to be a real problem. Some garages would have six attendants who stood around half the time. I wonder how long it will be before everything goes self service as in the West. There are armies of men and women employed to directing traffic at endless roadworks. Sometimes I saw as many as people directing traffic as working on the roads. Department stores employed people to stand at roadsides to wave people in and out. They even stood at pedestrian crossings as if to prove that people had not yet worked out how to read red and green lights without supervision.

11. Food. I had expected an array of exotic Japanese dishes, but I found it some of the blandest food I have tasted. Rice is the staple but there is an awful lot of processed food being eaten. ‘Rubber food’ I called it. Many people seemed to live off snacks like Noodle Cup (just add hot water to plastic food). Japanese people who had visited England often told me their biggest dislike was English food, but I think our national dishes are just all round tastier. There was certainly a lot of variety especially the raw fish dishes. The Japanese did not seem to be big on burning their mouths with spices, unlike Korea where it is a national pastime.

12. Costs. Japan was cheaper than I expected at least for the daily things I needed. Supermarkets had a lot of discounted food, and once I found which places did the bargains and when, it was easy. For instance, on a Monday, my local supermarket did half price milk at 50p a litre. On a Tuesday, Shimodate supermarket did chicken, bacon and bread for 50p . I`d stock up the freezer when I found any bargains. Fruit however was very expensive and I could usually only afford bananas when they were going half price. A whole watermelon would cost about £10. A large apple about £1. Alcohol was much cheaper than the UK. I could get a decent 6 pack of beer for £4.50, 3 bottles of European wine for £5.30 and a bottle of gin/vodka for £4.30 . Petrol was nearly half the price of UK fuel. I was able to get a litre of petrol for 50p. Most other things seemed more expensive. Expressway tolls were a killer if you drove long distance. I don`t think the electrical equipment was any cheaper than the UK. Parking was also an extra expense which you paid for everywhere. I managed to park for free all year, parking down backstreets, but I was lucky not to get a parking ticket.

13. My impression of Japanese girls were of incredibly attractive and shy people. Cute yet very immature. They seem mesmerised by the west and dying their hair brown and wearing western fashions is currently the rage. A mobile phone and mirror never left their hands. I never felt the urge to find a Japanese girlfriend because they were just not `get and go` types, preferring shopping and restaurants as their major pastime. Yuka at Shimodate school was the only Japanese girl I met who was willing to do things. She accompanied me to the World Cup, festivals and the Sumo tournament, but her experiences of living in Australia had broadened her outlook on life.

13. My impression of Japanese men was generally one of superior sexist types. They went to work, spent their lives there and left the women to bring up the children or go shopping. The women still seemed to be discriminated against. Some teachers maintained that the Japanese males are even more immature than the females! (no change there then!). That said, Japan is a very maternalistic society. Women control the home and the finances (no change there then!). 70% of Japanese men smoke (even though smoking is not legal until 20) and they are heavy drinkers. This must be a sign of the stressful working lives that they endure. I would see men drinking cans of cold black filter coffee and smoking at all hours just trying to stay awake.

14. Sex. With no Christian millstone around their necks, the Japanese appear to be completely at ease with sex. At the video store, soft porn was mixed with all other videos. Likewise with magazines. There was no top shelf in Japan. There were lots of comic book sexual magazines with women as victims, but sex crimes in Japan are some of lowest in the world. Love Hotels were everywhere. There are many extended families living together and sometime the only privacy a couple can get is to go to Love Hotel. No one seemed embarrassed about them. Just a necessity of life. Even my parents nearly ended up sleeping at one!

15. Japan has some wonderful sights, but the urbanisation blends into a bland non descript mass of endless concrete and brand names. The islands of Hokkaido and Kyushu had the best scenery (due to the low populations), Honshu had the Japanese Alps, Hakone and Fuji. For historical sights, Nara and Kyoto were unmissable along with Nikko and Koya San. My favourite cities were Sapporo on Hokkaido and Hiroshima on Honshu. Tokyo grew on me over repeated visits. But often in Japan you are hunting down little treasures in a mass of concrete. I can only surmise that the ugly urbanised country is due to the earthquake mentality. They seem to assume that it will all be destroyed. Yet they were very pedantic about keeping everything spotless and all vegetation trimmed back. The Japanese concentrate on small items of beauty; food preparation, packaging and gift wrapping, ikebana flower arranging, colourful festivals, kimonos and weddings.

16. Teaching. It was as difficult as I expected. I was never entirely free of the school except on the long breaks when I left town. I didn’t like the work mentality of the Japanese. On my days off, I`d often get a phone call to cover. Individual effort was required to cover the mistakes of other people or the school itself. I always seemed to be doing them ‘favours’ when I arrived until I turned around and said ‘No’ when I really didn`t want to do it. I missed the two day weekends we get in the West to just forget about the place for 48 hours. I always felt I was on call. We worked incredibly long days. Sometimes I was driving an hour to the school to get there 20 minutes before the first class. I’d often do 2pm to 10pm (with a couple of breaks) and then drive home. Then I’d start preparing the lessons for the following week. When I first arrived I was doing this for two hours every night and I worked out I was spending 70 hours a week involving everything with the teaching week. The long hours bonded many teachers suffering from "stress” and caused many of us to drink heavily (well, that was our excuse!). As I got to know my students, and repeated many lessons, I was eventually able to prepare all lessons while at the schools on school time. After Xmas I never did a lesson plan in my own time. Yet, the teaching itself was easier than I expected. The kids were very polite and eager to learn or be entertained. The classes were also small. 6 Kindergarten kids were my largest class. I was left alone to plan my lessons and experiment. If the students were happy, the school was happy and I was left alone. If a parent complained, they came into observe and then talk to the parent (always on my side too). There was no ‘big school’ mentality unlike the big teaching English companies here. I didn’t have to teach using their methods or sell anything to the students. I also liked the fact that I visited 5 different schools every week. It broke up the monotony, I met different teachers, teaching assistants and I had a different drive to work. I don`t know if I would rush back into teaching English. It was a challenge because I had never done it. You feel a great reward when after a few months your students are actually speaking correct English without prompting, but overall, I don`t think the job was intellectually stimulating enough for me on a long term basis. It was a means to an end. That end was to experience Japan.

17. Despite the image of efficiency, there appears to be a lot of disorganisation. It takes them an age to make a decision (group consensus), but when they do, they stick to it for better or worse, when sometimes it is obvious that they made the wrong decision. For example, the worst decision I felt that the school made during my year was to put all new teachers on 6 day weeks. They refused to acknowledge that some people were coming to Japan for more than the teaching aspect eg to learn the language or experience the culture. The consequences were teachers cracking under the endless hours with only one day off to recuperate. Some dealt with it and just got more exhausted and admitted their teaching was going to hell. Others quit or just did `runners`. Individual effort is exploited to cover up the mistakes and paper over the cracks in the system. People seemed to be forced into living stressful working lives just for the sake of looking efficient and professional. Yes, we were expected to fit in with the working practices of our adopted country, but as westerners, it was difficult to keep the momentum going. Teaching is full on, everyday. You are a performer. You can`t hide in an office and pretend to work while you nurse a hangover or just don`t feel like working. It can be very stressful. My social gang got through with some serious heavy drinking most nights. It was our reward and an excuse to wind down before we went back to performing the next day and the next day after that. And now, just as I am leaving, the school is giving the teachers the opportunity to move back to 5 day weeks (but with less annual leave).

18. Ex Pat Lifestyle. It was so easy to live in Japan as a foreigner. I could wake up in the morning and listen to the BBC World Service or Virgin radio live. I cooked English meals (meat and three veg) in my apartment (I only ate rice at restaurants). I drove on the left hand side of the road as in the UK. There were free internet cafes for communication and information. English signs were everywhere at train and bus stations. Also a lot of information desks/offices had someone who could speak some English (even Tsukuba bus station). I needed very little Japanese to get through the day, but this meant that I got lazy and lived a life virtually removed from the Japanese because I couldn`t chat to them. Not that they had anything to say. Few Japanese would ever make the effort to talk to you other than greetings or politeness. Videos were in English with Japanese subtitles. At restaurants, there were often photos of the food or plastic models in display cases. I did feel as if I was living a separate life here. I pumped my adult students about information on the country but often educated them on what I had learnt about the places I had visited.

19. In Japan, as a teacher, I returned to the lifestyle of a student. Not starting the job until the afternoons, many teachers would just sleep all morning. No matter how late I stayed up, I always tried to get up and get out in the mornings to do work on the internet, sightsee local things, run or play tennis or just do the routine stuff like washing/cleaning. Then I`d have up to 8 hours a day at a school (plus driving time), full on. Usually finishing at 10pm, I`d drive home and the social gang would congregate around someones (often mine since I had the best TV/video), to chat, bitch and drink into the night. I can count the number of times I went to bed before midnight on one hand (my exhaustive roadtrips were my only early nights). On a good night it would be 2 or 3am, but at least three times a week it was 4, 5 or even 6am. And I`d drag my weary arse up by 8 or 9am to start another day. I got used to crashing on classroom floors for `power naps` on my breaks.

20. I was glad that my parents, Paul and Jill were able to make the visit. At least someone knows what I went through. In their faces, I saw the initial `enchantment` that I felt when arriving in Japan. A lot of it looked familiar but it was quite different. All those preconceptions disappeared in days. Watching me teach, they also got to meet Japanese adults and kids. As tourists, they didn`t have to suffer the bureaucratic paperchasing that the Japanese love. Over a year, that aspect, the racial superiority and a lack of roadsense left me somewhat jaded. The enchantment had long been dissipated.

21. Things I will miss;
Orderly traffic
Politeness
Gentleness
Safeness and honesty
Non confrontational behaviour
Customer Service (service with a smile)
General Cleanliness
Clean Toilets everywhere
Japanese appreciation for beauty
Comfortable Lifestyle
Lovely students
The Japanese people who helped me or spoiled me
The teachers/teaching assistants/Japanese staff I made friends with
A special thanks to Luke for being my point man during the year.

Things I won`t miss;
The world`s supply of traffic lights
Terrible Driving habits, a lack of awareness on the roads
People in cars on mobile phones
Crap beaches
Faces that blanked me as if I didn`t exist
Ignorance
The general `boringness` of people
Lack of weekends
Group consensus to make decisions
Japanese TV

After a year in Japan, I never felt as if I belonged here or was even accepted. I barely scraped the surface, but wonder how deep it actually goes. Westerners either fall in love with the place and the challenge of the language and Japanese lifestyle, or leave hating the place; the alienation, the hours, the traffic, the pedantic habits. Japan seems to attract `strange` westerners. Everyone has their own agenda for being here. Some are running from elsewhere, others come to try it out for better or worse. Obviously the longer you live here, the more you get used to it, but there was never a time when I thought "yes I`d like to stay here indefinitely". I left pretty much inbetween the western reaction to Japan, almost non caring. It did feel as if my `prison` sentence had come to an end and I could return to normal life.

Nevertheless, I felt that my year here was a worthwhile experience. I don`t know any other friends who have done it. It is said that the second year in Japan is better, but I feel as if I gave it my best shot in my first year. I travelled extensively, got to grips with the existence with no problems; a second year would be more of the same and there are too many other places in the world to visit. I`m sure I`ll miss the safeness, cleanliness, politeness and general efficiency, but it doesn`t have enough `edge` to it. Countries like India and Indonesia eventually drove me nuts, but they were much more exciting places. Then again, I was only a tourist there. Here I was working and much of my time was spent doing humdrum routines like teaching, food shopping, internet etc. But I missed the social contact you get in the other countries. For example, within hours of arriving in South Korea, I made friends I am still in contact with. I remember returning to the blank, non interested Japanese faces and thinking this really is a strange place to live. In Hokkaido, I toured for 6 days and talked to noone. There seemed no point or need to learn Japanese well. I`d never use it again once I left Japan. It was nice to live a Gullivar`s Travels existence but only for so long. I left Japan with an overall good impression and would recommend that everyone should try and visit the place once in their lives. There are things here you will see nowhere else in the world.

So Sayonara Japan....

Bye bye time!