Exodus, Abridged

It’s fin­ished. I am writ­ing this from my new interim home with Negishi’s fam­ily in Yokohama. This will be my base for the next three weeks while I do a lit­tle trav­el­ing around the coun­try before return­ing to Atlanta at the end of August. I’ve spent the last three years teach­ing English at a pub­lic junior high school in rural Myogi, Gunma Prefecture, and gen­er­ally hav­ing a great time. The peo­ple in my town have mostly been fab­u­lous, and my teach­ing gig was unde­ni­ably the high point of my work­ing life thus far. It’s been a great ride, and I plan to come back sev­eral times as a guest, but I’ve deter­mined that I do not belong in Japan.

There’s lots of rea­sons for this. Ironically, i’ve been able to do a lot less Taido than I usu­ally did in America. I had assumed prior to mov­ing here that I would be able to find a nearby dojo and prac­tice at least a cou­ple of times a week, but that has not been the case. The near­est dojo to my home was a two hour drive away, and the dojo I most enjoy prac­tic­ing at required a four hour train ride — I just can’t make that trek too often. Compared to a cou­ple of hours every­day, 10 or so hours a month isn’t much, and i’ve missed being able to go to Taido any­time I wanted to. However, my expe­ri­ences with Japanese Taido have been incred­i­bly inter­est­ing and unique, and I would not trade the time I’ve spent meet­ing new peo­ple and shar­ing ideas for any­thing. I haven’t been able to to do a lot of actual prac­tice, but i’ve had the chance to expand my Taido hori­zons far beyond where they would have been had I stayed in America.

For another thing, it’s tough dat­ing when you’re on a short time­line. Half the women I met in Japan wanted to get mar­ried and move to America with me — after two or three dates. Some girls here just want to have sex with a for­eigner. Neither extreme suited me all too well, so most of my rela­tion­ships have been of the “she’ll do for now” vari­ety. It’s actu­ally been a lit­tle sad. Though I don’t expect to step off the plane in America and bump into my soul mate, I imag­ine that I’ll have much bet­ter luck find­ing a true part­ner minus the cul­tural and geo­graphic com­pli­ca­tions of “inter­na­tional relations.”

Then there’s music. I love play­ing music, and in Atlanta, I played every­day. I was able to play with a vari­ety of musi­cians in a vari­ety of envi­ron­ments and shared some of my most beau­ti­ful moments impro­vis­ing in front of small audi­ences. I brought a gui­tar to Japan with me, but it’s dif­fi­cult to be inspired play­ing alone in my liv­ing room. I’ve writ­ten some good songs while I’ve been here, but it’s been a lit­tle lonely not hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to play them for any­one. I tried to form or join a band, but most Japanese musi­cians come in one of two fla­vors — sucky or way too seri­ous. So, instead of pur­su­ing my own musi­cal growth, I’ve spent my most reward­ing musi­cal moments over the past three years teach­ing a few kids at the junior high how to play bass and drums.

… And besides all that, I’ve decided that I don’t want to be an English teacher anymore.

"But you said you love teaching..."

And I do love teach­ing. Many of my col­leagues seem to mis­un­der­stand my desire to be other than an English teacher. They ask me what bet­ter plans I have in America, and I hon­estly can’t answer. I love my English teach­ing job, but that doesn’t mean I want to con­tinue it indefinitely.

The thing that sucks about being an English teacher in Japan is this — most of your stu­dents will never really get all that good. Do I sound like an awful, pes­simistic, and neg­a­tive excuse for a teacher? Well, I’m not; I’m actu­ally a great teacher. I’ve reached stu­dents that nobody in my town had been able to reach. I’ve made stu­dents love English. I’ve helped shy stu­dents open up and share what’s on their minds. I’ve inspired, gen­tly prod­ded, and facil­i­tated. I’ve done a damn good job.

The prob­lem is not the teach­ers, nor is it the stu­dents. It’s the sit­u­a­tion. Japanese peo­ple live in a coun­try in which every­one speaks Japanese. Think about how many Americans stud­ied two years of a for­eign lan­guage in high school and can’t speak a word. The rea­son is that we all and only speak English in America (sure, this is begin­ning to change in major cities, but we are a far cry from being inter­na­tional). If you don’t prac­tice, you don’t get good — no mat­ter how much you study.

That’s the sit­u­a­tion here. To make mat­ters even more severe, many Japanese peo­ple are very rooted — that is, they spend 99% of their lives within a very short radius. They may take a vaca­tion to Hawaii or Korea for a few days, but they do so from inside the safe bub­ble of Japaneseness via tourism. Some Japanese peo­ple may attend uni­ver­sity in a large city, pos­si­bly even a major city, but tend to return to their home­towns, or nearby, for employ­ment. When your entire life is going to be spent within a fifty kilo­me­ter radius, you don’t have much moti­va­tion to learn the ways of the “out­side world (why do you think the word for peo­ple from other coun­tries trans­lates as “outsider”?)”.

It’s truly sad that, even if stu­dents have the desire to learn English, they won’t have much suc­cess unless they live abroad. This is an oppor­tu­nity that few Japanese feel is avail­able to them. Students can study day and night, but they will find that they have nobody with whom to prac­tice. Everyone around them will speak Japanese and expect them to respond in kind. The stu­dents in my school have only three or four peo­ple with whom to attempt eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion, and all but one are Japanese (which doesn’t make them bad teach­ers, it just means that con­ver­sa­tion with them will nat­u­rally be in Japanese).

Knowing this, I try my best to pro­vide as many oppor­tu­ni­ties as pos­si­ble for my stu­dents to have real, non-course-content con­ver­sa­tions with me — sim­ple con­ver­sa­tions that are not graded and are not intim­i­dat­ing. But it’s just not enough. I’ve had stu­dents with loads of desire to learn, who show up at my house to chat, and write me emails for prac­tice but have a hard time bridg­ing var­i­ous gaps in their skills. It’s sad­den­ing, and as a teacher, it’s soul-sucking.

I love teach­ing, but I feel that Japan will have to make some fun­da­men­tal cul­tural changes in order to allow stu­dents the oppor­tu­nity to really mas­ter English. And hon­estly, Japan has more press­ing prob­lems than that (though I believe that many of them are very con­nected). Thus, I don’t want to be an English teacher in Japan right now.

And that doesn’t give me many options. I really like var­i­ous aspects of liv­ing in Japan, but as far as employ­ment goes, there are only a very few pro­fes­sions in which for­eign­ers are con­sid­ered accept­able. Japanese soci­ety gives me the choice to be an English teacher or an enter­tainer of some sort. As funny and cute as I am, I don’t have any more desire to be anyone’s danc­ing mon­key than I do to teach peo­ple whose cul­ture pre­vents them form learning.

Of course, if I truly wanted to live in Japan, I would find a way to do so in a man­ner that suited me. I’m resource­ful, I have lots of friends, and I have a knack for doing the things I want to do. However, I do not wish to live for much longer as a for­eigner in this country.

Why I really don't want to stay

Many Japanese peo­ple ask me why I am leav­ing. I have a hard time answer­ing. For one thing, I would feel bad telling them the truth — Japan has, on the whole, a rel­a­tively unso­phis­ti­cated culture.

I know that’s a broad and seem­ingly pejo­ra­tive gen­er­al­iza­tion to make, but I’m mak­ing it nonethe­less. I’m sure plenty of peo­ple will tell me that I just don’t under­stand the sub­tleties of Japanese cul­ture — that I just don’t appre­ci­ate Japan because I am view­ing it’s splen­dor through my own dis­torted lens of American cul­tural bias. To those peo­ple, I say: lay off, punk. I know of what I write (and my gram­mar ain’t bad neither).

I’m not say­ing that being in Japan for three years makes me the arbiter of what is and is not of-quality in Japanese cul­ture. There is plenty I don’t know, but you’d be lucky to find any Japanese peo­ple who could ade­quately explain their cul­ture to you either. That’s not the point though. Believe me — I know as much about Japan as I need to know. I love Japan, but that doesn’t mean I find it above reproach. Hell, I’m leav­ing here to live in America again, and most folks who know me can vouch that iIm pretty out­spo­ken on my opin­ions about what’s wrong with America. There’s no sour grapes going on here, and there’s no mis­in­for­ma­tion. I know what’s up, and Japan is not for me in the long term.

When I say Japan is unso­phis­ti­cated, I’m not say­ing the peo­ple here are bar­baric, idi­otic, or unre­fined. I love Japanese peo­ple. I think they are cute (not to sound patron­iz­ing). I’ve very much enjoyed most of my expe­ri­ences with Japanese peo­ple and have even shed the odd tear when they’ve done extra­or­di­nar­ily won­der­ful things. But there are some excep­tions, and these excep­tions point to a cul­tural short­com­ing rather than a per­sonal fail­ing. Japanese cul­ture reminds me of how I imag­ine the mid­dle of America. To quote David Bowie, I’m afraid of Americans.

To be clear and fair, I should men­tion that I find Japan very refined. In con­tradis­tinc­tion to sophis­ti­ca­tion (which spi­rals up and away from cen­ter, towards the new), refine­ment works by gath­er­ing inno­va­tion about a locus and reduc­ing or remov­ing what is unnec­es­sary. The result is stream­lin­ing — whit­tling things down to their absolute core neces­si­ties and cre­at­ing clean-running, effi­cient ver­sions of what­ever is needed. This is the “zen” aes­thetic that Japan is famous for. I think that this is great for indus­try and econ­omy, but per­haps not-so-great for cul­ture and soci­ety. Though America is an obvi­ous exam­ple of a soci­ety gone crazy with expan­sive­ness, Japan makes the oppo­site mis­take (in my opinion).

A few examples

Since it would be dif­fi­cult to pith­ily sum up the rea­sons that Japan doesn’t suit me as a per­ma­nent home, I’m going to make a list of some small annoy­ances that should give you a feel for what’s “wrong” (for me) with Japan.

Foreigners have big noses

I’m tired of peo­ple say­ing I have a big nose. I don’t. I’ve seen some honkers, and let me tell you, I have a really nice nose. When I got kicked in the face and my nose broke a cou­ple of years ago, I had to lis­ten to about a thou­sand peo­ple (includ­ing my doc­tor) joke that it was because Americans have such big noses. What bull­shit is that? I got kicked in the nose because my face was in front of a fast-moving foot.

But it’s not just me with a giant, pro­trud­ing, cucum­ber nose — it’s any­one of non-Asian extrac­tion. In car­toons and comics, Americans (a catch all des­ig­na­tion, which also includes any­one from Europe, North and South America, and non-tribal Africans) are depicted with huge noses and big eyes. The big eyes are con­sid­ered beau­ti­ful, so peo­ple are com­pli­ment­ing you when they com­ment on that, but the noses are a sign of bar­baric infe­ri­or­ity. There is no escap­ing the big nose thing — it’s every­where. For three years, I taught English out of a set of text books (that should hon­estly be con­sciously designed to pro­mote inter­na­tional under­stand­ing and dis­cour­age eth­no­cen­trism) in which all of the non-Asians had noses the size of small animals.

All Americans have guns

People are always ask­ing me if I have a gun. I don’t. Guns are out­lawed in Japan, and own­ing them is a seri­ous crime. Japanese peo­ple are fas­ci­nated and fright­ened by the idea that any­one in America can have a gun, so they often ask me where I keep my gun. I tell that that it’s in the car, or at my house, in the closet. You should see the scared and wor­ried looks on their faces as they try to “help” me — “but Andy, it’s bad. You can’t have guns in Japan”. And my response is “No shit — then how would you expect that I man­aged to get one?” Of course, I don’t have a gun here. It’s ille­gal, and it would be near-impossible for me to sub­vert the con­trols that pre­vent peo­ple form hav­ing guns here — not that I would want to. I never owned a gun in America (though I do know how to shoot them) and have no plans to own one in the future.

Can you use chopsticks?

The most famous stu­pid ques­tion to ask the for­eign guy is the old “can you use chop­sticks?” Yes, I can. It’s not upset­ting to be asked this except when the inquirer is some­one who has actu­ally seen you eat with chop­sticks on many occa­sions. It’s dou­bly annoy­ing when some­one makes a big deal out it, say­ing “Wow! You can use chop­sticks? That’s fan­tas­tic!” Well, no really, it’s noth­ing to get all excited about; iIve been using chop­sticks from about the same age at which Japanese chil­dren begin learn­ing to use them.

Some Japanese peo­ple have informed me that there is actu­ally a proper way to use chop­sticks that is more dif­fi­cult and polite. Apparently, many Japanese peo­ple don’t do it cor­rectly, so I shouldn’t think it strange for peo­ple to be sur­prised that I can. No, I should feel hon­ored that peo­ple hold me in such high esteem that they even ask me. Whatever. I’ve never heard one Japanese per­son ask another whether or not he or she could prop­erly manip­u­late eat­ing sticks.

In case you were won­der­ing, I can hold them “prop­erly,” and I can hold them the easy way. I can do this with either hand. I demon­strate this to peo­ple, and then go on to explain that we for­eign bar­bar­ians also have such a thing as proper table man­ners and eti­quette that are not fol­lowed by most peo­ple in their day-to-day activ­i­ties, but are gen­er­ally expected in for­mal sit­u­a­tions. When peo­ple have really irked me, I’ll take them through a crash course in the cor­rect way to hold a knife and fork cor­rectly, how to cut meat with­out mak­ing scrap­ing sounds against the plate, how to sip a bev­er­age with­out slurp­ing or gulp­ing, etc., in order to demon­strate that there is more to claim­ing a rich cul­tural her­itage than eat­ing with twigs.

About driving

I’m also asked by oth­er­wise nice and intel­li­gent folks if I find it dif­fi­cult to drive in Japan. I ask them if they find it dif­fi­cult to drive. Since I’m from Giant America, it seems that peo­ple expect that I should have a hard time dri­ving a small car on small roads. They are stunned to learn that my last car in America was actu­ally a Toyota. They also seem to think that dri­ving on one side of the road is sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent form dri­ving on the other. I have to explain to them that, pro­vided there is a steer­ing wheel, the dri­ver of a motor vehi­cle can (regard­less of his cul­tural back­ground) point the vehi­cle in whichever direc­tion he should choose. They are blown away with the rev­e­la­tion that I learned how to drive in Japan in five min­utes. Apparently, my ten years of prac­tic­ing in America isn’t relevant.

Sometimes peo­ple ask me, “Andy, do you some­times screw up and drive on the wrong side of the road?” Usually, the temp­ta­tion is to much for me, and I reply by say­ing “No. Sometimes I drive on the wrong side, but that’s just for fun.” Then I walk away and leave them to wonder.

"But wait! There's more!"

And there are lots of other sim­i­lar ques­tions I get asked all the time. Questions to which the answers are obvi­ous. Really stu­pid ques­tions that I get asked explic­itly because I am not Japanese. However, really stu­pid ques­tions are not rea­son enough for me to want to leave Japan (I mean, I grew up in America — I’m used to hav­ing to answer stu­pid ques­tions), but the above are sim­ply meant as an indi­ca­tion of the types of spe­cific stu­pid­ity to which I am sub­jected to because I’m not Japanese.

And that’s the real prob­lem. It has noth­ing to do with stu­pid­ity and every­thing to do with cul­tural retard­ed­ness. I’ve heard it claimed that Japan is a racist cul­ture, though I think insen­si­tive and obliv­i­ous are more accu­rate char­ac­ter­i­za­tions. In either event, I now think I under­stand what it must feel like to be black in America. Being for­eign here for a long period of time can be a pain. It gets old and annoy­ing, and I’m ready for it to be over (none of which is to say that being an American in Japan doesn’t also have its priv­i­leges and advantages).

The long and short of it is: there isn’t much I can do here that will leave me ful­filled and sat­is­fied for the long term, and the peo­ple here have no idea how insanely stupid/offensive some of their eth­no­cen­tric gen­er­al­iza­tions are to peo­ple from other countries.

I know that I am loved and respected here. I know that I am val­ued. I know that I could man­age to have a good life here, but I do not belong here. I will be missed, and I will miss the places I’ve spent time and the peo­ple with whom i’ve worked and played, but this is not my home. I don’t know where home is going to be either — maybe Yokohama or maybe some­place i’ve never been before.

I’ll have to find out. Got any suggestions?

For more insight into what it’s like to live in Japan if you’re not Japanese, I rec­om­mend you read some of Mark Groenewold’s arti­cles on his excel­lent Karate the Japanese Way web­site. Mark is much smarter than I, but after many con­ver­sa­tions on related sub­jects, I can say that I am in 98% agree­ment with all that he writes in his arti­cles on Japan and very envi­ous of his abil­ity to express his thoughts so elo­quently. Please do check it out.