Kobe; drinking on the job; cub reporter Doug
Joy! I have a job. Expectations are finally parallel with reality. Clearly, the gold rush days of teaching English in Japan are over and now it's a bit more like hard slog. Still, it's good money for work that's really the ultimate in unskilled labour. But now I am stuck with Ponyboy. Happily, however, I have been shuffled out of his jurisdiction and into that of his manager, an affable man with a jolly belly and a penchant for maps. Seriously. Every time I see him, he shows me this program that can scale Osaka from way out in space right down to street level, forgetting that he showed me last time. With a single click, it becomes 3D (he always looks at me at this point to see my reaction) and we whiz through the streets. It's bizarre. But he is a vast improvement on Ponyboy.
I start on Thursday, but not as an employee. I'm a business. I am an Independent Contractor, which gives me a delightful 10% tax rate but more legal nastiness if I royally ass it up, I think. I start at a kids school, but for very little kids. Ass and snot wiping are the order of the day, with occasional bursts of basic English. Still, it is Hard Cash, a commodity in short supply around here. I'm getting embarassed about being the pity case in the hostel and having beeping noises proclaim that I'm too poor to buy an adult train ticket. After a hedonistic weekend, I'm back to being poor and knowing it.
In about two weeks, I'll get to work on a couple of kids camps around Osaka, which should be both entertaining and exhausting. I was watching three teachers herd a class onto the train this morning and they used tactics very similar to those employed by jackaroos on cattle. Create the illusion of a containing area; use your forces to good effect; be everywhere at once. There will be two hundred kids on these camps and I hope a suitable number of herders.
---------
I spent yesterday in Kobe, the site of a massive earthquake a decade ago. The Japanese philosophy to earthquakes is interesting - its only in the 20th century that they even thought it desirable to build earthquake proof buildings. Before that, a tremor would roll through, the cities would fall, the Japanese would shrug and build them again. I don't think any of the shrines here are 'authentic' in a historic sense - they've been burnt down or shaken to bits many times, if they're old, but they rebuild them on the same site.
To get to Kobe, I navigated through four trains, five stations and a wall of Japanese kanji with nary a terrified moment. God, I'm getting good. Or so I thought until I had to find an actual address. The Japanese system of addresses is like much of their culture: opaque, confusing and designed to be difficult for outsiders. They could make it easier. It would make it easier for them and probably reduce postman suicides. But I think they must be proud of the fact that it requires a long, long time to find a particular place.
For example, I tried to find an international school in Kobe. Here are the instructions:
From JR Suma Station:
Exit station from Street side stairs (not beach side). Turn left once you come down from stairs and go to the intersection. Cross intersection at lights. Turn right (go past London Bakery).
Then:
Continue past Marui Pan Bakery. You will see a small street marked by a barber shop pole. Turn left up this street. Walk under the tunnel. M___ is on the right.
Keep going past the first M___ building until you reach a driveway between both buildings. Walk up the drive; the reception area is in the building on the left. Walk up the steps by the statue and enter the building.
The reason such specific instructions are required is because very few streets have names (they sometimes name major intersections, but not always). Houses and buildings are numbered in a seemingly illogical fashion. 1-1-3 doesn't necessarily give way to 1-1-4, but sometimes 1-1-10 or even 1-13. In short, it's terribly confusing. So instructions ditch the whole street name and number thing and refer to local landmarks. Turn left at Macdonalds. Right at ECC. This means constant updating. Turn left where Maccas (or Maccado, here) used to be.
Anyway, I made it there, courtesy of their detailed instructions. I was running late but had to cool it in the waiting room. No doubt you're going mad with frustration at my clever, meandering storytelling method. But why were you there Doug, I hear you moan. If you're still reading at all. Right. To cut to the chase, I was there as a cub reporter. The story was hot. Sizzling, even. People wanted the inside story on what made second generation expats tick. Were they happy? Did they even exist? If so, were they Japanese? Expat? WHAT? Anyhow, that was my cub assignment, one that I visibly perked to be given, and goddamn, I was going to nail that story, chief. So! I interviewed damn well everyone I could; students, teachers, the headmaster, the cleaner. What did they know about second gen expats? Was there anything they couldn't say in public?
-----
It was actually good clean fun - the students were hip cats, just like you see in Japanese movies. As an international school, it was also a fair ripoff of an American school, or at least the movie version - the melting pot population (hunting students for my story, the headmaster collared one, asking, Jim, are you mixed?) - the mass-produced slop in the food hall, the hierarchies of cool. The students I interviewed were fascinating -unsure, poised between two cultures; mostly Japanese, but not entirely. The famed resentment of outsiders even extended to one of my interviewees, a fourth generation Korean living in Japan. She still had to have a Korean passport and take out 'Alien' insurance. Nasty. One expat I met thought it's based on a feeling that all alienness is temporary and will pass, will depart. The Japanese will endure.
----
Later, I went for an interview at the publication I'm cubbing for. I got enormously lost due to an inadequate map but got there only a little late. The office was on the second floor of a second-hand bookshop, which is a good start. There were steep stairs, which was better. And then! A real Production Environment. It's sad to say, but it felt kinda homely - scraps of paper everwhere, gleaming macs, story ideas, past editions, a tiny office and my host, the charming D__ who I first met in Kyoto. The interview went in typical Japanese style, which is to say unusually. Conversation darted from the history of the mag, to refugees in Japan (they don't take any if they can help it), to Paul Keating, to John Pilger, to the Irish rebellions - it was a little disorienting. D has a fine mind, a broad mind, but still unassuming, still free of ego. It was a thrill to be along for the ride. Talking about ideology in journalism, I said something without thinking - ideology is just another form of prejudice - and then blinked. I'd said something mildly intelligent. D looked a little surprised too. The interview ended, I edited an article and laid in a page (something certain, something from home), and he reappeared with a beer which we downed and left, walking towards a little place he knew. I'd never have gone in there on my own - middleaged Japanese men scattered around the tables, smoking and drinking, a local place. Along the walls were fridges, bottleshop style, and people would reach in and take one - legally speaking, people can only stand up and drink, but everyone sits down anyway. D and I sat near three men who started joking (in English, for our benefit) that one of them was a North Korean spy. D and I talked and drank for a while; a game of Japanese chess started up nearby, and a large cup of shochu appeared next to my hand. One of the Japanese men beamed at me. I took a tentative sip of their local spirit. Strong but smooth. I smiled, appreciative. He smiled back and gestured that I should drink it. I downed it, we left and I was embarassingly drunk on the train home. Finally, I've met someone who wants to put the booze back in journalism.
Joy! I have a job. Expectations are finally parallel with reality. Clearly, the gold rush days of teaching English in Japan are over and now it's a bit more like hard slog. Still, it's good money for work that's really the ultimate in unskilled labour. But now I am stuck with Ponyboy. Happily, however, I have been shuffled out of his jurisdiction and into that of his manager, an affable man with a jolly belly and a penchant for maps. Seriously. Every time I see him, he shows me this program that can scale Osaka from way out in space right down to street level, forgetting that he showed me last time. With a single click, it becomes 3D (he always looks at me at this point to see my reaction) and we whiz through the streets. It's bizarre. But he is a vast improvement on Ponyboy.
I start on Thursday, but not as an employee. I'm a business. I am an Independent Contractor, which gives me a delightful 10% tax rate but more legal nastiness if I royally ass it up, I think. I start at a kids school, but for very little kids. Ass and snot wiping are the order of the day, with occasional bursts of basic English. Still, it is Hard Cash, a commodity in short supply around here. I'm getting embarassed about being the pity case in the hostel and having beeping noises proclaim that I'm too poor to buy an adult train ticket. After a hedonistic weekend, I'm back to being poor and knowing it.
In about two weeks, I'll get to work on a couple of kids camps around Osaka, which should be both entertaining and exhausting. I was watching three teachers herd a class onto the train this morning and they used tactics very similar to those employed by jackaroos on cattle. Create the illusion of a containing area; use your forces to good effect; be everywhere at once. There will be two hundred kids on these camps and I hope a suitable number of herders.
---------
I spent yesterday in Kobe, the site of a massive earthquake a decade ago. The Japanese philosophy to earthquakes is interesting - its only in the 20th century that they even thought it desirable to build earthquake proof buildings. Before that, a tremor would roll through, the cities would fall, the Japanese would shrug and build them again. I don't think any of the shrines here are 'authentic' in a historic sense - they've been burnt down or shaken to bits many times, if they're old, but they rebuild them on the same site.
To get to Kobe, I navigated through four trains, five stations and a wall of Japanese kanji with nary a terrified moment. God, I'm getting good. Or so I thought until I had to find an actual address. The Japanese system of addresses is like much of their culture: opaque, confusing and designed to be difficult for outsiders. They could make it easier. It would make it easier for them and probably reduce postman suicides. But I think they must be proud of the fact that it requires a long, long time to find a particular place.
For example, I tried to find an international school in Kobe. Here are the instructions:
From JR Suma Station:
Exit station from Street side stairs (not beach side). Turn left once you come down from stairs and go to the intersection. Cross intersection at lights. Turn right (go past London Bakery).
Then:
Continue past Marui Pan Bakery. You will see a small street marked by a barber shop pole. Turn left up this street. Walk under the tunnel. M___ is on the right.
Keep going past the first M___ building until you reach a driveway between both buildings. Walk up the drive; the reception area is in the building on the left. Walk up the steps by the statue and enter the building.
The reason such specific instructions are required is because very few streets have names (they sometimes name major intersections, but not always). Houses and buildings are numbered in a seemingly illogical fashion. 1-1-3 doesn't necessarily give way to 1-1-4, but sometimes 1-1-10 or even 1-13. In short, it's terribly confusing. So instructions ditch the whole street name and number thing and refer to local landmarks. Turn left at Macdonalds. Right at ECC. This means constant updating. Turn left where Maccas (or Maccado, here) used to be.
Anyway, I made it there, courtesy of their detailed instructions. I was running late but had to cool it in the waiting room. No doubt you're going mad with frustration at my clever, meandering storytelling method. But why were you there Doug, I hear you moan. If you're still reading at all. Right. To cut to the chase, I was there as a cub reporter. The story was hot. Sizzling, even. People wanted the inside story on what made second generation expats tick. Were they happy? Did they even exist? If so, were they Japanese? Expat? WHAT? Anyhow, that was my cub assignment, one that I visibly perked to be given, and goddamn, I was going to nail that story, chief. So! I interviewed damn well everyone I could; students, teachers, the headmaster, the cleaner. What did they know about second gen expats? Was there anything they couldn't say in public?
-----
It was actually good clean fun - the students were hip cats, just like you see in Japanese movies. As an international school, it was also a fair ripoff of an American school, or at least the movie version - the melting pot population (hunting students for my story, the headmaster collared one, asking, Jim, are you mixed?) - the mass-produced slop in the food hall, the hierarchies of cool. The students I interviewed were fascinating -unsure, poised between two cultures; mostly Japanese, but not entirely. The famed resentment of outsiders even extended to one of my interviewees, a fourth generation Korean living in Japan. She still had to have a Korean passport and take out 'Alien' insurance. Nasty. One expat I met thought it's based on a feeling that all alienness is temporary and will pass, will depart. The Japanese will endure.
----
Later, I went for an interview at the publication I'm cubbing for. I got enormously lost due to an inadequate map but got there only a little late. The office was on the second floor of a second-hand bookshop, which is a good start. There were steep stairs, which was better. And then! A real Production Environment. It's sad to say, but it felt kinda homely - scraps of paper everwhere, gleaming macs, story ideas, past editions, a tiny office and my host, the charming D__ who I first met in Kyoto. The interview went in typical Japanese style, which is to say unusually. Conversation darted from the history of the mag, to refugees in Japan (they don't take any if they can help it), to Paul Keating, to John Pilger, to the Irish rebellions - it was a little disorienting. D has a fine mind, a broad mind, but still unassuming, still free of ego. It was a thrill to be along for the ride. Talking about ideology in journalism, I said something without thinking - ideology is just another form of prejudice - and then blinked. I'd said something mildly intelligent. D looked a little surprised too. The interview ended, I edited an article and laid in a page (something certain, something from home), and he reappeared with a beer which we downed and left, walking towards a little place he knew. I'd never have gone in there on my own - middleaged Japanese men scattered around the tables, smoking and drinking, a local place. Along the walls were fridges, bottleshop style, and people would reach in and take one - legally speaking, people can only stand up and drink, but everyone sits down anyway. D and I sat near three men who started joking (in English, for our benefit) that one of them was a North Korean spy. D and I talked and drank for a while; a game of Japanese chess started up nearby, and a large cup of shochu appeared next to my hand. One of the Japanese men beamed at me. I took a tentative sip of their local spirit. Strong but smooth. I smiled, appreciative. He smiled back and gestured that I should drink it. I downed it, we left and I was embarassingly drunk on the train home. Finally, I've met someone who wants to put the booze back in journalism.
posted by Doug @ 3/08/2005 09:37:00 pm
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