The working life
Well, the gloss has come off the job. I still love it, but I have managed to single out aspects which suck. This means I now have Perspective. One of the things that sucks is the commute, which takes a ridiculous length of time. The second is kid shit.
I was doing so well, so very well. Every single diaper (we are an 'international' kindergarten, which as usual translates as American. I'm seriously going to come back with a US accent and slight Filipino inflection) I had changed was beautifully, gloriously clean, or a little wet. Yesterday, it all changed for the worse. God, kid shit stinks. It is a vile, vile thing. I don't know what their parents feed them. The perpetrator lay on his back, humming, eyes moving about the ceiling, a picture of innocence, while I toiled away cleaning his ass for him. Oh, the glamour of working in Japan. The next day, I had another unpleasant surprise.
So the sheen of my beautiful new job was already fading by the time I met our new co-worker, T. I saw him and disliked him immediately, passionately and irrationally. I gave him two days to allow the irrationality to pass, and it did. I now dislike him rationally. He is a fuck. To begin with, he says everything he doesn't like is 'bullshit' which is irritating. He swans about, seeks attention, and has one of those angular Adam's apples which bob obscenely when he talks. He doesn't really get along with the kids, except for the most undiscerning of the bunch, and once told me he enjoyed making them cry. His attitude to Japanese girls is of an untapped resource and he has real lust in his eyes. He's a German Jew who lived in Israel and picked up a dose of arrogance from both countries. In short, within two days of meeting him, I wanted to kill him.
Being forced to work with this man has led me to think that the anti-gaijin sentiments which are supposedly out there are at least partially deserved. I'm meeting more white people I don't like here than I ever did in Australia. It's like the West is exporting their crap. That doesn't include me of course, because I'm the scathing observer and therefore immune.
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Writing about the delights of working with Japanese toddlers may well be boring you, my readers, so I will try to spice things up. I had a Semi-Hot Date on Wednesday night with N. It was semi-hot because she talked a lot about her ex-boyfriend. I'm terrible at dating so I don't know what that means. But it was interesting, anyhow; her ex (Australian) was earning many, many times more than I will ever make, which she partly attributed to her intervention. She suggested using Japanese methods, which involve bestowing gifts and deference on your superiors. At the end of the date, she gave me a pile of MacDonalds vouchers for free meals (I had confessed to my abject poverty). A little embarassing. But only a little.
Tonight, I'm finally going out on the town with some friends, and thankfully not to a gaijin bar. The trains stop at 12.30, which seems a little bit backwards. This means that for me to go out in Osaka proper, I have to have a tiny night, or a massive one. This is a problem. I am a middling night kinda person; I start yawning around three, and drinking more makes it worse.
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I've started taking Japanese lessons with a self-described 'torture teacher'. After the first lesson, she made me memorize hiragana and katakana in a week. Surprisingly, I managed, and it's great - I can painstakingly read some advertisments now. The Japanese translate Western words into Japanese using katakana, a seperate syllabary designed for that purpose (again quarantining foreign influence). So, Tom Cruise is Tomu Kuruizu; Ayers Rock is Earuzu Roku. It's a great feeling to be able to translate, even if only a little.
Well, the gloss has come off the job. I still love it, but I have managed to single out aspects which suck. This means I now have Perspective. One of the things that sucks is the commute, which takes a ridiculous length of time. The second is kid shit.
I was doing so well, so very well. Every single diaper (we are an 'international' kindergarten, which as usual translates as American. I'm seriously going to come back with a US accent and slight Filipino inflection) I had changed was beautifully, gloriously clean, or a little wet. Yesterday, it all changed for the worse. God, kid shit stinks. It is a vile, vile thing. I don't know what their parents feed them. The perpetrator lay on his back, humming, eyes moving about the ceiling, a picture of innocence, while I toiled away cleaning his ass for him. Oh, the glamour of working in Japan. The next day, I had another unpleasant surprise.
So the sheen of my beautiful new job was already fading by the time I met our new co-worker, T. I saw him and disliked him immediately, passionately and irrationally. I gave him two days to allow the irrationality to pass, and it did. I now dislike him rationally. He is a fuck. To begin with, he says everything he doesn't like is 'bullshit' which is irritating. He swans about, seeks attention, and has one of those angular Adam's apples which bob obscenely when he talks. He doesn't really get along with the kids, except for the most undiscerning of the bunch, and once told me he enjoyed making them cry. His attitude to Japanese girls is of an untapped resource and he has real lust in his eyes. He's a German Jew who lived in Israel and picked up a dose of arrogance from both countries. In short, within two days of meeting him, I wanted to kill him.
Being forced to work with this man has led me to think that the anti-gaijin sentiments which are supposedly out there are at least partially deserved. I'm meeting more white people I don't like here than I ever did in Australia. It's like the West is exporting their crap. That doesn't include me of course, because I'm the scathing observer and therefore immune.
---
Writing about the delights of working with Japanese toddlers may well be boring you, my readers, so I will try to spice things up. I had a Semi-Hot Date on Wednesday night with N. It was semi-hot because she talked a lot about her ex-boyfriend. I'm terrible at dating so I don't know what that means. But it was interesting, anyhow; her ex (Australian) was earning many, many times more than I will ever make, which she partly attributed to her intervention. She suggested using Japanese methods, which involve bestowing gifts and deference on your superiors. At the end of the date, she gave me a pile of MacDonalds vouchers for free meals (I had confessed to my abject poverty). A little embarassing. But only a little.
Tonight, I'm finally going out on the town with some friends, and thankfully not to a gaijin bar. The trains stop at 12.30, which seems a little bit backwards. This means that for me to go out in Osaka proper, I have to have a tiny night, or a massive one. This is a problem. I am a middling night kinda person; I start yawning around three, and drinking more makes it worse.
---
I've started taking Japanese lessons with a self-described 'torture teacher'. After the first lesson, she made me memorize hiragana and katakana in a week. Surprisingly, I managed, and it's great - I can painstakingly read some advertisments now. The Japanese translate Western words into Japanese using katakana, a seperate syllabary designed for that purpose (again quarantining foreign influence). So, Tom Cruise is Tomu Kuruizu; Ayers Rock is Earuzu Roku. It's a great feeling to be able to translate, even if only a little.
posted by Doug @ 3/25/2005 05:33:00 pm
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