Obligatory Yakuza post

If, for some reason, a television show was made about my kindergarten, one character you would never, ever be able to kill off would be Juan (not his real name). Oh, I'm sure you'd get a ratings blip, but long term, it would be a bad move.

OK, so he's Colombian-Italian; I've written about him before but he continues to amaze me. He likes sex a lot, which is fine, but it's mostly with girls who are not his long term girlfriend, whom he lives with. I asked him about it, and his moral juggling abilities are unparalleled. He looked shifty only for a moment, before telling me that his girlfriend cheated on him once so it's therefore ok. Then he looked a trifle puzzled. "Although, maybe she cheated because she was poor and she needed help paying the rent." Even this fact didn't affect his rationalisation powers.

Ok, enough snide judgement from me. What makes him interesting is that his extravagant love life is coupled with a true innocence derived from simplicity. From him, the Latin American/Italian combination of machismo (on paper, a recipe for horribleness) comes across as playful. He bounces children on his knee while filling my ears with smut and innuendo, relating tales of the night before. Often, I try to stop it because it feels so, so wrong to talk about sex in the land of the innocents but it's his hobby, his preoccupation and it's tough to find anything else which interests him as much. A month ago, he came up to me, whipped out his keitai (mobile phone) and proudly displayed some rather personal photos of one of his 'friends' - a saucy version of picture ping pong, and ever since then I've come to dread his phone.

So, that's the background; he likes sex and pursues it avidly in love hotels and bars (he successfully wooed a rich bar-owner). There's nothing predatory about him; he's too simple. But about a week ago, he came into work looking a little the worse for wear, possibly even limping a little and I asked, thinking hangover, but no, it was yet another vigorous bout of sex that he was keen to tell me about. In passing, he mentioned that she had a dragon tattoo emblazoned across her back and something twigged. She was almost certainly yakuza - dragon tatts being the identifying marker of choice. Juan hadn't even thought about it, but if you own a bar in Japan, you'll most likely have dealings with them. I freaked out a little; they might be accepted as part of life here, but man, they'll still kill you.

I told Kiyono the story and she didn't react as I expected. "Yakuza aren't that bad," she said. Oh? How did she know? "Because my stepfather is an ex-yakuza. They aren't so bad." Really? "No, not so bad. But they still cut off his little finger when he quit."

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On Monday I have a job interview. Work's been draining me and the pay is bad. But if I work one less day for more pay, it would be fine. So, if I have another offer, I have a bargaining platform for the showdown with my idiot boss. Some of my workmates have already left; others are leaving, and I think I might be able to extract a bit more money out of his tight grip. Interestingly, because I'm white, I have more bargaining power than the Filipinos I work with, who are just grateful not to be doing hostess/sex work or factory drudgery. Ah, the joys of immigration into rich countries. You get to complain about the newcomers and at the same time make them do all the hard work that you used to have to do before you became Developed. I think the phenomenon of treating newcomers badly is almost a Constant and Immutable rule of life, scalable to both the lofty heights of society and the smaller fact that the constant stream of new workers at my kindergarten are generally given the jobs which involve kid poo.