The Great Japanese Dream

For foreigners, Japan really is a land of opportunity, like America used to be before the class system tightened up. I think it's because gaijin operate in a shadowy realm outside the mainstream; there are few of us and people are generally a bit scared of us. I thought it was only in remote Vietnamese villages that children still shied away from a white face but not so - in the wilds of Osakan suburbia, anything can happen, and in the true countryside, I stand out even more clearly. Sometimes I feel like Dr. Livingstone. On Saturday night, I was obliged to attend a work party at my conversation school in Kobe, at which my boss had his camera stolen by a loitering fat Canadian and I was besieged by Japanese women cooing at me and fingering my hair and inspecting my eyes and describing their exact shade of blue and it was intensely uncomfortable. Anyhow, the upside is that people actually believe I can do what I say I can do. Yes, I'm a teacher. Of course I can work in a kindergarten. Next, I'm going to try and paint myself as a Good Christian to nail a wedding pastor job, and I'd still love to work in a host bar, flirting for money (which is what I do in my conversation school for lower wages) and after that, I want to work in an izakaya and learn me some proper Nihongo and who knows, perhaps I can talk my way into the Japan Times. While a lot of people stay in the English teaching ghetto and judge their years here by the numbers of hang-overs and non-solo orgasms, it's not so hard to break out of that, to say here I am, this is me, I can do what I say I can. Row just got a job in a good cocktail bar. Why? Because he said he could learn. When was the last time that being keen and ready to learn got anyone a job in Australia? It's the old circle of experience needed to get experience. Not so here. If you can talk the talk, you can walk the walk.

According to D, my dubious Colombian-Italian connection (not the most reliable source, admittedly), there are more than a few African-Americans in Japan who were scraping by in the States playing music; they came here, became exotic (in a good way this time, not as cheeky darkies or slave labour) and now pull in hefty paychecks playing in hostess bars. From what I've seen, I'd say it appears true. While Japanese business culture is rather conformist, and effectively so, foreigners can operate on the margins of society and make a decent living doing so. Last night, I met a Canadian car-exporter who wormed his way into the closed shop of car-auctions here and now ships them to other countries for a hefty mark-up; then there's the American who puts on parties in clubs; the Israeli drug dealers, the Filipino/Ukrainian hostesses, the South American pretty-boys living off rich Japanese yakuza women. If I can just figger out how to work the system, I'll be set. Last week, I met a German woman brought up in an Indian commune who worked in a Taiwanese kindie for two years to earn the hard cash to buy a large slice of land in India and build herself a pottery studio. Anything is possible here.