Mr.World Traveller -
You know the type,
they've been to Timbuktu and back. Usually Japan's about 5th on their list of
'To-Visit' countries. I like this type a lot, usually adventurous,
confident people, who know more about life than any of the stuffy well-bred
businessman you might encounter. Those businessguys like they think they know it all just because they've got large salaries and a few extra responsibilities. You're just running the rat race dudes, and you ain't gonna leave a mark when you finish it.
Once you've been to
another country you get a taste of the travel bug which Mr.World Traveller lives by.
Where you can't feel settled once you go back to your home country. And some of
them never go back. It may seem a pointless to some, but you have to admit this form of non-repetitive life certainly beats the crap out of a 9-5 existence. Ex-Pats - They came, they saw,
they stayed. I might have mentioned it before, you see, some people love that
glorious country called Japan, and some hate it. Either way, most people find some things
they just dislike, whether it be the lack of individuality in the society, being
un-accepted on Japanese terms, language struggle, or just boredom. But,
occasionally, you get someone (like myself), who feels completely at home in
this strange, foreign, weird and wonderful land and decides to make it their new
home. Some of us desire a little bit more than fish+chips and Coronation Street
(my God, I swore I'd kill myself if I ever heard that bloody title tune again,
and I managed to avoid it for a full 3 weeks when I got back to England). I
don't know why some of these other people stay, I guess some do it for the money
they get, and realise they can't make that kind of bread back home; some get
married too quickly before they realise they can't handle life there, and get
stuck in a family situation, and some just must love it there for the same
reasons I do, cause it's something completely different and exciting to what you
grew up with. A theory I've got is that people who have close family contacts
are too afraid to up and hop it abroad permanently.. Probably Japan to them will
always only be a 'holiday' destination.
I guess this is the best place to live if you're very spiritual, and also
it's a country with a huge population, so who knows what type of people you can
find from one corner to the other? For me, Londons a good place to live, but I
can't stand English weather, it's too cold, and let's face it, England's for
grown ups, and Japan's for kids at heart like me. I think the Ozzies have
got a point when they call us Whinging Pomm's, but that's cause of the weather
dudes!. The weather over in Japan is really great in the summer aswell and ranges from sub-tropical in Kyushu, to Nordic snowfall in Hokkaido. Whingers - People who hear all
about the money that can be made in Japan, so they come all the way over, spend
all day talking to the other whinging teachers. Moaning about how they hate
Japan all the time and cursing their worst students, before they fill their
obliged time in Japan, and go back to their country and whinge some more about
the bad points of Japanese society. Go home early guys!. I dunno what to say to
these types, I guess they're no different than all the people who flock to the
States to follow the American dream, the only difference is, a lot of these
types always look down on Japan like it's an inferior country to their own.. I
can't stand pessimismn (you try spelling that then?) in people in a foreign
country. It just brings the rest of us down. It
just seems a bit of a piss-take that these people never have anything good to
say about Japan. Normally they're completely ignorant turds that get up your
nose half the time with their moaning and groaning, and they never have a single
Japanese friend. Ah well, luckily I can say this is quite a rare breed. The
worst ones you meet are the ones who've been in Japan too long - because they
actually come out with some good points that actually make sense..
Mr.Middle Age Crisis - The kind of
condenscending bank-manager types who quit a good job in their own country to
come to Japan for different reasons, usually financial. I swear there must be nothing more irritating than going to Japan, getting a 'real' job and finding you're under the authority of another bloody gaijin, who is a Mr.Middle-Age-Crisis. Fully settled for a few
years, and probably married to a Japanese, they really feel (mistakenly) like
they've been 'accepted' over there as 'one of them', and you, the newbie, are a piece of shit trying to infest their territory. They wont give you an easy time, and if you work with them, expect to be back-stabbed, ignored, misinformed, told you should go back home (by another bloody foreigner!!!), and don't expect ever to recieve credit for your hard-work.
I reckon these types know that deep down and feel like they
have to vent their frustration from being treated so differently after a long
period of time on the new to Japan types. Usually they hold senior positions in
English Schools, and can speak fluent Japanese. Some are good and some are just
plain patronising to other foreigners. They really treat you like shit
sometimes. They don't seem to understand the plight the newly-initialised
teacher goes through, and make it hell for everybody by pretending like they
know everything there is to know about teaching English. You nod to them on the
street and they just ignore you. Like I said before, some are genuine nice guys
who can offer good-advice and general good-will, and some are just middle-age
losers who're rejects from their own countries, but successful in Japan because,
being foreign, Japanese can't read gaijin like we can, and employ them
anyway. You have to understand, in Japan, age comes before skills, so you do end
up serving under a lot of bums's sometimes..It's just bad luck if you end up
there, and it's another good reason to find out a lot about company's your
applying for from other gaijin. More than once I've heard guys talking about
their asshole gaijin boss'. These guys get frustrated by the fact that even though times might be changing,
you're always the outsider
to the Japanese majority. These idiots seriously believe that in a country with only a 1% foreign population they can really be treated completely like another Japanese. I swear , it's only if you're slighty nuts you can really feel at home in Japan. I am though, so. The Know-It-All - You get 'em
everywhere else, so why not here? The 'oh...I'm not saying that my Japanese is
excellent, but---' Yes, these are the people that study for everything most of
their life, and feel it's their right to correct every mistake another gaijin
(or sometimes even Japanese!) makes in writing Kanji or speaking. I think you
know the type, not the kind of person that 'politely' suggests you've made a
mistake or something else, but the type who has the say something sarcastic
while he watches you write a perfectly legible letter, like 'Noooo! That's not
how to write Kanji properly!' and proceed to give you a full lecture on the
'taught' method of writing each little character correctly. They might even
laugh at your poor Japanese, even though you only got off the plane yesterday.
Luckily, these guys are not natural's at languages usually (if you do
find one then just watch out), and struggle with the rest of us, so often their
Japanese is worse than the common man who's been there awhile. One good trick is
to get a bunch of you and your friends to watch TV around him/her and laugh
synchronously like you actually understand it, and then look at him/her like an
idiot for not getting the joke, that soon knocks them off their high horse. The
trouble is, Japanese always say your Japanese is good, even when it's absolute
shit, but these sorry types actually believe it. Like the book I started
learning Japanese from says 'If they say that it means you're not good enough
yet. It's when they 'don't' say that, that you know you're getting
somewhere....' Normally they come and go..you get sick of teaching them the
simple stuff in the beginning, and then watch as they try to better your
Japanese after they've had just a few lessons.
Far Away Fred-Oh you know old Fred, alias
Billy-No-Friends, Pikey Pete, Tommy Dipsh*t, because he was 'that' guy, you remember, right?
The one who used to sit in the corner of the class-room alone. You forgot his name, but
you'll always remember how the nastier kids in the class used to play tricks on him, cause
he just didn't seem to have enough brains to do anything. Although he took notes and seemed like he was studying hard, he was probably just thinking about why slugs die if you pour salt on them.
He was that dude that your friends you to meet on the way to school and joke 'Hey Fred, there's
no school today! didn't you get the letter from the teacher in the mail this morning?'..Poor
old Fred would look surprised and just turn away and start walking right back home...amen. And then
he quit school at 17 to go work in his fathers little printing company and dissappeared for good. Ten
years later you're watching American Pie and thinking about your past and you wonder..Hey, wasn't there a dip-shit in my high-school called Fred? Oh yeah! I forgot all about that guy..I wonder what he's doing now.
' And then everybody else joins in, in the chorus..
One things
for sure, some of the long term ex-pats'll shock ya. Some of them are so
Japanese, you won't believe it. I once met an American who'd been there
twenty-five years. He could hardly remember English. Oh, that's another thing,
wait till you meet your first Gaikei-jin (I guess that's what you'd call them).
These are the gaijin born and raised in Japan. Man do they freak me out, they
look like you, they're the same height as you, but they act 100% Japanese.
There's nothing more bizarre, I swear. Most of them can't even speak English.
Bii-zaaarre
Present Day: Well guess what?..Yep..One day Fred picked up a book about Japan..He thought the girls looked pretty, and that
they wouldn't tease him like he'd been teased all his life. He thought the people looked kind and honest. So Fred quit
the day job, borrowed money of his over-protective mum, who made him promise to write every day, and headed off to the Land of Uki-E.
Now the god-damn place is fulla Freds! And they even fit in, which is the strange thing, hell, they don't care if he's dumb, he's foreign!!..Walk into any antique oriental shop
in Tokyo, and you'll see our friend, Japanese for Beginners book in hand, pointing to the shop-keeper and say 'O--HA--EE-YO--GO-ZA-EE-MA-ZU!'
and slam the book closed, fully happy in his achievements. Anybody remember Revenge of the Nerds..when that jock guy is on the roof
watching the bookworms moving into the Residential Halls, and he's like:nerds..
nerds...
NERDS!!...
NERDS!!!!...
NERDS!!!'
NERDS!!! NERDS!!!
That's Fred that is..
I salute you Fred!