Gaijin-in-Japan

Speaking Japanese for more than two hours makes me tired. If I have to speak to an older person, then you can bring that down to an hour. So, it gets very difficult if I have to keep on my toes and try to say what I really want to say later in the conversation. Sometimes I think its just to hard to say some things or simply I just don’t care to explain myself. When this happens I may tend to look as if I don’t care. But if I pull the silent treatment, that gets translated into many different things since in Japan, silence means more than words.

A few weeks ago I had a meeting with a real minister about getting work to be a wedding celebrant. The minister is about 70 years old. If you have ever spoken to older Japanese, you’ll understand when I say I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. For two hours I had to sit there and nod to this and that while he explained the origins of weddings and probably what life was like 40 years ago. While his hands were shaking, I took paper after paper from him and tried to act as if I understood what the bazillion kanji meant. He pointed here and there and looked up at me every 5 minutes or so. He seemed content and never gave up while as I had given up after the first 60 minutes.

Luckily for me, I live with a Japanese. That means I am able to listen to Japanese everyday. I could understand enough to reply with a question that was at least in the ballpark. When it was time for me to ask questions, I would try to ask the three or four most important ones, including “When?”, “Where?”, and “Who do I meet?” After a few rounds of asking those, I had a pretty good idea of what was to happen next. I could understand what I needed to “bring” and “sign” and “when” he was going to “contact” me.

….

It’s been a couple weeks since that interview and I have had quite a few phone calls with him. Things are better know because I can understand his vocabulary. He’s getting easier to understand. He understands that when there is nothing happening on a particular day that he should not explain why, and to just say “Kyou wa nashi,” today is nothing. It works, and we both understand each other. The job is going well.

I can’t understand my son about 60% of the time; especially when he’s shooting of those bad words to complain about something. Last night he was saying he wanted a Wii. Tomoko doesn’t like video games, and letting Kai play DS for hours is a real torture for her. He only does his homework for about 5 minutes and then turns to the DS or watches Animax on TV. He does play with friends outside. Anyway, he was asking for this Wii and Tomoko was telling him that he doesn’t study enough and plays DS too much. That’s why he doesn’t have a Wii. To which Kai’s reply is something along the lines of , “Nah ahh. You just don’t care. We’re a poor family.” What do you think I should have done in this situation?

If you live in Japan, and you’re a father, you probably answered, “Nothing. Let the wife take care of it.” Well. I don’t like that answer one bit. He’s my son. He deserves a father who lays down the law at times and bites back when needed. So I took his DS and hurled it across the room thinking it would make Tomoko happy and force Kai to study more. But noooooooo…. totally wrong move. Tomoko turned on me and went up one side and down the other, putting me back in place. (By the way, if it breaks you can send it back to Nintendo and they’ll fix it or replace for free.)

Advice. If you are going to have a child in Japan with a Japanese wife, expect to be treated like a salaryman: never home and silently “dis”respected.

Finally! It’s been quite a long vacation, 10 hour work weeks for the last 16 months. Nice you might say, but stressful more like it. Money has been pretty dismal and my social life has been demolished. But thanks to the Japan lifestyle, I have been able to survive. I’ve been studying and waiting for the right opportunities to surface and it finally looks like things are going to turn around. I was offered another gig teaching a couple nights a week that will pay over 4,000 an hour, as well as picking up the wedding work on weekends. Together with the university work I should come out all right. Whew. I’ll have more stuff to write about and I don’t have to drink happoshu as often. Yeah. I might even be able to get out of the house again.

Yesterday I had a private lesson with a student who is working for an accounting firm. He told me they are leaving today for an eight day business trip to Germany in which they will be securing new clients. The problem was that one of the accountants asked to go, and the only one who can speak English well, decided to quit a few days ago. He mentioned that he tried to call me on Thursday but that my phone didn’t work (he dialed the wrong number). He said he was going to ask if I could go to Germany with them to do some translating and that they would have paid me one million yen to go ($10,000.00USD)!! The co-worker has since decided to go..gee, I wonder why.

It’s when your wife doesn’t tell you that you need to get a job because she doesn’t want to work. Today I heard a comment to the effect that she didn’t want to get a factory job. I get it….If I don’t make enough money and I don’t have any other options, I need to figure out what to do because otherwise you might have to get a factory job.

I thought about this for many moments and came to the conclusion that men are stressed because women don’t tell them that they like their home jobs. Personally, I think Japanese women are pulling the wool over our eyes. The PTA…that’s just an excuse to plan the next babachan meeting and give us the “Oh honey, it was so cheap…just 100 yen for a glass of wine”.

On the other hand..I remember doing that many a night for the 100 yen beers.

I’m right dammit. Back me up!

Ladies…I’m on to you!

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Come on Mike. You’re joking, right?

Nope! I can get you a nice site by using one of my templates or even one you give me. I don’t have to sit down with you and do mock ups and custom design because, well, that’s what costs A LOT of time. I also don’t need to give you full control of your site. I mean, I control your site. You never have to touch it. It’s just there. And it works. And you have email. And it works. That’s it. You don’t care about changing things every month or trying to make your website move up in the search rankings. You don’t care if some of the obscure browsers can view your site or if mobile phones can see your site. You just need to be able to tell your clients, customers, students, friends and family that you have a site. It has your name on it and you have a personalized email account with a business card and a logo and it only cost you a couple of nights out. Pretty cool. Email me at mike[at]worldnetjapan.com