The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in a Japanese Office Environment

Or, "How To Be An Asshole So Subtly That No One Really Notices" (volume 1)

1. If someone leaves anything on your desk on days you aren't there, hide it on the days that you are.

I've had huge stacks of marked tests, sample MEXT-approved textbooks and a big bag of white rice (only in Japan) waiting for me on my desk after a couple being away for a couple of days. While there's a 99% chance that if it happens, this belongs to a teacher directly beside you who forgot you actually work there, studies have shown [citation needed] that quietly picking up this object up, bringing it to an empty table nowhere near the offender's desk and discretely abandoning it sends a firm but absolutely innocuous message. The first time you'll get an apology from the offender, and after that they'll keep quiet.

2. If you forget your lunch, there's always omiyage.

Shiroi-koibito and day old green tea are part of a balanced lunch.


Plus, Shirokoibito was my club name back in Roppongi in the 80's.

Surely, no one will notice a few extra missing, but they may quite possibly notice those few extra wrappers on the edge of your desk and wonder who the hell you think you are.

3. Cut someone off when they say goodbye

If you're in the process of stealthily "going home for lunch", and someone catches you red-handed and begins to say "otsukaresama desh---" [have a nice d---], cut them off with a friendly, if not brisk "konnichiwa!" You're the forty-seven ronin, and the front door is Kira Yoshinaka and Nishimura-sensei is Prince of Sendai [see below]. Right?

You gotta do what you gotta do, man.


4. Laminate shit.

That's what the laminating machine's there for.

5. If you make a spelling or grammar mistake in class, blame it on your dialect.

This happens to the best of us, where the teacher -- who obviously has read "The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in the LL Room", or felt scorned by what they read in "Your ALT is Just Not That Into You" (both available from Doubleday) -- smugly points out an obvious mistake you made in front of the whole class, and it's always embarrassing, unless you act a bit holier-than-thou, up on your English high-horse, and say that they're wrong and it's actually a very common way of saying it in your own dialect, and then indignantly lament the misfortunes of the Americocentric English education system.

If used properly, this guide will help bring about antipathy, foster a vague infamy, halt pesky enkai invitations and help cement negative stereotypes about Westerners.

"Tragicomic"

I was flipping through some books at work looking for something-- anything-- teachable, and I happened upon a picture dictionary. A picture dictionary, for those not in the know, are glossaries of vocabulary arranged by subject which use illustrations instead of definitions.

I found this one series of pictures which was keeping it real to the point of being depressingly bleak, but had a strong streak of perhaps-intentional irony running through.

Let's call today's protagonist "Bob". Bob's my age, I reckon. 25 years old, but with a wife and eight year old daughter to support. Judging solely by the pictures, Bob's from a bad home and married young. He's an aspiring rapper from St. Louis who goes by the stage name "Ferret", because of his knack for weaselling out of things. Bob's job at the warehouse gave him time to think. Perhaps a little too much time, because after one night of heavy drinking with the guys, they decided get revenge against the bourgeoisie by breaking and entering. Someone called the cops, and while Bob's nimble friends got away easy, Bob, always the slow one, was run down by even the heftiest of middle age cops.


Caught! The misnamed "Ferret" is not looking too proud of himself. I want you to take note of one particular detail: mullet and sideburns. But in the next shot, Bob's cleaned himself up a bit for his impending trial.

But look at that vacant look his eyes. The eyes of a criminal.


His lawyer's hired/provided by the state, so now LET THE TRIAL BEGIN!


Bob and his lawyer are optimistic, but unfortunately that optimism is unfounded.


Look at his expression:


Poor Bob! He looks so sooooooooooooo sad. ☹ Good thing Bob has a lot more time on his hands, to think about his sins and how to survive on the inside.

Actually, from the look of it, the stress of prison aged Bob terribly through those seven long years, because the last panel has a significantly greyer, balder Bob walking back out into the world, so new and frightening.


He appears to be wearing the same suit that he wore to his sentencing too, leading me to believe this is the only possession from his old life that he has left.

I invite you to take a closer look at his radically different hair styles:



I think the moral this depressingly blunt story is, DON'T DO CRIME. Though, in my version, he finds religion, joining the Five Percenters, and focuses his experiences in the clink into his debut album, which sells a million copies in it's first week.

Last we heard from Bob, he was living in a 50,000 square foot mansion in Farmington, Connecticut and was doing family movies.

And now, Sagas of Saga presents "Natto: A Comedy of Errors"

It all started at the ruggedly beautiful and yet refinedly classy Shikian Ryokan in Oita Prefecture, Japan. I'll save you the details of the ryokan, other than a fantastic main building and individual Japanese-style guest houses, each with a large private onsen bath made of solid granite and the size of a car.

Breakfast the next morning was a buffet style with really well made Japanese food. This is where our story begins. I piled up the rice, fish, soup and a small paper cup with the following label:


Me: Ohh... "yuu... ki... something-something mame." Mame means beans! It's probably dried soya beans. Mmmm!

Misato: I thought you hated natto.

Me: *thinking something else I took had a tiny big of natto on it* Oh, yeah, it's okay. I don't hate it. I just don't like it.

I opened the label and peered in at fermented soya beans reeking of ammonia and the sweat of the oppressed.

In pure desperation, I mixed in as much rice as possible and added a little packet of Japanese mustard, which is essentially like watering down poison. If anything, it just draws out the pain.


I started out optimistic. In fact, I decided that I'd man it up and eat it. Japan is a waste-not-want-not society, which means it's rude and shameful to leave even a grain of rice on your plate. This, I actually really respect, so I wanted to try my best.

Me: Wow! It's sticky! Fun... exotic...



It started out all fun and games until I started getting it on my hands. My enthusiasm wained after this.

Me: Um...

Misato: Ganbarinasai.



After finishing about half of it, and absolutely everything else on my plate in some depressing attempt to filibuster, I started to give up on manliness and maturity altogether, reverting to a child-like state.

At this point, a storm was brewing. In my bowels.



Eventually, I gave up and shovelled the rest of the beans back into the paper cup and tried to hide my shame with napkins and the label. An hour had passed and I had completely failed at Japanese food and table manners. Clearly, not my best moment in Japan.

Top 10 Japanese Words that ALTs Use In Casual Conversation (Part 2)

Part two of my top 10 list of most common Japanese words used by foreigners in Japan. I hope you enjoy!

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Konbini [kon-been-ee]
- noun

Ever wish there was a place where you could buy such things as snacks, stationery, a bottle of French wine, concert tickets, some lunch, DVD movies, clothing, video games, umbrellas, and "love magic", and where you can even pay your bills; all in one convenient store? Try 7-11, Lawson, AM-PM Mini Mart, Family Mart, or one of the many other fine Japanese konbini.

Yes, I know 7-11 exists outside of Japan. In fact, most of the Japanese konbinis started off life as American companies, then were bought by Japanese companies, but in Japan they're unbelievably highly competitive, doing very specialized and localized market research which they call "Dominant" (yes, an English adjective), and end up being something else altogether. So much so, that they go beyond the North American image of a "corner store" and little by little has become... the konbini!

[Origin: Japanese コンビニ, itself from the English convenience store]

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Gaijin [gahy-jin]
- noun, adjective, interjective

I've been in Japan for about a year, and I'm willing to guess that anyone who knows a smattering of Japanese phrases has come across this one already, so I won't go into the details of the nuances or etymology beyond the meaning "foreigner", except that it's a shortened form of gaikokujin, or "person-from-a-foreign-country". And, it's pretty rude. And Japanese people say it all the time. And the Japanese people that use this shortened form of gaikokujin would be horrified if they I used the shortened forms of "Nipponjin" or "Japanese".

And let's not even get into nanban chicken.

All this, of course, does not stop the gaijin community from using "gaijin" in every other sentence. In fact, just the other day I was in Fukuoka with my gaijin friends and spotted some strange, suspicious, possibly criminally-active foreigner-looking gaijins coming our way and I said, "Goddamn, there're a lot of gaijins here!" with a bit of autoxenophobic excitement.

I personally used the word "gaijin" 46 times today. I counted.

See also: Gaijin Smash.

[Origin: Japanese 外人, itself a contraction of 外国人]

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Eki [ey-kee, ek-ee]
- noun

Train station. I don't know why we use this particular Japanese word since Japanese train stations closely resemble their Western equivalent, but maybe because very few of us had lives so intimately connected to a mere train station. Ever wake up at 6:15 AM to be on time for a lonely commuter train? If you have, you feel my pain. Pushing through a noisey, hostile crowd of uniformed students, barely (and sometimes not) avoiding hitting your head on handle bars which are all at a painfully low six-foot level -- pushing through just to get out at your stop...


At the same time as I associate the eki with so many terrible things, it's also the home of plenty of good memories, so what can I say? I love my eki.

[Origin: Japanese 駅]

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Onsen
- noun

Ever feel like sitting in a bit bathtub filled with sulphuric water, ass-naked with a few of your best mates? Well then you'd best to Japan, me son! This is at first the most uncomfortable thing in the world, but after a couple of times, it stops being anything of an issue and becomes one of the most relaxing things to do on a Sunday afternoon. Especially if you're sipping a beer and are outside in the warm water on a cold winter day staring off at the mountains. Said to be quite healthy too.

The first time I went to an onsen was at the very end of operating hours, and as we were leaving, a security guard came to ask my naked self to bend over and pull out the big onsen bath plug to let the water out for the night. Awkward!

[Origin: Japanese 温泉]

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Keitai
- noun

Keitais! Teacher, mother, secret lover. While you Westerner types are spending X amount of dough on Blackberries per month ($100+?), my little keitai -- the Japanese word for "cell phone" -- was the smallest of the small and cheapest of the cheap, and it combines an ordinary phone with a dedicated e-mail client, web browser, mp3 player, video player, digital camera, digital video camera, dictionary, calculator, etc. Behold(!):


Much like Golem from Lord of the Rings, I love and hate my keitai. I love it because it's fairly useful for communication, but really because it's an endless source of entertainment. Get bored? Send an innane e-mail to all my friends. I hate it because, aside from brain tumors, and for that matter a tumor on my thigh where my pocket is, it's annoying! First of all, I use it as an alarm clock, with it's handy mp3 player playing Kid Koala's "Like Irregular Chickens" (starting at the one minute point) and so I associate it with waking up at 6:15 for crowded commuter trains, but also, it's like a computer in every way, but much less convenient. I don't LIKE typing e-mails with my thumbs, damn it! Lastly, I got that ultra-slim model. The purple one on the top right, actually, because I thought it was dark brown in the muted lighting of the store, and I think dark brown electronics will eventually replace the white lacquer look that Apple's been pushing, so might as well get behind this one now. But I got the smallest phone they had, because my goal was a phone the size and shape of a credit card, and the only drawback, or at least the principal drawback is, I have to endure all manner of folk telling me "It's cute that such a big man has such a small keitai." Pff! Whatever. At least I'm not overcompensating for anything.

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I know this is a "top 10" list, but I didn't number them, let alone choose a favourite. Have a favourite? Post a comment and tell me which! Also, I put two movie and two TV references in this post: figure out which, and I'll buy you a beer.

Top 10 Japanese Words that ALTs Use In Casual Conversation (Part 1)

I've heard the Japanese in Vancouver is rather "slangy". The English in Montreal's soaked up Francicisms enough to be considered a distinct dialect, and Acadian French contains such witticisms as "ridez le truck". Minority languages tend to work this way-- slowly creolizing, de-creolizing, and then eventually disappearing.

I used to be one of them Montreal English, and now I'm a foreigner living in Japan. There aren't too many of us, and if there's one thing that unites us, it's how we fracture the Japanese language at the expensive of our own. Here's the first half of my top 10 list:

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Haro! [hah-roh]
- interjection

English, sort of. Think of this as English fried and then refried. If you've ever been within 50 metres of a group of 10-year-old Japanese boys, you've heard this. If you've been in Japan long enough, you've probably said it.

Today's kids are getting savvy to the fact that... not every white person is a English speaking American citizen, and they occasionally throw out the buenos días and namashites. One time when I got a "haro!" from somewhere behind me, I threw back a nice, crisp "bonjour!". You know, to internationalize. I assume it's the first time he ever heard this, 'cause I faintly heart a sad and confused "bon... jour?"

[Origin: Japanese school children ハロー!, var. of hello, itself var. of hallo, itself var. of hollo, itself var. of earlier holla]

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Genki [gen-kee]
- adjective
Genki isn't in any English dictionaries I know of, but make no mistake: we gaijins have bastardised and Anglicised the sucker until it's Sino-Japanese etymology is just a painful memory. But what does it mean? Genkiness is a mix of exitement, happiness and healthiness, or in other words... "exuberance"?

A quick Google image search yeilds a genki carrot:


Notice the glassy look of excitement on his face and the gung-ho attitute. After spending even days in Japan, everyone's genki or not-genki. There are no other emotions.

[Origin: Japanese 元気]
-Related forms
Genkiness, genkize, genkify, genkerific

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Nomihodai [noh-mee-hoh-dahy]
- noun, verb

All you can drink for two hours for about $15-20. Way to give'r to your liver, eh? Sometimes you get free food and it often it involves making an ass of oneself with coworkers singing terrible songs in karaoke.

I did this last night, in fact, and now I'm feeling not-so-genki.


Note: nomihodais may lead to liver failure.

[Origin: Japanese 飲み放題]

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Tabehodai [tah-bey-hoh-dahy]
- noun, verb

All you can eat for about $10. Sometimes it's à la carte, and sometimes buffet. Either way, prepare to eat a lot of meat, fish, squid and pizza or indeterminable quality.


Sometimes, you can get "nomi-tabehodais", which combines the two into a swirling vortex of fatty meat, a cynical single vegetable serving consisting of some raw cabbage and an endless amount of watery booze. Highly recommended.

[Origin: Japanese 飲み放題]

Misdo: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Japan

About six weeks ago we had a near-Biblical flood after several days and nights of rain. And the day of the flood was the day I had to commute an hour.

I rode to the station in knee-deep water and it was still raining, so I wasn't sure what I'd be going to-- work, or to a terrifying nightmare of floods, mudslides, emergency helicopters and mostly likely Jihadists, based on alarmist terrorism posters that the train stations have been suddenly plastered with:


I hesitated. The train that arrives just before mine was, for the record, three hours late. Mine was on time, but I still couldn't get in contact for any sort of authority figure to find out of schools are cancelled when there's a threat of a natural disaster like today (--they aren't). I wasn't going to get on that train until I knew for sure I could, so I ended up having a breakfast of waxy doughnuts and sugary, milky café au lait at the American-founded but so so Japanese chain, Mister Donut, affectionately called Misdo. In Canada we have doughnuts with exciting names like "Maple Dip", or "Sour Cream Plain" -- and in Japan, they have names like "Maron Whip" and "Old Fashion Maccha Choko". It's bizarre and wonderful, because it was originally an American chain, and in the same way you wouldn't want to go to a sushi restaurant in your home town and see a menu of English translations, in Japan, restaurants with Western-style food will have a lot of English on the menu, but shamelessly mixed in with untranslated Japanese nouns. It has a similar kitsch appeal to bilingual packaging in Canada with brands like Cap'n Crunch being famously rendered in French as Capitaine Crounche -- not quite a literal translation, but this strange middle ground.


I was exhausted by the time I made to the station through the floodwater, so I was sitting there drinking my coffee in a haze. I hadn't put my change away, so it was lazily sitting there on the tray. I got a refill of coffee, which was somewhere just below boiling, and burning my mouth when I took a big gulp, I left in disgust, having forgotten about my change. A pretty sizable 600 yen.

Having made an ass of myself, I decided never to go back there again. There is NO tipping in Japan so it wouldn't have been misinterpreted as a friendly gesture. Just pure gaijin stupidity.


Finally, one day last week I bit the bullet because I was jonesing for that coffee. As far as coffee goes, it's just as bad as Timmy's back home, if not worse, and the heavy cigarette smoke somehow adds to the appeal. How often do you come out of a coffee shop stinking of nicotine in Canada? I rest my case.

So, I got to the counter and there was a bit of a rumbling. One of the ladies was taking a long hard look at me and said something inaudible to her coworker and I thought, "Awee shit. They're thinking, 'That's that guy! Thanks for the change, you idiot foreigner!'" Instead, she comes up to me with a baggie with my change in it! At least a month later. Every last yen was kept behind the counter, waiting for my return. In kind of a Grinch-like moment, my general feeling of alienation that's slowly been building as a foreigner in Japan disappeared and I gave probably the most sincere thank you I've have since coming here. I was absolutely amazed, and something this simple really shows just how civil this society can be. Thoughtfulness (omoriyari) is a sign of adulthood in Japan and is promoted constantly. But human nature, no matter what country, can be pretty selfish -- I really wouldn't have been surprised or even angry for minimum wage workers at a doughnut shop to pocket the change. But, this really opened my eyes to a cultural difference that I can't quite put my finger on. Something prompted the woman to see my money, not take it, inform the other staff members and have it kept for me. This is sort of thing that really only exists in Canada in small towns amongst particularly well-raised people, but having this at a train station with thousands of people passing through a day-- really impressive.


No longer will I make fun of your silly Engrish, Misdo! No longer will I mock your wax-covered doughnuts and burnt milky coffee. From now on, you have a special place in my heart, and will remain an shining example of everything that's good about Japan.