Senkaku Island Notes

I've been going through a huge time line of the Senkaku Islands conflict which I found online in order to prepare for (maybe) having to write an essay for a grad school application. (We'll find out about that part soon enough.)

But I was reading through the time line and through some essays and newspaper articles and was thinking back to conversations I was having with Ikumi about it and what she was saying about extremely patriotic-- and sometimes just very extreme essays-- Japanese people were writing about the crisis on websites like mixi. I also happened to see a photo album on the Globe and Mail's website with a wide variety of far-right racist douchebags.

With all this swimming in my head I started reading a 40 year old essay by famous Japanologist Donald Keene and just-as-famous Mishima Yukio buddy talking about the cultural effects the Sino-Japanese War had on Japan, and he started off the whole essay talking about how before the war Japan still had a definite image of China as being culturally and militaristically absolutely superior to the still-東夷 Japan, with huge Chinese ironclad warships visiting Japanese ports and Japanese diplomats still being given "the treatment" in China while trying everything to impress Chinese diplomats in Tokyo. As the extremely popular war progressed there was a wide-scale propaganda campaign put on by newspapers and book and woodblock print publishers to glorify Japanese soldiers while depicting the Chinese as weak and cowardly and wholly undeserving of their now-perhaps-mythologized glorious past. This view of China seems to have continued on to this day amongst the previously stated far-right racist douchebags, some of whom are in parliament, and a lot more revealingly: it was during the same war where the image of the Chinese went 180° that China lost the Senkaku Islands to Japan. (This is only after an evenings pre- and post-StarCraft 2 reading, but) I think the economic and diplomatic conflict between Japan and China over the last two months, as well as the general attitude of nationalist groups in Japan toward China, really began during the war 115 years ago. The atrocities of World War 2 and subsequent US occupation, the communist revolution in China and sometimes forced attempts to "reunite" the country, and more than anything, the discovery of 100 billion barrels of oil in the vicinity of the islands of course have a huge role on this crisis, but I think the crux of the issue has, Japan and China are at a crossroads right now the same way they were 115 years ago in terms of regional power and influence and Japan seems to be relying too much on those old post-war stereotypes of China being a backwards, lesser country and China seems to be embracing the even older stereotypes of their own grandeur.

(How many Chinese or Japanese ultranationalists will leave long rants in the comments section now...)

London 2012 Mascots Look Like Vortigaunts

Former Saga resident Charlene posted in her blog about London's lovable... eh... well, shiny Olympic mascots for the 2012 games, Wenlock and Mandeville -- which I believe are named after the finger puppets from Salad Fingers.

I realized, though, that I'd seen them somewhere before. It's been bugging me all day, but as soon as I got home today it hit me like a sack of oranges.

Exhibit A: Wenlock and Mandeville, Mascots


Exhibit B: The Half-Life game series aliens, the Vortigaunts.


OH. MY. GOD!!

Wenlock and Mandeville are Vortigaunts!

This is probably to get us ready for the invasion!!

AUGHHHH! *hyperventilate*

On Host Clubs, Racism and Robotics

This is a pretty snazzy little documentary by Japanese-American Adam Yamaguchi for the show "Vanguard".



Usually when I see Westerners talk about Japan about TV, especially when they talk about major cultural differences like femmy men pouring drinks for yuppie spinsters, or the emergence of robots in the workplace, they present it as being extremely weird-yet-common place (in a "that's so Japanese" sort of way), so it's refreshing to see something that's well analyzed and with a knowledgeable host.

I still don't quite get the robot thing though. Maybe Kyushu is too inaka (ie. the boonies), but I've never seen a robot in Japan. Not once, ever. But, unlike other news magazine documentaries I've seen about the robotics-versus-immigration debate (or, "non-humans versus sub-humans"), this documentary actually talks about cultural differences behind this phenomenon.

I was thinking too, about how people act in stores. I was just at the grocery store and was watching the kid in front of me at the till. The cashier was using ultra formal Japanese with him but not making eye contact. The kid took his change, didn't look at her or respond, and just walked away. This is not really unusual in Japan, and from a fuh-fuh-fuh-foreigner's point of view, at first it was kind of nice, but the ultra-formal Japanese sounded so scripted anyway after a while that now it doesn't even feel like they're talking *to* me. My point is, replace that cashier with a robot and no one would notice.

And I really feel sorry for the Koreans, Chinese and Brazilians in the documentary. I mean, there are enough angry rants in here as it is so I'll save it, but I feel for you, dawgs.

Edit: I want to become a host because, as some of you know, it's been my life-long dream to get drunk every night and talk about virility for some old grand-mama who might be-- nay-- is decked out like a Christmas... tree

The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in the LL Room

Or, "How To Be An Asshole So Overtly That No One Can Really Be Offended" (volume 1)
Or... "I had a really terrible week at work."

If you're a long-term reader, you may remember, my pièce de résistance "The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in a Japanese Office Environment", which gave instructions on the following leftist revolutionary activities:

- If a coworker leaves a stack of papers on your desk, hide it

- Abuse the laminating machine

- Blame your own bad English on your "dialect" (etc.)

I wrote a guide on being an ass of an ALT, which many of us certainly are, but many of my Japanese coworkers have expressed concern that I took the ethnocentric route and ignored the Japanese point of view, because, dammit, we're all human beings and human beings are basically evil, spiteful simian turd-throwers.

So, in my second volume, I will give advice for any team teacher unlucky enough to be forced into working with a lazy, stupid, badly-dressed punk of a gaikokujin. Sometimes, if they push you, you gotta shove back.

So let me present, the The Furious Guide to Being Passive Aggressive in the LL Room.

1. Talk about the ALT to the students in simple, understandable Japanese in front of the Japanese-speaking ALT.

Have you ever walked into a classroom, noticed an ALT chatting with some students, and announced in a loud voice "彼は外人だから英語がぺらぺらだね！" (He's a white, so that's why he's fluent in English!"). If you have, then you're probably the former principal at my school.

2. Got team teaching class? Mark some papers!

Your prefecture spends $40,000 a year to bring a foreign language teacher in to assist you in your classroom to enrich the classes for both you and your students.

But this is probably a good opportunity to get some of that pesky marking done. So while the ALT is up at the front of the class "assisting" you, you should stand at the back, completely ignore him or her, and get the real work done. Marking tests and quizzes.



(Alternative: still ignore the ALT, and give him or her these tests or quizzes to mark!)

3. Bring up the war with a nuance of blame (even if the ALT is not American).

There's absolutely no better environment than an international communication class to bring up the war. Not only bring it up, but avoid any association with your country and any aggression, while still demonizing the enemy. POWs? Huh? Unit 731? What's that? Seriously-- what is that? I've never heard of it. Should I know? ...Let's talk about Hiroshima instead.

4. What's his name? I think it's "ALT" or something.

It takes time -- and time is money, as the students inexplicably all know how to say in English -- to ask the foreigner it's name, and it probably wouldn't understand the question in the first place, so let's call it by it's job title. The ALT. No wait-- ALT-sensei to be polite. Well... ALT-san, anyway. And the ALT don't mind if you use it's job title to describe it while talking about it in front of it as though it wasn't sitting right there looking at you. It is an ALT after all. It's like calling a spade a spade, or a German Shepherd a German Shepherd.

If correctly used, this guide will ruin all international communication, effectively destroy the chance that the ALT will choose to recontract, and spread hideous lies about xenophobia in Japan the world over.

Disclaimer: Dear bosses, there is no Nishimura-sensei. If there was, I'm sure he would be very nice.

The Difference Between "Gaikokujin" and "(Go Home You F'ing) Foreigner"

One of the first things any ALT hears during orientation back in their home country is "don't try to change things." The system is what it is, the culture is what it is, and trying to change everything will probably alienate you further and cause you much frustration and gnashing of teeth. 99% of the time, this is true.

But back last winter, I was given a stack of essays to mark by students who made a trip to Asia Pacific University, a major international school in Beppu, Oita Prefecture. They met some of the foreign students there, of which there are many, and came back and wrote about their experiences. Most of them were okay, but maybe 20-25% of them kept referring to the full-time Japanese speaking students as "foreigners".

[Editor's note: In Japanese, gaikokujin (外国人) means "non-Japanese", though literally means "foreigner". It's applied very liberally, and has no particular negative nuance despite exclusion and generalization. Japanese people generally don't refer to people by race or nationality, for better or for worse. Most people here just think of people as being Japanese-- or not. So if you're a Canadian tourist, for example, you think of yourself as being a foreigner in another country. However, if you're a Japanese tourist, you might think, 'Ooooh look at all the foreigners here.' And just a side note, last time I went on vacation to Canada I said in shock and horror "God damn there're a lot of white people here!"]

So they kept calling these Chinese and Indonesian and Sri Lankan students "foreigners", and it kind of dawned on me how the students clearly don't know the difference in nuance between the benign word "gaikokujin" and the much more negative word "foreigner", so I showed them the distinctly negative definition in the Oxford English dictionary:

1. a person who comes from a different country
EXAMPLE: The fact that I was a foreigner was a big disadvantage.

2. a person who does not belong in a particular place
EXAMPLE: I have always been regarded as a foreigner by the local folk.

and left it at that.

Next essay, a couple of students talked about "the foreigners" [actually "foreign" fish from tropical "countries" invading Japanese waters], so I figured, yeah, I guess I really can't change anything. If Japan wants to be weird and xenophobic, they can do it without me.

But then when I got to school today the teacher from this particular class asked me to correct a draft of a speech one of these students wrote, and the whole thing was about the word "foreigner" -- about realizing through the experience at the university and my little lecture about it that the word "foreigner", or even "gaikokujin", can hurt or offend people. He went on to give his own opinion that this is left over from Japan's period of national isolation and said we should try to look at each other as being simply human beings before than anything else. Dude! I was absolutely floored, because, to be honest, I've been really sick of the whole "gaijin" issue lately. Sick of it being an issue. Both for recent depressing personal reasons, and broader reasons [for the latter, read the last two posts].

This is the first time where I know-- not hope, but know that I've made a difference here. So despite whatever you hear at orientation, if there's something that's really important to you, don't just do the whole "ALT gaijin clown" thing even though it's easier and it's what they want you to do, but do your duty as a teacher and as someone representing your country and at least try to tell people about your point of view. If you do it respectfully, it won't hurt the wa, and someone out there might just be listening.

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!

---

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]

---

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]

---

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]

---

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]

---

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.

---

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:

---

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]

---

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

---

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]

---

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]