Hi guys,

It's been a while since I last posted sth here. It doesn't conclude I forgot you all. I've always been a regular stalker of your profiles and sharing my own updates in facebook. In this post, I wanted to share sth I read recently. It was, no doubt, a matter of interest for me. What do you say?

The Japan Times Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011
JUST BE CAUSE
The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner
By ARUDOU DEBITO
Courtesy http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20110802ad.html
Blog entry with copious comments at http://www.debito.org/?p=9289

(NJ = non-Japanese)

A few months ago I had beers with several old Japan-hand guys (combined we have more than a century of Japan experiences), and one of them asked an interesting question:

"After all our years here, how many close Japanese male friends do you have?" (Excluding Debito, of course.)

We glanced amongst ourselves and realized that none of us hadany. Not one we would count on as a "friend." Nobody to whom we could talk openly, unreservedly, and in depth with, about what's on our minds. Or contact for a place to stay because our spouse was on the warpath. Or call at 3 a.m. to announce the birth of our latest baby. Or ring up on the spur of the moment because we didn't want to drink alone that evening. Or who would care enough to check on us in the event of a natural disaster. Not one.

This occasioned much discussion and theorizing, both at the table and on my blog later (see www.debito.org/?p=8933)

(A quick note to readers already poised to strike with poison pens: None of the following theories are necessarily mine, nor do I necessarily agree with them. They are just to stimulate further discussion.)

One theory was that Japanese salarymen of our age group are generally boring people. Too busy or work-oriented to cultivate outside interests or hobbies, these one-note-Taros generally "talk shop" or resort to shaggy-dog stories about food. We contrasted them with Japanese women, who, thanks to more varied lifestyles and interests (including travel, language and culture), are more engaging and make better conversation partners (even if, my friends hastily added, the relationship had not become physical).

Another idea was that for many Japanese men, their hobby was you. By this, the speaker meant the culture vultures craving the "gaijin shiriaiexperience" or honing their language skills. This was OK in the beginning (especially when we first got here) but it got old quickly, as they realized we wanted to learn Japanese too, and when they weren't willing to reciprocate. Not to mention that we eventually got tired of hearing blanket cultural explanations for individual issues (which is how culture vultures are hard-wired to see the world, anyway).

Another theory was that after a certain age, Japanese men don't make "friends" with anyone. The few lifelong friends they would ever make were in school; once they entered the job market, all other males were treated as rivals or steps to promotion -- meaning you put up a mask and didn't reveal potentially compromising personal information. Thus if Japanese men were going to make friends at all, they were going to make them permanently, spending enormous time and energy imprinting themselves on precious few people. This meant they had to choose wisely, and non-Japanese -- generally seen as in Japan only temporarily and with unclear loyalties -- weren't worth the emotional investment.

Related to this were issues of Japan's hierarchical society. Everyone was either subordinate or superior -- kohai or senpai -- which interfered with friendships as the years marched on: Few non-Japanese (NJ) wanted to languish as kohai, and few Japanese wanted to deal with a foreign senpai. Besides, went the theory, this relationship wasn't something we'd classify as a "friendship" anyway. Conclusion: Japanese men, as opposed to Japanese women with their lifetime coffee klatches, were some of the most lonely people on the planet.

Another suggestion was that this was just part of how life shakes down. Sure, when you're young and carefree you can hang out willy-nilly, spend money with abandon and enjoy the beer-induced bonhomie (which Japan's watering holes are very good at creating) with everyone all night. But as time goes on and people get married, have kids, take on a mortgage and a nagging spouse (who doesn't necessarily want you spending their money on your own personal fun, especially if it involves friends of the opposite sex), you prioritize, regardless of nationality.

Fine, our group countered, but we've all been married and had kids, and yet we're still meeting regularly -- because NJ priorities include beers with friends from time to time. In fact, for us the older the relationship gets, the more we want to maintain it -- especially given all we've been through together. "New friends are silver, but old friends are gold."

Still another, intriguing theory was the utilitarian nature of Japanese relationships, i.e. Japanese make friends not as a matter of course but with a specific purpose in mind: shared lifestyles, interests, sports-team fandom, what have you. But once that purpose had run its course -- because you've exhausted all conversation or lost the commonality -- you should expect to lose contact. The logic runs that in Japan it is awkward, untoward, even rude to extend a relationship beyond its "natural shelf life." This goes even just for moving to another city in Japan: Consider it normal to lose touch with everyone you leave behind. The thread of camaraderie is that thin in Japan.

However, one naturalized Japanese friend of mine (who just turned 70) pooh-poohed all these theories and took me out to meet his drinking buddies (of both genders, mostly in their 60s and 70s themselves). At this stage in their lives things were less complicated. There were no love triangles, no senpai-k●hai conceits, no "shop talk," because they were all retired. Moreover they were more outgoing and interesting, not only because they were cultivating pastimes to keep from going senile, but also because the almighty social lubricant of alcohol was omnipresent (they drank like there was no tomorrow; for some of them, after all, there might not be!). For my friend, getting Japanese to lower their masks was pretty easy.

Fine, but I asked if it weren't a bit unreasonable for us middle-aged blokes to wait for this life stage just to make some Japanese friends. These things may take time, and we may indeed have to spend years collecting shards of short interactions from the local greengrocer before we put together a more revealing relationship. But in the meantime, human interaction with at least one person of the same gender that goes beyond platitudes, and hopefully does not require libation and liver damage, is necessary now for sanity's sake, no?

There were other, less-developed theories, but the general conclusion was: Whatever expectation one had of "friends" -- either between Japanese and NJ, or between Japanese themselves -- there was little room over time for overlap. Ultimately NJ-NJ relationships wound up being more friendly, supportive and long-lasting.

Now it's time for disclaimers: No doubt the regular suspects will vent their spleen to our Have Your Say section and decry this essay as overgeneralizing, bashing, even discriminating against Japanese men.

Fire away, but you'd be missing the point of this column. When you have a good number of NJ long-termers saying they have few to no long-term Japanese friends, this is a very serious issue -- with a direct connection to issues of immigration and assimilation of outsiders. It may be a crude barometer regarding life in Japan, but let's carry on the discussion anyway and see how sophisticated we can make it.

So let's narrow this debate down to one simple question: As a long-term NJ resident in Japan, how many Japanese friends do you have, as defined in the introduction above? (You might say that you have no relationship with anyone of any nationality with that much depth, but that's awfully lonely -- I dare say even unhealthy -- and I hope you can remedy that.) Respondents who can address the other sides of the question (i.e. NJ women befriending Japanese women/men, and same-sex relationships) are especially welcome, as this essay has a shortage of insight on those angles.

Be honest. And by "honest", I mean giving this question due consideration and experience: People who haven't been living in Japan for, say, about 10 years, seeing how things shake down over a significant portion of a lifetime's arc, should refrain from commentary and let their senpai speak. "I've been here one year and have oodles of Japanese friends, you twerpski!" just isn't a valid sample yet. And please come clean about your backgrounds when you write in, since age, gender, occupation, etc. all have as much bearing on the discussion as your duration of time in Japan.

Above all, remember what my job as a columnist is: to stimulate public discussion. Respondents are welcome to disagree (I actually consider agreement from readers to be an unexpected luxury), but if this column can at least get you to think, even start clacking keyboards to The Japan Times, I've done my job. Go to it. Consider yourself duly stimulated, and please offer us some friendly advice.

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Debito Arudou's new novel "In Appropriate" is on sale (www.debito.org/inappropriate.html) Twitter arudoudebito. Send your comments to community@japantimes.co.jp
ENDS

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All for now. Thanks for reading! Have another read again tomorrow at the Japan Times!
Arudou Debito (debito@debito.org)
Archives, Comments, RSS, and more at www.debito.org. Twitter arudoudebito

DEBITO.ORG NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 5, 2011 ENDS

Don't forget to add your comments if you've read it. I wanna know who's still alive in this blog.
Cheers!

I do.

As I was striding the autumn/winter clad streets the other evening, it suddenly dawned on me. "I miss Japan". Well, it's not like I haven't mentioned this or realised it earlier but it's just, it hit me out of nowhere.
I began thinking about the food. Ahh..the food. I could buy and cook whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Then on my way out, I might just grab a furaido chikin or two. Then as I walk towards the ryou, I'd just take things slow, walk at my own pace, noticing so many interesting and beautiful things around me.
I miss the transport as well. There's nothing like having a little order in my life ^^
And when I finally get back at whatever time without having to worry about my safety, I can finally take a seat (or lie xD) in front of my lappy with the heater turned on at just the right temperature.

Now, I have to get my grocery, shopping etc. done by like 2 or 3 at the latest. Sometimes even waking up at 5/6 to go to market.
I have to brisk most of the time because the pedestrian lights in Melbourne are either ridiculously too long or too short.
Worst of all..I don't have a heater! Well, that's the main point actually. Because winter is so cold and also because I lost all my "heat-retention" abilities =(

Bookworm is back!

Hey guys, hope that you are doing fine and that, this time, blogspot will understand I want SMALL-sized Trebuchet and not X-SMALL sized fonts.
Post-edit: no, appearently blogspot still likes changing my 'small' to 'x-small'. Sorry guys, I won't change it. I have to change the html line by line to make it work and I just don't feel like it.


Just going through the neighbourhood because as Nurani said we need to prevent this blog from entering blogspot's spam list again. And because I was reading Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" and found something amazing. I think we all fit in that segment in one way or other so I hope you don't mind I share this!


"I said this one day to the doctor in charge of my case, and he told me that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn't happen overnight, and if you try and force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified explanation, of course, ant it's just one small part of the problems we have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed". That's what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly not to hurt one another".


Now, I bet at this point of the post each one of us have different ways of reacting to the words, but let me break it down. I just find it interesting how Murakami plays with the human mind, because he uses a strong word (deformity), then shows that it's not such a bad thing when he talks about 'getting used to it', but soon after that he brings up that the character will never be able to do that because she thinks her deformity 'hurts' people.
Then again, I believe that we fit in one way or the other (not only because we are foreigners), because as far as I know you guys (and myself), I think there are some walls and obstacles we haven't come over yet because we still fear our own capabilities. Or should I say deformities? It depends on which word you use for it, and whether you think that word is 'good' or 'bad'. I don't know, it was just hauntingly interesting.

Prevent spamming!

Hey guys, How're you all? Finally could log into this blog from Bangladesh. I was afraid it"d be spammed again. Glad we all survived from the disaster and hope we're all mentally prepared for upcoming semester. C'mon guys! I, myself had been nagging about how my life sucks in Japan, but I realized that these are the days I'm gonna remember the most. Definitely I've discovered a soft corner for the place I called second 'home' so far, so I've decided to use it as a motive (I sincerely hope it helps). This year's home-coming party was nice, would have been better with those familiar faces. I believe, we'll never be in short of stories or have an awkward silence in midst of our hang-outs ever. I'll just say, I wanna see how much you've changed, or not? Since, I've used 'I miss you all' far too many times. xD

Aaaand!...それで？

ハッピいいい~~
クリースマス!!
って、ちょっと。。遅いかな、かな？へへ
みんなゴキゲンよ
再び、新たなニューご新年を！。。なんとか。。。なんとかに、ね？
じゃあ、お久しぶりに
目茶苦茶だ　T.T
ああ、悲しい。。。

Aaaaaaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!

I've midterms tomorrow...dunno what I'm doing here. But feeling like shit. T_T

I still freak out looking at, I prefer to call it, "the book of anatomy" enriched with those fancy characters we call "kanji". But things could have been better.

Well, listening to the stories about why we cough, choke, sneeze or how the antibiotic kung fu fights with the germs was so far so interesting that it actually triggered me to decide to play with drugs. :P

But I was betrayed.

First semester was like counting the number of trees that passed by, in a one and half hour long shinkasen ride from Tokyo to Sendai. Man, how could those professors possibly write and talk simultaneously so fast! Not only that they don't even think what they're saying or writing (otherwise they'd be stuck in the maze forever ever and ever), but also don't let us gasp a breathe.
Phew! But I made through it somehow!

This semester, well, you get a new pair of teachers who doesn't even bother about the syllabus and likes to talk about...you wouldn't even wanna know. If you're too curious...call me! :P ^^" Or you can ask LC too.

So all that's left is reading the text by myself which is gonna take ages for me.
I wanted to upload a photo, but I felt stupid again.
Why am I wasting my time here? Well, I've already wasted enough time in the anatomy classes this semester. I'll consider skiving it off after mid-terms.

I don't hate anatomy. I used to love it. But the circumstances... T_T

I'm working now

well, it's been months ケド　へへ