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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Inherent Qualities
I was going to post this over in my Japan blog, but decided to put it here because of its inherent negative qualities. Take that as a warning. I guess. I do a fair amount of reading online blogs, and recently found a site where gaijin in Tokyo (tourists and longer-term residents) post. One of the blogs was written by a couple from America who teach English in Japan. Naturally I am interested in this particular subject and so I settled in to read a few entries. The first post just about had me sending an email to the woman, who apparently did not a single bit of research about Japan before moving there. Her first complaint was about the high prices of fruit in Japan. If you do any reading about Japan, you know that it has the reputation for being a pretty expensive place to live. And not only that, but fruit is one of the gifts that it's customary to take when you visit someone and so fruit from certain stores tends to be perfect and priced to put it in the gift category. Her next complaint was about the paucity of ATMs in Japan. Every single book about Japan--whether it was written for tourists or longer-term residents--specifically spells out that Japan is a largely cash-based society, and that ATMs are rare--yes, even in Tokyo--and often only open during banking hours. Since she is used to having an ATM around when she needs it however, she was annoyed at how the Japanese do things. Next, she found it cute that her students often "mix up" R's and L's. I thought, I wonder if she ever (as I do) mix up sounds in Japanese (Westerners are famous for not understanding the "double consonant" in Japanese), but it came as no surprise when I read on that she doesn't speak Japanese and has little interest in learning to speak Japanese. Which seems a little shortsighted at best. But then I thought: Am I overreacting to this woman? Am I being, as I am wont to be, a bit overcritical? Okay, I know that I may be a bit hypersensitive to Americans acting like morons overseas, because I know that Americans have a reputation for being morons precisely because of people like this woman. I know when I travel that I'm up against a certain amount of prejudice because of people like this who travel the world with an attitude like "Oh, how cute and primitive and naive your culture is compared to mine. Oh, look, honey, they don't even have convenient ATMs!" I was talking with Max about this couple's blog (and by extension this subject) this morning and he brought up the point that when people like this are in teaching positions, they often tend to indulge a kind of easy superiority (since they know English and their students don't, so they must be superior, right?). And, yes, I do understand that this is, in part, a student/teacher phenomenon that goes on between Americans and Americans and probably between Japanese and Japanese, too, but it is also a problem between American teachers and Japanese students precisely because the border where two cultures meet is be a problematic place. And Americans have largely been taught that they can take andvantage of this place. (For example, I remember asking Mitch, who used to regularly prey upon his single female students when he taught English in Japan whether or not he ever felt any qualms doing so and he had, but he had done it anyway, reasoning that these women, his students, who looked up to him in his superior position of power, were adults and could make their own choices.) In The Kaisha orientation meeting, the recruiters were very careful to point out that they were not interested in hiring people who might take advantage of the legendary politeness of the Japanese. In traditional cultures--which I believe the Japanese to be if only because their cultural practices reach back further than the 200 or so years that American culture covers the necessary extent to which hospitality must be practiced seems extreme in the face of the kind of selfish ethnocentrism that is routinely practiced on American soil. Ask any Native American or Spanish-American, even those born and raised in the US can see this because they still harbor the vestiges of their culture, despite a US policy of eradicating any and all traditional cultures. And that is not to say that traditional cultures don't harbor selfish people, only that it's usually an exception and not the rule, and it is certainly not a desireable character trait the way it seems to be for many white Americans. So, am I overreacting to this woman? Probably. I guess I've been at the hands of too many superior White people to be comfortable going into any situation as The Expert. I've had too many teachers who thought they knew what was best for me and they were going to make damned sure that I did exactly what they had decided I do. And too, growing up poor, female, Hispanic, and intelligent in the United States, I've often encountered the attitude that I was an object of curiousity, a dog that could talk...and this is my problem, I know. I take a bathroom break (from the TMI file) and while perusing an old The New Yorker come across a review of Tracey Scott Wilson's play "The Story." The is about Yvonne, a black female journalist with a white male lover named Jeff (who is also the editor who gets her a job on a major paper). The review writes: "Being "with" Jeff is a way of being "like" Jeff: white and male and thus free to pursue her own ambitions without having to be nice or grateful for the opportunities offered to her." White and male means that you don't have to be nice. You don't have to be grateful. I mean, you can be if you want to be, but you don't have to be. Other attitudes follow. Some fall on the male side, but just as many fall solely on the white side. But white (and male) is not the norm in this world, so the norm, by extension, is still to be nice and grateful for the opportunities offered to you. I wonder how many people who travel the world know this? And why I feel the need to express my knowledge of it. It's all problematic, but I welcome problematic. Sorry. I know that this is fragmented and imperfect (much like myself), but I'll develop it more as I go along. That's my promise to you.
More lies:
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