Job Discussion Forums

[kdynamic]

Cleaning days are fairly common actually. I don't have to deal with them but that's because I live in a huge building with a seperate crew of people that takes care of all that. I would put up a stink if I was forced to participate but wasn't allowed to have a say in the scheduling.

TK4Lakers - dude you gotta learn to use the quote function! Your posts are very confusing without it.

[luckyloser700]

[SeasonedVet]

CafeBleu
Interesting post.
I find listening to others' experiences interesting.
I must say that some of the things you posted about I have heard about and others I haven't.
But it's your experience.
One thing though I couldn't understand what this was in reference to

[cafebleu]

Thanks for your posts. Seasoned Vet - the point I was making in the 'Inaka Category' comment was that not all negative opinions on life in the Japanese countryside are down to being a maladjusted person or somebody unwilling to fit in.

It has been my experience at times when I've addressed the "honne" underneath the often cultivated nice face of Japan, that there are some posters who seem to take it as a personal insult and respond by acting as if they have all the knowledge under the sun of what I went through in my particular experience. I'm not saying everybody has to repeat what I said, I'm saying that be aware things are in many ways not what they seem in Japan.

There is a definite culture of pettiness and surveillance in your average Japanese rural neighbourhood that ceased to exist some time ago in some other countries. As you saw from my last post, I put that in its historical context. The trouble is, the need for the Japanese to be vigilantes spying on their neighbours to the military police ceased to exist some time ago.

As Seasoned Vet said, it does depend on different regions. But it's interesting that a Japanese academic called Sugimoto has commented on these kinds of things in a book he wrote on Japanese society. He says there is a more 'authoritarian' spirit in Kyushu and I think that's true of where I lived in inaka.

As for people who disagree with me, holding up my home country of the UK as an example - that's about as valid as comparing a cat with an elephant. I grew up in a part of London that is very multi-cultural. My parents, grandparents and great grandparents grew up there and I heard about the days before when Cockneys had a lot to do with their neighbours and knew a lot about local matters.

However, that was more a relationship of people in working class neighbourhoods that had been home to the non affluent, working classes and disadvantaged for centuries. There has always been the notion in the UK (Great Britain as it was before) that "An Englishman's house is his castle." Rural snoops grassing on others were objects of contempt rather than people who were to be humoured and feared, especially after the modernisation of Britain in the 19th century.

Japan has a completely different culture based on centuries of a particularly oppressive feudalism, which hasn't gone away in some respects. The Japanese care far more about what insignificant gossips think than any other people I ever met in my travels or home country. Nobody will band together and tell the block fascists that yes, they will do something if they can. If not, sorry but we have lives to lead. No, your meeting that goes on for hours and achieves nothing is not my priority.

The block fascists with their regressive taxes levied on all irrespective of income, and their monetary penalties for your being absent from their activities because you were carrying out commitments you've made in your own life, never existed in the UK. The pushy gossips who complain to their neighbours about a hedge around your house being too high are not a feature of life in the UK.

Why? They are not tolerated. They'd be told to 'shut it' in no uncertain terms. They're a feature of a society that has been tightly controlled for many centuries in the past, was until the post WW 2 era, and still is today to an extent so many foreigners fail to even notice.

There's also the policing function that these groups carry out and the potential for abuse is endless. Block reps regularly talk with the police and identify individuals and groups they feel are a 'meiwaku' or have committed criminal activities, and given Japan's system of guilty before proven innocence, it's something I can't endorse.

TLakers - do you live in an aparto or a house? Probably if your rent is being taken from your salary you are also paying a neighbourhood fee of some kind. In rural areas wherever these assocations exist, you join or you get regular visits from somebody until you do. I joined up first-off but maybe I should have kept them hanging on.

When I moved out I lived in an apartment block. My landlord was a great guy and I asked about an association, as apato and mansion blocks often have their own. He said there was none - nobody wanted it. Theywere all working people with their own important things to do. Amen to that.

[furiousmilksheikali]

[Glenski]

cafebleu wrote:

[cafebleu]

Yes, if it had been my turn anytime during my residency there to take around the kairanban (newsletter) I would've done it happily - provided the neighbours understood that in my life it wasn't the most important priority.

Mike - I believe that kind of activity by the neighbourhood associations is valuable. Nothing wrong with safety awareness, newsletters, cleaning days, etc.

But when Japanese people make the rules the focus instead of seeing that not everybody is an idle or relatively idle 55 plus person and hasn't got their kind of free time, and punish you for it financially as the supposedly selfish gaijin, then it reminds me of exactly the Yakuza and their extortion.

To make my block's rules more idiotic, the block across the road didn't have that rule. Why not I asked a neighbour across the road? She said because they thought that it wasn't fair on old people to expect them to do cleaning and other activities if they weren't up to it. Fair enough. So there wasn't any penalty for not turning up.

As I mentioned, I let my block know beforehand why I couldn't come but it made no difference whatsoever. The hands were out for 4,000 yen in 'penalties'. I think this kind of thing is usual in Kyushu which other foreigners I knew in my time there described as 'backwards compared to Honshu". That's their opinion - I never lived outside of Kyushu.

And Mike - try refusing in this situation. My friend knew a woman from Eastern Europe married to a Japanese man elsewhere in Kyushu inaka. She didn't join from the jump - she said it reminded her of the regimentationof the past in her home country, she didn't trust her neighbours judgement in allocating the money as they gave a percentage to J charities that waste contributions, and like my friend and myself she didn't see why affluent neighbours' children were given holidays out of the fee.

The locals just kept houndig her. Again and again. In the morning. In the evening. She ended up refusing to open the door unless her friends and husband used a code with the doorbell. In the UK and many countries, this persistence would be called harassment but in Japan it's another example of the rules for rules' sake, and why the Japanese can appear so cold and lacking in feeling to non Japanese.

[kdynamic]

I completely understand your frustration and I would not accept having to pay such a fee either. However, I think ignoring the people and hoping they will go away is not the answer. I think the best way would be to talk to them and try and work out some kind of solution. If you have concerns about where the money goes, offer to be the treasurer, or at least tell them you'll consider paying fi they show you an accounting of all the fund collected and you agree with what they are being used for. If you think the fee system is unfair, offer another way to contribute or reform it. If they are totally unreasonable or harrasing you, it's time to take it to the police or city hall and get someone to mediate the problem. Obviously this is a pain to carry out, but perhaps it's preferable to having crazy old bats ringing your doorbell all the time trying to shake you down for money they think they are owed.

All of Japanese society is set up for the salary-man house-wife with children and grandparents type of family. Everything. The tax system. The school system. Everything. Japanese people who don't fit the mold suffer from this as well. Japan is going to have to adjust to the realities of nontraditional lifestyles and families, including people from other countries, but it's going to take a long long time and meanwhile all we can do is try to work within the system while not totally bending over to the neighborhood nazi's. I have had my own run in's with that sort (I once did a homestay in the house of such a crazy old nosey bat. needless to say it didn't last) so I totally agree that they are ridiculous and annoying.

[luckyloser700]

[SeasonedVet]

A friend told me recently that in the inaka where she used to live that there are unwritten rules that people observe, for example they had to be in and out of the bath by a certain time, somewhere around 11:00 pm or midnight, (presumably becaus eof the noise the gas heaters make when it's quiet at night) and also for a young person coming home late at night after midnight, it was recommended that she be very very quiet, if not the neighbors would talk.
In all fairness it is also true that these things are changing. it is not the same everywhere and some places are changing with the changing times.

[buddhaboyjp]

[buddhaboyjp]

[Dipso]

When I lived in the inaka, there were a couple of old women who would always yell "Doko ni ikun?" at me whenever they saw me leaving my building. I have no idea who these women were; they were strangers to me but they obviously felt that they had the right to know where I was going. It happened almost every day during my three years on JET. *shudder*

[TK4Lakers]

[SeasonedVet]

Dipso wrote: