Okay, I see the problem here. You think you're typical of the western mindset and I think *I'm* typical of the western mindset. But now that I think about it again, both of us are probably wrong.

For example, I don't think fear of causing meiwaku is exclusive to Japan just because they have a word for it. There were many times in Japan and the U.S. that I didn't take vacations because my co-workers might be planning to go out of town at the same time. It's called responsibility. Hardly a foreign concept to the western world. But perhaps westerners don't always fret over it the same way that I do.

Meanwhile, you give a lot of thought to the way Japanese society works and the historical basis for the way things are today. While I think it's typical of gaikokujin to generalize to try to make sense of their surroundings, you do it in such an intellectualized, atypical fashion. So while your coworkers were thinking, "There goes Tom, distancing himself from us again," they had no idea that your mind was this immersed in knowledge about their culture and that you were the one who felt like you were being kept out.

In any case, I hope you find job satisfaction at the new place. It's rare no matter where you live.

Fair enough. I'd agree that neither you or me are typical westerners. You're also right that I try to make sense of my surroundings by generalizing.

On job satisfaction, I agree and disagree. It is rare, yes, but a lot of it comes from effort you make yourself.

I'm going to be a little bit harsh, not because I want to hurt anyone or be contrary for contrariness's sake, but because I believe the Japanese deserve at least some kind of voice, even if it is as uncalled for and ignorant as my own. I have been here a very long time. I went to school with and was surrounded by foreigners here ever since I can remember. I grew up with "seeking-the-far-east-following-the-overland-trail" foreigners, "live-on-the-base" foreigners, "get-away-from-the-evils-of-the-west" foreigners, "spend-all-your-free-time-in-Roppongi" foreigners, "return-from-living-overseas-Japanese" foreigners, "the-intellectual, think-they-know-all-about-japan" foreigners (Donald Ritchie and my father know each other... Ritchie used to come to our house back in the 70's. James Gibney was also a friend of the family and his son was my classmate. Reischauer and my father had lunch together occasionally. My mother and Alan Booth often did translation work together. Back then the foreign community was so small everyone knew everyone), the "ambassador family" foreigners (my father was chief of the United Nations University Press), the "American Club" foreigners, the "buddhist monk" foreigners, the missionaries, the "eat-only-at-MacDonald's businessmen" foreigners, and on and on. I've seen them all. And I've heard every argument and statement and speculation and pronouncement of Japan that probably is possible to speak. Everyone, including myself, trying to rationalize and compartmentalize Japan, mostly because we don't understand it at all. And we never really will.

Just like if I would go to Ireland now and live there for ten years and then pronounce to the world that I know how Ireland ticks; you would say I was being preposterous. And that's for someone who can speak English (well, sort of, wouldn't you agree?). If you can't really speak Japanese as well as the Japanese (and very few foreigners can, including, again, myself... my brother can and he understands people here much better than I do) then you have no business saying you understand the place or the people. I think it is a dodgey proposition at best to say that Japanese have a "lower" expectation of work than you do... you're not Japanese and will never see work or obligation or membership in a company or family the same way as a Japanese will. In the same way a lot of Japanese I know call westerners lazy and irresponsible and unable to stick with anything and so forth and some such, without knowing a thing really about what it means to live as a westerner. They will never really understand where you're coming from because they see work and all the other variables differently. And vice versa.

To me you are quite a typical foreigner. The things you criticize and complain about and take heed of are the same things that nearly every foreigner who takes the time to look around and immerse themselves in life here brings up. It is inevitable. You will always see things here with your western bred eyes. You come with unconscious presupositions that affect everything you feel and expect and see. You once voiced anger at how people here tend to express nervous laughter. I was perplexed by that. I could very well have said that it was strange how you could get angry at something as trivial and natural as that... just the getting angry and constant analysis and criticism so aptly characterizes you and I as westerners. When was the last time you sat around with Japanese who criticized everything all the time (my students will go out of their way in my classes to avoid showing that they are better at the lessons than other students, deliberately making themselves sound more confused than they really are so as not to make the other students feel less competent... they are brought up to feel and see and act this way, and they see it as more important than being better all the time) Did you ever stop to think that they thought less of you for being like that? Japanese really look down on people who criticize others all the time and can be extremely sarcastic when talking to you while you do it.

Another time you recounted a telephone call you had with one of your translation clients about their refusal to take your work because of the word "because". I didn't say anything because I thought it would just be petty on my part, but the way I read the reaction of the Japanese at the other end of the line was that you had put him into a position of loss of face (haji). By insisting on his answering a question that he probably couldn't answer you forced him during those moments of silence, to come up with something. So he must have absently chosen the word "because" and he stuck with it. What distressed me was that your post wasa taken up by an internet magazine and posted for even more people to see. Now the impression among all those ignorant non-Japanese is that Japanese are fools and incompetents... which just isn't fair.

Setsunai, you are a sensitive person and you appreciate Japan. You take the time to know it as best you can and do make an effort to wander where most foerigners don't usually go. Being here a long time can really wear a non-Japanese down, especially when you try so hard to fit in. But I think you take it a little too far when you start appraising yourself as somehow being "above" people here. Who's to say that your version of what work should be is the "right" or "better" version? It might be for you and me, but I doubt a lot of Japanese would agree with you. Just ask them. They will usually stay silent so as not to offend you (again the aversion to criticism and disharmony). But I can guarantee that in most cases they will not agree with you at all. And the thing is, it really doesn't matter whose way is right or wrong or more efficient or less wasteful. What matters is that the people doing it are satisfied with the way they do it. Just because you aren't happy with the way the Japanese are content with things doesn't mean that you know what they need or should have.

The problem with discussing these things in these non-Japanese communities is that rarely will a Japanese ever have a say here. I doubt many Japanese are even read what is being written. If they are then they are a minority who often cannot communicate their thoughts to us at our level of English. Can we take this level of dialogue to them in Japanese? I might be able to, crudely, but not without a lot of misunderstanding. So basically we are talking to ourselves with no counterpoint. Not really a fair assessment of anything at all.

Sorry to be harsh... but I felt something had to be said to remind us all of other sides of things we don't really understand.

Read the post again. I said expectations were different. I'm writing honestly for myself about my own experiences (which happen to be in Japan) on my own personal weblog, not putting myself above (or below) anybody.

Not really sure what to say, Setsunai. All day I've been mulling over a proper response that wouldn't come across as too defensive or insulting. I'd prefer to keep things at peace between us. I read your post about eight times, trying to glean your intent and it still comes across, to me, as I originally saw it.

But you're completely right, of course: this is your blog and you ought to be able to write what you see fit here without people like me tripping up the works. I have always thought of you as an honest person and your writing, including this post, has always been honest. And you have always had a balanced view of Japan and the Japanese. That is why I come back here every day (I don't visit many expatriot blogs because so often they just spend all their time looking for differences from their own cultures) , because you give me an alternative insight to Japan that often I might miss and not fully comprehend. Discussing these things with you has often helped me to rethink my own prejudices and at times unreasonable reactions to Japan.

If I have offended, please forgive me. But I was also trying to be honest and fair in my own earlier words. I took a very long time to write the words, trying as best I could to express my reaction without coming across as a pompous asshole. Perhaps I did come across that way. If so, forgive me.

Okay, it's no big deal. In the post I say "I respect their lifestyle but I refuse to do the same."

And that is my position. In other words, I am not making any judgments here, just describing my world as I see it. I am not saying "I'm right and they're wrong." I'm saying our lifestyle choices are different, and they are. The reason they are different is because we have different expectations (or values or whatever you want to call it). You may disagree with that, but that's how I see it.

I respect your opinions, but if I feel you have misread my intent, I'm going to tell you.

Thanks. That's very fair. And perhaps I have misread your words. Overall I feel that we both have always felt similarly about Japan, so I will look at it all through those lenses.

My reaction might have also been tempered more than I realize by my own circumstances in which I feel that I must now give serious consideration over whether I should stay in Japan or leave. It's an agonizing decision because Japan is not just an "experience" for me, but as much an integral part of my identity as Ireland is for you. The problem is that I'm not Japanese and so I have to be critical of things that most locals would never consider about a culture that they are part of.

Leaving Japan this time would mean my admitting that I will never be part of a culture that I've always wanted to be accepted in since I was a young boy. Before I graduated from high school I used to think of myself as Japanese (can you believe that I used to never want to live anywhere but Tokyo?). In college in the States I realized that I am not Japanese, even though almost all my friends in college were Asian and I still feel most comfortable in Japan. I identify with the Japanese in a way that you don't and can't (and I can't tell you how much I envy your undeniable sense of being Irish and your surety that you come from that culture, plus the unquestioned acceptance of you there by the people... no one would ever scoff at you for pronouncing yourself Irish), even though the vast majority of Japanese would never allow themselves to identify with me that way.

What I am trying to say is that in many many ways I am Japanese. I feel many of the things you talk about, including, to a great extent (though not all... I learned quite a few things in the States), the whole idea about working.

I've stayed at the present school I am teaching at for nine years in part out of loyalty, in spite of many of the conditions that you spoke of. The boss and I used to have this understanding of me being more like a Japanese employee than a foreigner. I even accepted it as natural that I wouldn't get a pay raise in four years, because we were all in the boat together and had to make sacrifices in order keep the school afloat. But now that the school is in a grave crisis suddenly I am a foreigner and all the old bonds have been severed. Quite a rude awakening.

And it leaves me without any place to identify with or call my own culture. I could fight for the right to be part of this place, but as you know Japan really makes it hard. Much harder than the States, or even I suspect, if I were to go there, Ireland. I'm tired of always fighting to fit in all the time. I've had 35 years of it here in Japan.

Where to go where what I have learned to be and loved in Japan also exists? Well, it doesn't.

I sit on the trains daily, looking out across at the other passengers trying to see myself through their eyes. I wonder what they see. Not, I'm pretty sure, what I see of myself.