Dodesho: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Guns hanging loosely on his hips, serape thrown over his shoulders, spurs clanging in the dirt with each step he takes, he paused to lift the brim of his hat and wipe the sweat from his forehead. It was ungodly humid in Kyushu in the middle of summer and our protagonist, The Teacher, was more suited to the dry heat back on the homestead in New Mexico. He'd been around the world, walking alone, from Latin America to Asia, searching for his last job, that one final score that was going to have him sitting pretty for the rest of his career. He’... More...

Dodesho: The Day I Became King

The day I became king, or at least felt like one, is every day; every day my foot crosses the threshold into a Lawson, 7-Eleven, dining, shopping, or customer service environment to be greeted by the wild shriek of "irasshaimase!" Welcome to Japan – where the customer is truly king. I am from England, where despite the bravado, hooligan antics you see on television and supposedly extrovert characters, when it comes to dealing with customers, we prefer to chat behind the till, take an extra five minutes on a fag break or shy away completely ... More...

Dodesho: I'd like to teach the world to surf

"Nihon de no mokuteki wa nan desu ka?" "What is your purpose for being in Japan?" I confess to being lost for words recently when a Japanese colleague asked me this deceptively simple question. Did he mean professionally? Personally? Existentially? Was this an innocent inquiry (a benign translation of “So, what brings you to Japan?”) or was I being asked to justify my presence in Japan on the grounds of not being born here? Regardless, it is a question that internationally-minded FN readers – both non-Japanese and Japanese alike - would do ... More...

Dodesho: Honey, I’m Home!

As an American in Fukuoka, I’m constantly being reminded that I’m different. I live in Futsukaichi, where the primary form of entertainment seems to be dyeing your hair blond and screaming“Wooo!” like a hood from a Jackie Chan movie while riding on the back of somebody else’s moped. Out here, folks get bored easily and there aren’t many foreigners, so I get a lot of stares. What bothers me is not the stares themselves,but the fact that they’re so often accompanied by assumptions. See, Japanese people think they know all about me, which I’m s... More...

Dodesho: A Wife Less Ordinary

It began with a light, deceptively superficial conversation on an evening soon after I started working. One of my fellow high school teachers, a Japanese man of about fifty, cleared his throat repeatedly at me. “Uhrm, ah. Yes. Ehto. So, Scott-sensei, will you be attending the enkai this evening?” “Yeah, no problem. I just have to run home first, but I’ll be there.” “Ah, you will be bringing your wife, yes? Ah, good. Yes, I… look forward to meeting her.” When I arrived at the izakaya later that night, my coworkers spotted me ... More...

Dodesho: A Nation of Food Otaku

I come from a country where culinary sophistication amounts to adding chives to your potatoes and where a jam sandwich is considered a perfectly acceptable lunch. And I don't mean a jam sandwich like Fukuoka's elementary school students have after their main meal: I mean a jam sandwich on its own with maybe a packet of crisps afterwards if you are still hungry or feeling particularly plush. The longer I spend in Japan though the more I realize the importance of, nay, obsession with food in this country. What is it with the Japanese and food? ... More...

Dodesho: Culture Shock! Japan

“Knock and the door will be opened to you.” I was never a particularly attentive Sunday school student, but there are some traditional injunctions that you can’t help but absorb when growing up in a particular culture. To a large degree, Westerners are encouraged from childhood to seek solutions to problems. Difficulties big and small should not be endured but resolved. Which is why it can be so whiplash-inducing to live in Japan and see how people quietly tolerate situations that I think would be so easy to improve. My most recent example t... More...

Dodesho: Dated Danji

For many foreign women living in Japan, there is a greater chance of becoming a yudansha in aikido or a Grand Master of sado than dating a Japanese man. Contrary to our male counterparts’ experience in Japan, gaijin gals just don’t have the same je ne sais quoi as gaijin guys when it comes to romancing the locals. Although initially open to and excited at the prospect, eventually, we give up. And then we justify. “It’s nice to be able to walk without being hooted and hollered at.” “I can dance freely and not worry about being groped or leered ... More...

Dodesho: She Loved Me, She Loved Me Not?

January fourth was a bewildering day for me this year. It started out like any other Sunday: for most people it was the last day of the New Year's holidays. It had been several months since I broke up with my long-term J-girlfriend. I had tried to maintain the friendship at least, seeing as we had broken up on what I thought were good terms. However, any time I suggested we meet for a coffee or a drink, I was met with a "saikin, shigoto isogashii." After the first few times I took the hint. Meanwhile, I had begun a promising friendship with ... More...

Dodesho: I am no fashionista, but...

By Alex Berger USA/ English TeacherThese days every time I open up the newspaper I am reminded that Japan is in the midst of a recession. But one wouldn’t know it to go walking down the streets of Tenjin. Scores of young men and women prowl the high-end haberdasheries and boutiques carrying as many as four or five large shopping bags on each arm in search of the latest fashion, seemingly oblivious to the economy crashing down all around them. Fashion is certainly a way of life in Japan and in these dire financial straits you would just as soon ... More...

Dodesho: An Educational Experience...

It's a struggle to keep focused on the big picture. I don't have any real problems yet: I have a place to stay, enough money for a plane ticket home, and thanks to the generosity of my friends I will not, in fact, work for food. But this follows weeks of panic and anxiety after the crash of eikaiwa-giant Nova, the ekimae ryugyaku, my former employer. Like me, thousands of ex-Nova teachers are now scrambling for jobs, in a low-hiring season, and asking themselves some crucial questions: how long can I stay before I need my plane money for grocerie... More...

Dodesho: The Continuing Worldwide Kancho Scandal

by Nicholas Klar, author of "My mother is a Tractor" Kancho. The very mention sends English teachers scurrying to the nearest wall, their hands linked defiantly around their crotch in a last-ditch measure of defence, albeit often in futility. Every year jumbo-loads of English teachers are disgorged into their home airports, walking like John Wayne, and telling of the horrors of kancho. Yet, little is mentioned in Japanese media. What is kancho and how did it reach such apparently plague proportions? According to Takipedia, the kancho atta... More...

Dodesho: Getting Up For Election!

I was happy to see the January election of comedian Sonomanma Higashi as the new governor of Miyazaki. Not just because Sonomanma may finally be known to foreigners for something other than Japanese Personality Most Likely to Be Mistaken for O.J. Simpson. Rather, it proves once again that acomic or singingtalento with precious little knowledge of government can succeed in Japanese politics. This list in recent years has included comedian and former Tokyo Gov. Yukio Aoshima, comedian and former Osaka Gov. Nokku "Knock" Yokoyama, and of cours... More...

Dodesho: Good Cop, Bored Cop

One of the great advantages of life in Japan is the safety we come to take for granted. I learned recently that the downside of this appears to be a police force bored enough to look for trouble where it does not lie. Allow me to be specific; I was waiting on my bicycle at a red light in Tenjin recently when I was stopped by three cops. They asked me where I got the mama-chari (grandma-style bicycle - a friend's old one bought at a recycle shop), took my gaijin card, asked me to get off, and radioed in the bike's details. Apparently, either the... More...

Dodesho: Night Riders

It's not that often I get angry; it takes a lot to push me over the edge. So, standing on my balcony at four in the morning in my undies yelling curses into the night, eyes wild and hair unkempt, I realized: This was serious. The first time it happened, I awoke - bleary-eyed - to what sounded like a building being demolished. Fearing either terrorism or a Godzilla-related disturbance, I staggered to my balcony, sleepily grabbing a frying pan in self defense. But there were no terrorists, and no giant monsters. There was only a long column o... More...

Dodesho: A Traditional Japanese Kurisumas

Christmas in Japan instantly brings to mind that well-known urban myth of Santa's crucifixion. The general consensus is that it occurred shortly after World War II, and that the perpetrator was a Tokyo department store. Still struggling to grapple with the concept of Christmas, and in the vague knowledge that it is somehow related to both Jesus and to Santa Claus, they decided to plaster the store with giant posters of Santa on a crucifix! Any foreign visitor to that particular store must have been left with the impression that somehow "It is C... More...

Dodesho: Such A Polite Country, but Where Are Your Manners?!

I do not slurp. But I believe my Japanese yatai comrades that slurping displays a passion for cuisine and can improve the ramen's taste. Hence, it is not an impolite deed. Nor is it when Japanese tell me, "Hana ga takai!" They're actually complimenting me on my big nose. Truly, I am impassioned with Japan. The ever-changing seasons and their colors, delightful festivals; the healing onsen and timeless ryokan. Most of all, the people: their sense of aesthetics, their vitality, their warmth and sensitivity. And especially their consideration for ... More...

Dodesho: Zangyou Blues

It's 8pm and I'm still at my desk. I work at an ordinary Japanese company. I work hard, and like all of the employees at my company, I do overtime (known as 'zangyou'). Lots of zangyou. Of the unpaid variety. And what do I do with my zangyou? Well, you know. I look up hemorrhagic fever on the net, flirt with Honda from accounting, drink coffee, sleep. You see, it's not about battling through the work I haven't finished yet. I finished all my work hours ago. It's not about the work. It's about the appearance of work, of going the extra mile for... More...

Dodesho: Speak American, Dammit!

Every non-American English teacher in Fukuoka has heard this dreaded phrase at least once: "Ano... sensei? You spelled that wrong. There's no 'u' in color." It's enough to make a Canuck want to bang her head against the whiteboard. Or a Kiwi, or an Aussie, or a Brit, or... in fact, pretty much anyone who is not American. At least once a semester I must stop my class and explain to a room full of patiently waiting (or sleeping) ichi-nensei students that 'no, in fact, I have not made a mistake.' There are two commonly accepted ways of spelling wo... More...

Dodesho: You Don't Say?!

If you live in Japan but don't speak Japanese, then you're the one who's been causing me all these problems. Let me explain: every time I go into a McDonalds, they flip the menu over to the English side before I reach the counter, and the staffer prepares to try to take my order through sign language. This isn't for me: I speak Japanese. No, they're doing this because of you, and it annoys the hell out of me! That's just the start of it. Public employees don't accept that I can speak Japanese, and insist on trying to communicate in English, d... More...
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