Turning Point

With The Kaisha Trainers watching the ‘blog, I rarely write about work anymore. I mean, I spend forty or fifty hours a week at work, but when was the last time--barring Ben’s leaving--that I mentioned work or work-related angst? Hmmm.

But here’s some work-related news that might interest one or two among you:

I did not renew my contract.

That’s right, on Tuesday, the day before the holiday, I turned down the six-month contract extension that had been offered to me by the school. When I told them my decision, my boy-wonder of a manager and the five-year-old head teacher looked shocked. They asked why--and instead of telling them all the reasons why I was really turning it down, I found myself being very Japanese.

That is, I smiled.

I smiled and said that I missed home and that it is very difficult to live in Japan. And both those things are true, certainly.

I mean, I do miss home. I miss my friends and family. It’s only been six months, but in those six months, I’ve lost two grandmothers. My family has weathered the grief without me, and I’ve been halfway around the world and I’ve weathered the grief without them. I’ve had friends marry and graduate and have children and and and...and I feel disconnected and lonely at times. I’ve felt heartbroken and haven’t had a shoulder to cry on or anyone to give a hug to or take a hug from. And though it’s not like I was much of a daughter or granddaughter or much of a friend when I was home, I was there. I was trying. And...

And it is hard to live in Japan. Yes, a lot of that is my fault. Yes, I am independent to a fault and consequently loathe to ask for help. No, I haven’t taken a single Japanese class and I found that the Japanese I had under my belt was almost useless and so I now speak even less Japanese than I did when I arrived. Yes, I drink too much and I eat too much. I have gained weight (just like every other member, but one, from my training group). I do it because I am lonely. It’s hard for me to concentrate on anything because the environment is so overwhelming and I find myself not reading or writing. Yes, that’s my fault too. Here, I am functionally illiterate and even though Tokyo is navigable, it’s stressful.

I don’t say any of this to Boy Wonder and the five-year-old. I smile and say, “I miss home and it’s hard to live in Japan.”

They are shocked. The five-year-old is supposed to be translating Boy Wonder’s Japanese into English and she is so shocked that she listens to his Japanese and then turns to me and repeats it word for word--in Japanese. It would be funny if she weren’t always doing things like that.

The truth is that I really like Japan and I could easily see myself staying here. I like the people and I like the land. I even like being an outsider. I like the relative safety of this place. I like not owning a car.

Why did I not renew my contract?

First, it’s like the Buddhists say: Take a step off a thousand-foot pole.

Now what in the hell does that mean?

To me, it means: Don’t get comfortable. What does that mean? Well, in terms of its practical application to my life, it means that I’ve gotten comfortable and I need to get uncomfortable. It means that I’ve fallen asleep again and I need to wake the hell up. It means that the dream that is my waking life hardly seems like a dream anymore. It means that my life is largely characterized by familiarity and I don’t really need that. (Yes, I know that seems to conflict with homesickness, the desire for familiarity, but the homesickness I can stand. The homesickness is transient. It passes. But falling asleep in one’s life? That is a state that has the potential of permanency. It could easily come to define a lifetime. It is that state that is insufferable.)

But here’s another, less spiritual reason why I turned down a new contract: I was insulted that I was only offered a six-month contract. And I was even more insulted by how clumsily it was managed by Boy Wonder and the five-year-old.

Here’s how the offer went down:

On December 16, I was called into a meeting with Boy and the five-year-old. They offered me a six month contract renewal and asked me for an answer on the following Tuesday. It was Friday. That meant that I would have four days to think about the next year of my life. (I say a year because the renewal would have extended my stay with The Kaisha through next December.)

Four days to decide a year of one’s life is certainly enough time. In fact, it’s four days to many if you go by the Bushido code to make all decisions within the space of seven breaths. But in this case, seven breaths would have been six and a half breaths too many.

I already knew I was going to turn them down, but I didn’t want to let the insult pass unnoticed.

I reminded them that The Trainers had informed everyone during the refresher training that we would have two weeks to think about any contract offer. I told them that I wanted two weeks to think.

Boy Wonder drew in an audible breath, a sort of hiss through his teeth. The Japanese do this when they’re going to tell you that your request is difficult. In Japan, someone responding to a request with the reply that it is difficult means that they are turning down your request. No is too sharp a word, so they don’t say it. Instead they say that it’s difficult to fulfill your request at the moment...and that means that your request has a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being filled.

I waited until Boy Wonder had finished hissing and was on the verge of telling me that my request was difficult. Before he could speak, I held up the contract and pointed out the date it had been received from the head office.

“This says December 8th,” I said. “What have you all been doing?”

The reason I pointed out the date might be obvious, but I will explain just in case it’s not. The contract was dated December 8th, and had it been presented to me on or nearer to that date, I would have had nearly two weeks--from the 8th until the 20th--and not four days to think about a decision. Their sitting on the contract and then trying to put me into a time crunch is typical of how things are handled around The Kaisha branch I work for. (And, no, I don’t suspect it’s be any better if I worked anywhere else.)

After I pointed out the date, the five-year-old sputtered and said that the head office had made a mistake on the contract and they had to send it back to be fixed. I nodded, seemingly readily accepting her lie. The mistake, I suspect, was that the original offer had been for one year. They had sent it back so that the new offer was six months. I wouldn’t have taken a year certainly, but I was insulted that it wasn’t even offered.

I told them that I would have an answer for them on December 27th, the day before our New Year’s holiday was to begin. They thanked me.

On Tuesday, they called me in for another meeting and asked me for a decision and I held out the contract and showed them where I had marked that I would not renew my contract and the five-year-old gasped and said, “Not even for three months?” And I smiled. I had considered a three-month option, but after talking to the members of my training group--each of whom had been offered a year--I decided that I wouldn’t take even three months.

Boy Wonder looked shocked and after I explained my reasons, he apologized to me for not taking better care of me and though it was only so much talk, I appreciated it anyway.

I thanked them for the opportunity and swallowed all the hurtful and mean things that I wanted to say--and I swallowed them despite the fact that I could have even made sound professional--and I smiled and the meeting ended and I went down for a smoke.