Rare Pleasures

The Dreaded Gaijin Seat

I am normally not a very friendly person when it comes to making contact with others who share my morning commute, but this morning, I chatted with New Guy (we normally don’t meet up on our commute into work, but happened to on this morning), so I felt a bit friendlier than usual. When the four teenaged boys in their school uniforms got on the train, I was smiling and so they naturally took me for a friendly person.

Three of the boys squeezed into the space on the seat opposite me and New Guy and there was almost but not quite space on next to them for the fourth boy. One impish boy pointed to the seat next to me, to the space next to every gaijin, the dreaded gaijin seat, the seat that remains empty unless every other seat in the car is taken--and even then, sometimes it continues empty while people stand. I used to give up my seat to old ladies and other people who seemed to need a seat, but now I take a look around and, if there are empty seats on the train (including the one next to me), I stay seated.

The imp pointed at the seat and the other seated boys laughed and the boy who was standing squeezed himself into the seat alongside them. They looked at me and I smiled and patted the seat next to me and they all laughed.

They didn’t make eye contact, but as they exited the train, they called out, “Goodbye!” to me. I laughed and called back, “Goodbye!” to each of them.

New Guys remarked, “They’re brave enough to yell “goodbye” as they’re sprinting off the train.”

Some days that’s brave enough for me.

No One Is Free Who Is A Slave To The Body

Last weekend in Shibuya, I stopped at Virgin Records and spent a smallish kind of bonus from The Kaisha on books.

The 6,000 yen “bonus” was money that I earned via some head office “contest” by which I was paid 1,000 yen for every successful interview I did--that is, I was awarded the equivalent of about ten bucks if the prospective student signed up after talking to me. I did seven interviews and six of the interviewees signed up so I netted 6,000 yen--which was closer to 5,000 yen after taxes. But I’m never thrilled by this kind of “contest”--I assume that if it’s my job to do interviews then it’s my job to do them to the best of my ability, in which case the monetary incentive perversely becomes a kind of insult--so when the boy-wonder of a manager gleefully announced the terms, I made New Guy laugh by asking, “If I pay you 1,000 yen, can I just not do interviews?” (“Kore wa nani?” he said. What is that? And the five-year-old translated, and the boy wonder said, “Anyway, please do your best,” in this earnest way of his that makes me feel like I’m a million years old.)

Anyway, impressing you with my black-humor was not the point of telling you about the bonus. Mostly, I wanted to make two points.

The first poins is that the price of new books in Tokyo is such that my 5,000 yen netted me three books: Two trade-sized paperbacks and one of those cheaply printed (think Dover Press, but not Dover Press), hundred page, palm-sized paperbacks. (The Brain makes me stop while it thinks about whether or not that is expensive. We’ve been in Tokyo awhile, The Brain and I, and maybe it’s just as expensive out there in the real world. Wait. I’m confused. Is fifty bucks for three paperbacks expensive?)

Um. And the second point is that that last Dover-but-not-Dover paperback is one that I plucked from the philosophy shelf, a copy of Seneca’s On The Shortness Of Life. (Yes, I know you can read the entire text online, but I can’t read the entire text on the train, or while sitting at the Immigration Office (more on that in a moment) for three hours.)

Seneca, that Stoic, that practical Greco-Roman moral philosopher, is my man. I heart Seneca and have since I was a teenager.

When David and I had the house on El Paseo, I painted quotes and poetry on the inside doors. On the door to the bathroom, I painted the quote from Seneca “No one is free who is a slave to the body.” I was studying Latin at the time, so I used the Latin (which of course escapes me now). But that kind of pithy thing really appeals to me in generally. There is little ambiguity to the moral code of Seneca and his ilk, and the stoic attitude is one that fits seamlessly into the kind of Japanese existence I have now.

For example?

For Example, La Immagracion

Remember the one-year visa that I have to apply for to cover ten days of work? Well, that application process ate up most of Wednesday morning. Visiting the immigration office in Shinagawa was about as exciting as visiting the DMV in the States, so I’ll spare you the moaning about the two hours in the morning rush hour on the Yamanote Line that it took to get there and the nearly three hour wait to drop off the application form. (I’ll have to return next month sometime to get the visa itself.) However, I will comment on the demographics of the crowd at the immigration office.

First, the population of Japan (about 127,000,000 people) is less than 1% non-Japanese. Most of that 1% lives in Tokyo, and are mostly non-white. Those are the facts, but those facts in action are a sight.

At the immigration office, I took my number at the correct counter: 267. I looked up at the lighted board: 86. It was 9:30 a.m. I took a seat and pulled out my Seneca. In between doses of stoic philosophy, I spent the next two and a half hours surveying the crowd.

There were probably two hundred and fifty or three hundred people waiting for various services. Of those, there were six Westerners--four men and two women, including me. There were four or five men and women of obvious East Indian descent. (One man spoke fluent Japanese.) The rest of those waiting were Asian: Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean. And that was interesting in and of itself. But think further on this:

The Japanese don’t consider themselves Asian. They don’t have very friendly relationships with their neighboring countries and, in fact, as a student explained to me, Japanese consider Japan to be a kind of Western country. The students were surprised to hear that, to an American at least, Japan is an Asian country.

One hour passed. People milled about and waited for their numbers to be called.

The men and women waiting all carried the same paperwork: The six or seven page application form, their passports and alien registration cards, and copies of the form that their employer fills out. It is next to impossible (if not actually impossible) to get a work visa without being employed first as the company has to agree to sponsor any foreign workers it employs. Work visas are issued for one or three years and one doesn’t ask for a specific length, it is determined by the government which is issued. For example, Ben, who worked in Japan for three years and who had received three one-year visas, finally netted a three-year visa just before leaving the country. (He too had to apply for a visa to cover his last ten days with The Kaisha.) I, on the other hand, will probably net a one-year visa.

Another hour passed.

As it neared 12:00, I began to get nervous. The numbers hadn’t rolled over into the 200’s yet, and I had been warned that the office would close for an hour lunch break at 12:00. That would mean that I would have to kill an hour in Shinagawa and then would probably be late to work besides.

Stoic, The Brain reminded me. Get stoic. I pulled out my Seneca.

Ten minutes before noon, I thought I was going to have to strangle a clerk. Let me explain. The numbers were displayed on lighted boards over the clerks and as each changed, a recording played in Japanese. It announced the number and very politely asked the person holding that number to make their way to the desk. Number 263 rolled up and the clerk pressed the button to play the recording. No one responded. This had happened before and the other clerks had played the recording twice then had moved on. 263 played again. No response. 263 played again and again there was no response. 263. No response. 263. No response. 263. No response. I gripped my paperwork and tried to keep my eyebrows in their normal position. (Raising one’s eyebrows is the height of anger in this place.) 263. I looked over the crowd and saw the person who had to be holding 264. It was a man in a yellowish suit who was gripping his own paperwork, half-out of his seat, ready to jump up. 263. No response. And finally--264. The man jumped up and headed to the window.

A moment later, my own number rolled up. The clerk I spoke with was all business. She had plain brown shoulder-length hair and was dressed in a smock-like uniform. I could see that she was probably six or so months pregnant. It’s very unusual to see pregnant women working in Japan, even in Tokyo. She spoke a mixture of Japanese and English (“Ano korewa no same company desuka?” “Eto ne passuporto, please.”) and I didn’t understand my own name when she said it. “Garushia-san desuka?” It’s Garcia, isn’t it?) And she was just as puzzled as I was about the contracts from The Kaisha that were attached to my work visa application. One contract, the one about to expire, had been issued for one year, but the one that is about to take effect (and which I signed one year ago) was valid for all of ten days. (“Ano ne can I keep?” She asked of the contracts. Yeah, sure. They’re not going to be any good to me in seven weeks.)

I filled out a postcard with my own name and address and if/when I receive a new work visa, it’ll be mailed to me. Then I get the pleasure of returning to the immigration office to have my passport stamped.

Yay.