Blogger friend Orchid made this great post earlier this week and there's plenty of food for thought. Not least for reminding me of an archetype of Japan who, thankfully, I've not met for many months but, not-so-thankfully, will possibly cross paths with in the not too distant.
Welcome to another phenomena in Japan, the Self-Hating Gaijin. Like his cousin Charisma Man, he's usually a young white guy who never matured back home. Most likely a reject. Rather than seek out the native nails that won't stay knocked down and make connections, organise art exhibitions, set up vegetarian cafes, he turns the full battery of his self-hatred onto his fellow Caucasian foreigners. It starts by ingratiating himself with the locals, chattering in Japanese and refusing to speak English. Very soon he's talking about Ono Yoko*, walking past other white guys and girls in the small town where he lives, blanking them (I accept that this probably happens in Tokyo and other big cities where there are hundreds of foreign tourists, but not somewhere like Kitakyushu). Black people, those of South Asian origin are different, of course - he'll still greet them like long lost homeboys and fill them in with his I-know-about-Japan act and pulling a let's-hook-up-seeing-we're-in-the-same-boat. So he wishes!
Or if he's less politically-aware and much less sensitive he might even post on a message board where a debate was being held whether a fifteen year-old Filipino girl, born and raised in Japan, should be given special dispensation to stay in the only country she's ever known - send her and her law-breaking parents back, he'll fume, for breaching the immigration laws of a sovereign nation! He knows full-well that he couldn't say that about Mexicans in the USA, but here he believes he has a ready-made audience.
What Self-Hating Gaijin doesn't realise is that he will never, ever be accepted, however much disdain he displays for his fellow Caucasian. And that what he draws from Japanese people, whose policy of closing their shores to exclude the likes of him isn't too far back in the collective memory, is far from admiration.
It's called contempt.
* Sorry Orchid, am using your blogs as more than food for thought - the 'Ono Yoko' comment references Orchid's blog here on Japanese naming tradition, and moreover how westerners wishing to show off their superior Japan knowledge might see fit to work it into a westerners-only conversation to prove how aware they are. Twits!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Dare to be wise!
Sometimes when I got the bus home from school, I'd be ambushed by kids (and it was always girls) who had a thing against the 'posh girls' who wore the same blue and grey uniform that I did. For years after that, whenever I met girls who were at neighbouring schools, I was reminded what a snob I was by folk who were no less bourgeois than I was. I went to a girls' grammar school - which I will refer to from here as GGS - entry into which was by the now almost defunkt Eleven Plus exam.
Reading the message board for my school at www.friendsreunited.com, it looks like most of the girls spent their school days in a state of terror. The headmistress, a cantankerous midget with an MA in Classics courtesy of Cambridge University and a shock of white hair, was joined by her sidekick the deputy head, who also taught physics. Between them this double-act played bad cop/nice cop respectively with no role-switching. While the deputy head had the odd pleasant word to say on Parents'/Teacher Evening ("Emily's a lovely girl - but she does dream"), there was no method to the madness that was the head honcho. She hated my parents, rightly identifying my mother as having been a teenage mother, and my stepfather as nouveau riche. But she also hated my friend Alex's dad the diplomat, and even more so her Volvo-driving mum, with whom she'd had a screaming match on PT evening. There was the odd girl, and by extension parents, that she liked, but as my mum said recently there was no pattern to her favouritism whatsoever. If you asked an expert nowadays, they might say bi-polar. Reports on the message board speak of her raging at a girl for letting down the school because she couldn't take part on Sports' Day when she had her geography O-level exam (an unmoveable feast), ripping up a girl's French exchange form before her very eyes because she was in high spirits at the end of term ("I wouldn't let you represent the school, let alone the country!") and yelling at a girl who dared not go to university.
Speaking of daring, our school motto - can you believe some schools have mottos? Is this normal? - was in Latin and to avoid identification, let's say it translated as 'Dare to be wise' or perhaps 'Use your initiative'. Not a bad thing to pump into young minds. Grammar schools tended to turn out a fairly elitist bunch of people, even though it was open to any smart kid from any background. Although there were plenty of working-class kids at GGS, it wasn't a port of call for the humble TEFL teacher, artist, manual worker or nurse. In many ways I was lucky to have gone to GGS, although any kind of thinking outside the box was discouraged (can't think what it reminds me of!). But I was envious of the guy I met whose cool comprehensive school once hosted a visit by Keith Joseph, Education Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. While our teachers would've arranged for Keith to come round each classroom where we'd be swotting up on the present indicative in Latin or burning oxide powder to work out the chemical compound, these kids were handed bags of flour by their teachers and told to pelt the man who was cutting the funding for their low-life schools.
Perhaps Mr. S. would've felt more at home handing out bags of flour, though as our English teacher in the Fifth year (Year 10 in old money), he was unlikely to have met any takers except me. And when it came to going to local schools' meetings, Mr. S. found himself treated in the same way I had been by local comprehensive teachers - as a snob. I know this now because I bumped into him around fifteen years ago in a coffee shop. It was as frustrating for him as it was for me, given that we were both left-wing types who, although we appreciated the fine education that grammar schools offer, could see that the idea was to turn out bog-standard doctors and lawyers. *
And here's two of them!
Being a man was enough to guarantee instant stardom at a girls' school, but having an infectious and fun personality helped too. Mr. S. was a half-Italian Irishman and seemed to have but one set of professional clothes which comprised of a burgundy V-neck jumper which he teamed with a pair of orange-tinted glasses. He had a big belly laugh which we'd sometimes hear through the wall in a dull class, and there were plenty of them. He would egg us on to do cheeky things - being good grammar school girls, the worst thing would've been planting stink bombs in the bathrooms. Besides encouraging us to be imaginative, he was always receptive to a bit of leg-pulling. On April Fools' Day the whole class came in wearing red or burgundy jumpers and yellow glasses, cackling the whole class long. That didn't bother him - he just gave the lesson in Italian!
After my exams I left GGS, vowing never to return, though I occasionally went back to see friends who'd stayed on till the sixth form. By this time I had the blue hair I'd been threatening to bring back to school, and it didn't go unnoticed. Despite what my family describe as my wonderful education, I did most of my learning after I left school. That's where I met people who'd lead very different lives, many of whom were a lot smarter than my old schoolfriends and me, but who hadn't been on the fast-track from the age of eleven. In time I lost contact with the girls from school, save two.
But I always remembered my cool teachers. And it seemed that they, too, remembered me.
It was a summer afternoon in 1993 and I was on my second cappuccino in a Clapham cafe, making notes for a writing class. A young woman came over to my table and asked me if I had ever been to GGS. Yes, I replied, banjaxed. Did I remember Mr. S., she asked. He was waiting outside - would I like him to come back in and talk?
Mr. S. was straight back in, with that heaving belly-laugh. He said they'd both been trying to work out if it was me, but I seemed so serious with my bright red dreadlocks, my notebook and pen that they thought it couldn't possibly be me. But I had exactly the same face as that girl who used to come back to visit the school with the bright blue hair. Mr. S. had never forgotten that and was always egging me on from the sidelines, knowing how much it annoyed the snooty members of staff. He'd left GGS which he found stifling - even the teachers from other schools in the borough hated our teachers! This must've saddened him a bit, 'cos he remarked that from all his years there I was one of the view pupils he remembered as having any kind of spark and who lived up to the school motto.
So Mr. S. wasn't teaching any more, but it seemed like he'd quit quite some time earlier. Meanwhile his female companion who'd approached me said she'd been in the year below me - and they seemed to be on very chummy terms! Of course I did the maths - hmmm, so I left aged 16, you went on to the sixth form then went to uni... how come you two are hanging out looking all comfortable together after all this time? But, of course, I didn't.
Looks like Mr. S, had dared to do something extra-curricular - but had GGS gotten wise?
* No offence meant to doctors and lawyers - you're all a fine bunch of guys n' dolls!
Reading the message board for my school at www.friendsreunited.com, it looks like most of the girls spent their school days in a state of terror. The headmistress, a cantankerous midget with an MA in Classics courtesy of Cambridge University and a shock of white hair, was joined by her sidekick the deputy head, who also taught physics. Between them this double-act played bad cop/nice cop respectively with no role-switching. While the deputy head had the odd pleasant word to say on Parents'/Teacher Evening ("Emily's a lovely girl - but she does dream"), there was no method to the madness that was the head honcho. She hated my parents, rightly identifying my mother as having been a teenage mother, and my stepfather as nouveau riche. But she also hated my friend Alex's dad the diplomat, and even more so her Volvo-driving mum, with whom she'd had a screaming match on PT evening. There was the odd girl, and by extension parents, that she liked, but as my mum said recently there was no pattern to her favouritism whatsoever. If you asked an expert nowadays, they might say bi-polar. Reports on the message board speak of her raging at a girl for letting down the school because she couldn't take part on Sports' Day when she had her geography O-level exam (an unmoveable feast), ripping up a girl's French exchange form before her very eyes because she was in high spirits at the end of term ("I wouldn't let you represent the school, let alone the country!") and yelling at a girl who dared not go to university.
Speaking of daring, our school motto - can you believe some schools have mottos? Is this normal? - was in Latin and to avoid identification, let's say it translated as 'Dare to be wise' or perhaps 'Use your initiative'. Not a bad thing to pump into young minds. Grammar schools tended to turn out a fairly elitist bunch of people, even though it was open to any smart kid from any background. Although there were plenty of working-class kids at GGS, it wasn't a port of call for the humble TEFL teacher, artist, manual worker or nurse. In many ways I was lucky to have gone to GGS, although any kind of thinking outside the box was discouraged (can't think what it reminds me of!). But I was envious of the guy I met whose cool comprehensive school once hosted a visit by Keith Joseph, Education Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. While our teachers would've arranged for Keith to come round each classroom where we'd be swotting up on the present indicative in Latin or burning oxide powder to work out the chemical compound, these kids were handed bags of flour by their teachers and told to pelt the man who was cutting the funding for their low-life schools.
Perhaps Mr. S. would've felt more at home handing out bags of flour, though as our English teacher in the Fifth year (Year 10 in old money), he was unlikely to have met any takers except me. And when it came to going to local schools' meetings, Mr. S. found himself treated in the same way I had been by local comprehensive teachers - as a snob. I know this now because I bumped into him around fifteen years ago in a coffee shop. It was as frustrating for him as it was for me, given that we were both left-wing types who, although we appreciated the fine education that grammar schools offer, could see that the idea was to turn out bog-standard doctors and lawyers. *
And here's two of them! Being a man was enough to guarantee instant stardom at a girls' school, but having an infectious and fun personality helped too. Mr. S. was a half-Italian Irishman and seemed to have but one set of professional clothes which comprised of a burgundy V-neck jumper which he teamed with a pair of orange-tinted glasses. He had a big belly laugh which we'd sometimes hear through the wall in a dull class, and there were plenty of them. He would egg us on to do cheeky things - being good grammar school girls, the worst thing would've been planting stink bombs in the bathrooms. Besides encouraging us to be imaginative, he was always receptive to a bit of leg-pulling. On April Fools' Day the whole class came in wearing red or burgundy jumpers and yellow glasses, cackling the whole class long. That didn't bother him - he just gave the lesson in Italian!
After my exams I left GGS, vowing never to return, though I occasionally went back to see friends who'd stayed on till the sixth form. By this time I had the blue hair I'd been threatening to bring back to school, and it didn't go unnoticed. Despite what my family describe as my wonderful education, I did most of my learning after I left school. That's where I met people who'd lead very different lives, many of whom were a lot smarter than my old schoolfriends and me, but who hadn't been on the fast-track from the age of eleven. In time I lost contact with the girls from school, save two.
But I always remembered my cool teachers. And it seemed that they, too, remembered me.
It was a summer afternoon in 1993 and I was on my second cappuccino in a Clapham cafe, making notes for a writing class. A young woman came over to my table and asked me if I had ever been to GGS. Yes, I replied, banjaxed. Did I remember Mr. S., she asked. He was waiting outside - would I like him to come back in and talk?
Mr. S. was straight back in, with that heaving belly-laugh. He said they'd both been trying to work out if it was me, but I seemed so serious with my bright red dreadlocks, my notebook and pen that they thought it couldn't possibly be me. But I had exactly the same face as that girl who used to come back to visit the school with the bright blue hair. Mr. S. had never forgotten that and was always egging me on from the sidelines, knowing how much it annoyed the snooty members of staff. He'd left GGS which he found stifling - even the teachers from other schools in the borough hated our teachers! This must've saddened him a bit, 'cos he remarked that from all his years there I was one of the view pupils he remembered as having any kind of spark and who lived up to the school motto.
So Mr. S. wasn't teaching any more, but it seemed like he'd quit quite some time earlier. Meanwhile his female companion who'd approached me said she'd been in the year below me - and they seemed to be on very chummy terms! Of course I did the maths - hmmm, so I left aged 16, you went on to the sixth form then went to uni... how come you two are hanging out looking all comfortable together after all this time? But, of course, I didn't.
Looks like Mr. S, had dared to do something extra-curricular - but had GGS gotten wise?
* No offence meant to doctors and lawyers - you're all a fine bunch of guys n' dolls!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Credit Crunch Britain
Fiddle-dee-dee, a pointless indulgence.Or how about a pair of shoes from the same store, whittled down to an amazing £54 from £150?
I'd like to say that these were a gift from a handsome rich man who was so taken with me he rushed out to the shops. But I'd be fibbing.Oh go on then, I'll take this Reiss number at £31, though the original price tag said five times as much.
...and it will be perfect for those hanami parties!
All items that will be in my suitcase. And if funds were available, they would be joined by five other frocks. But don't worry - I haven't been spending all my money on frocks. At Christmas I paid two months worth of rent plus settled my council tax bill till the end of the year (local tax), and any spare money will be put towards those costs. Bills are up to date. After all, you only have to pay up in the end.
I seem to be of of a huge number of British people with few, if any, savings, and it used to depress me. Every day there are Credit Crunch articles in the paper. Some tell desperate tales of how bankers are jumping out of windows, unable to fund the trophy wives and private schools. On the tube last week I heard a man bemoan the cost of his golfing club. More upbeat themes speak of middle-class parents having more clout with the comprehensive school system and cheap holidays in Iceland.
Talking of which, my friends injected a little much-needed cash into the Icelandic economy by going to Reykavic this Christmas, and I'm off out in a second to hear all about it. You may remember that our prime minister Gordon Brown froze Icelandic assets held in British banks as the country went bankrupt late last year, taking millions of pounds of British savings with it. As a result a rather cross Gordon said huh, we're stopping you getting your money too, invoking a clause that allows us to freeze foreign governments' assets that are held in UK banks should we see fit. The thing that really pissed the Icelanders off was the clause is usually used to stop terrorist regimes' money.
Well, I'd be pretty narked too.
Decent liberal types like myself would like to make it up to our northern neighbours, with whom we were last at loggerheads in the 1970s over fishing rights (the Cod War). Right now holidays to this fascinating country are half-price, meaning many Brits are heading up there to see the Northern Lights. I hope it's helping to mend a few bridges - mind you, my friends met a friendly group is a bar who introduced themselves with a "Hi, let us introduce you to some more of our terrorist friends!", so perhaps it will take time.
As for me, I'll have to wait a bit longer to visit. In the meantime I hope that my purchases from Karen Millen, owned by Icelandic firm the Bagyur Group, will mean a few more pennies in the coffer for our Arctic Circle pals.
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