I teach business conversational English classes twice a week. Unlike kids or old folks, adults are usually more reserved about what they say, so I rarely hear too many zany, WTF-worthy stuff. But they do come up with some pretty funny stuff sometimes.

Electronic Arts has announced that two of their upcoming games for the PS2 will feature new technology that will allow them to be heard in DTS Digital Sound. This week, Konami Of Japan released various PlayStation 2 and PS one titles that will be on display at the 2001 Spring Tokyo Game Show.

*** One group I teach is a really fun bunch. They seem to get along well outside of work, so in some ways the English class is a chance to unwind and enjoy themselves. Which is a good thing. For my first class with them, we did self-introductions. After the obligatory boring regular introductions, I had them pick someone – anyone at all – assume the role of that character, and introduce themselves to each other in pairs. They made some interesting character choices – at one point, “Barack Obama” met “Jack Bauer”, and we all agreed that this is a meeting that should happen in real life. As they are making the rounds, Jack Bauer meets a girl maybe in her mid-thirties/early forties.

She’s also kind small/short. For this exercise, she has assumed the identity of Pikachu. As she introduces herself, Jack Bauer is a little surprised by her choice. He steps back, takes a good look at her, and says “Oh, you are Pikachu?! But, you are not yellow. You have no tail.” He even looked at her ass as he said that. Maybe you have to be very un-PC to appreciate this, but I just found it absolutely hilarious.

A Japanese guy sizes up a Japanese woman and then says, “You are not yellow. You have no tail.” Obviously, Jack Bauer is in the Sir Mix-a-Lot camp when it comes to women. *** Speaking of “Pikachu”, this woman actually avoids speaking English as much as humanly possible.

Weird for an English class, right? Welcome to Japan. After the introduction exercise concluded, I asked everyone to tell me about someone interesting they met. When it was Pikachu’s turn, she decided to tell me about her meeting about Jack Bauer.

Me: So, where does he work? Pikachu: I don’t knowmaybe some kind of special police? Me: Okaymaybe we can say he is special police (I’m trying to keep things simple).

Did he tell you anything else that was interesting? Pikachu: (thinks about it for a second) Not really. Nothing at all? Pikachu: Yes.

Jack Bauer has a very ordinary life. So, nothing interesting happens to him, at all, say in one whole day? Pikachu: (thinks about it again) Oh, his wife died a few years ago.

But that’s about it. International terroristsnuclear bombsdeadly chemical weaponsthe fate of the free worldapparently all of this is just one normal day for Pikachu. Man, the Pokemon world is a lot more cutthroat than I thought. *** In a different exercise, I had the students pretend to be travel agents and potential travelers. The catch was that the travelers were extremely rich, and wanted to take a vacation where they could spend ridiculous amounts of money.

Again, Jack Bauer, the travel agent, was paired up with Barack Obama, the traveler. These are just my nicknames for them now, I didn’t have them play travel agent as these characters.

I can’t imagine the travel package that the real Jack Bauer would put together. “You too can scream in terrorists faces and shoot dangerous criminals, while staying in the fanciest 5-star hotel and enjoying the recreational facilities” For his desired vacation, Obama was telling Bauer that he wanted to see the pyramids in Egypt. He asked about travel arrangements through the Egyptian desert, to which Bauer replied, “Oh, we have a special camel. It makes you feel so good.” Idon’t think I want to know. Personally, I would have preferred a tricked-out humvee or something, but hey, who can say no to a special camel that makes you feel so good?

*** In a different class, I was teaching two young female lawyers about how to politely refuse suggestions by saying I’m sorry and giving a reason why you can’t. As a scenario, I pretended to be a guy asking them for a date, so they had to come up with excuses as to why they couldn’t go to the movies or dinner. As an interesting cultural point, I told them that there was one response in particular that American women are famous for giving, and asked them to guess what it was. “Imagine you are an American girl, and I’m an American guy asking you for a date,” I said. “You don’t want to go. What would you say, if you were an American girl?” Trying their best to think like young American women, their responses were – “I’m sorry, but I like much bigger, stronger guy.” (Keep in mind that I’m 6’3, over 200 pounds) “I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m a lesbian.” Yeah.

I told them the answer was “I’m going to wash my hair”* and they both agreed that it was a terrible excuse. *I’ve actually been hit with this excuse. At the time I was young and stupid and accepted it, but seriously, what the hell? I also told this to my wife, who’s response was “Yeah? I wash my hair everyday.” I then asked the two girls to come up with an excuse of their own.

As usual, they kind of stared into space, thinking hard about what they could say. I tried to give them a prompt by coughing – I was aiming for “Sorry, but I have a cold/I’m not feeling well.” However, upon seeing my prompt, one girl said, “Oh! I’m sorry, I can’t. I must go to the hospital.” Well, I guess that’s one way to let a guy down. “I’m sorry, I can’t go out with you. Your date proposal has made me so intensely, violently ill, that I have to check into the nearest hospital immediately.” I think I like the hair washing excuse better.

*** Let’s go back to Pikachu. In one exercise, I pretended to be a passenger on the trains, violating some rule or being rude in some way. The student had to ask me to stop or change what I was doing. For Pikachu, I pretended that I was a guy who had cluelessly wandered onto the women’s only train.

So, ideally, Pikachu would come up to me and say “Excuse me, but this is a women’s only car. Would you mind moving to the next car?” Ideally. But remember that Pikachu tries to avoid using English whenever possible.

So her solution to the problem was just to get off the train. I got Pikachu back on the train, and explained that she needed to ride this train to be on time for work. With no escape now, she had to now use English to talk to me.

So as a clueless Gaijin male who just happened to mistakenly board the women’s only car, Pikachu, this tiny little Japanese woman, comes up to me, taps me on the shoulder, and says “Get out!”. I didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. Keeping up the story though, I asked why I was being asked to get off the train. Pikachu thinks about it for a moment, then points to my crotch and says, “You have that. That is not okay on this train. You must get off.” Well, I guess the “No Penis Car” is one way of saying “Ladies Only Train”. Gentlemen, take your penises to cars 2-8 only.

Not wanting to let her off the hook just yet, I said that the morning train was crowded so I couldn’t change cars internally, and the doors had just closed. I asked her how I could get off this train car? I was hoping to get out of her “Wait until the train stops, and then change cars at the station.” What I did get was, “how about the window?” I’m telling you guys, Pikachu is hardcore. When I have time, sometimes I like to pop into a Japanese arcade for a few rounds of video games.

As some of you may have figured out already, I’m a big Street Fighter fan. Any adult male my age is at least casually familiar with Street Fighter II, the game that re-defined the arcade experience. But while most people played a few rounds and moved on, I’m of the select group that really dedicated ourselves to the game. Like, I used to go to tournaments and what not. I had mostly hung up my fighting hat a few years ago, but this past summer Street Fighter IV was released in Japanese arcades. Those of you not familiar with the franchise may not know just how big of an event this was, so let me try and explain it for you.

Street Fighter II was the game that hooked us all. That game was released in 1991. That was seventeen years ago. Seventeen years ago, George Bush Sr. Invaded Iraq for the first time. Seventeen years ago, Rodney King was asking why can’t we all just get along.

Many of you reading hadn’t even been born yet. In that time, we got three brand new Star Wars movies, Rocky, Rambo, The Terminator, John McClane, and Indy Jones have come back to the big screen, and Bryan Adams was The Shit™. And yet numerically, Street Fighter has only gone from II to IV. While arcades in America are a dying breed, in Japan they’re still alive and kicking. They are usually nothing special – a room filled with video games, guys who play them far too much, and enough cigarette smoke to bring about instantaneous lung cancer. They’re usually nothing special.

But its always the exception to the rule that gets you, isn’t it? *** I was in an arcade one day that’s not too far from my home. While the proximity is nice, I don’t often go – it’s also home to some of the best ass-kickers in the world, and my ego can only take so much damage. But I was there one day getting some SFIV games in, and as I was playing I noticed a group of high school boys wandering around. I couldn’t help but to notice one in particular – he looked terribly familiar, as if I’d seen him before. As I was looking at him, I caught him also staring at me. And not just the “hey look it’s a gaijin!” stare we foreigners usually get, but the “Hey, I know this guy!” look that I was also shooting at him.

At pretty much the same time, we both came to realize how we knew each other. I was looking at Watson. Yes, that Watson. The boy who since his ichinensei days had made it his personal mission to grab my dick, to not waste the one chance he may have in his entire life to grab the dick of a black man and confirm whether or not the stereotype is true with his own hands. His curiosity was superseded only by his diligence, as not a day went by where he didn’t try to molest me in one way or another. He’d graduated during my last year on the job, but here he was in my life again. It was a moment I can’t really describe.

Imagine He-Man, some 50 years later, old and decrepit in a nursing home, and as he wanders the halls looking for the shuffleboard game he runs into Skeletor, looking as evil and bony as ever. It was kind of like that.

He hadn’t really changed at all. He looked the same as he did two years ago, just proportionally bigger. He was attending a high school in the city. He was hanging out with his friends and we couldn’t talk long, but he seemed to be doing well.

And no, he didn’t try to grab my junk for old times sake or anything like that. People grow up and change I guess, and Watson is no exception. Although the dick-grabbing is what I’m most going to remember about him, even 50 years later when Street Fighter VI finally comes out.

*** Speaking of molesters I was in the same arcade I ran into Watson at a few weeks later. I was playing, and actually had a modest win streak. Although this is a stereotype, most Gaijin who wonder into an arcade are tourists, or even if they aren’t they don’t have the skills to keep up with these fighting game monsters.

While I know I’m not a top-level player, I’d like to think I have decent skills at least, and can stomp anyone who isn’t on the top of their game. So that’s kind of rare in Japan, and occasionally I get people peering around the cabinet and being moderately surprised to see a foreigner administering ass-kickings. There was a guy standing next to me, maybe in his 40’s or so, watching me play. After beating one guy, the guy next to me came in a little closer and spoke.

Very good job!” he says in broken Engrish and gives me a handshake. Well, that’s not so bad. Japanese arcades aren’t exactly cozy dens of friendliness, so this could even be a good thing. See, it’s always the escalation that gets you. I get linked up to a new challenger. Looking at his stats, this guy is pretty good.

It’s going to be a tough fight, and I’ll need to concentrate and focus in order to compete properly. The match starts, and as expected, my opponent is a difficult match-up. I’m doing fairly well thoughbut that all changes as I feel something behind me. Is ityep, it is.

Old dude is now rubbing on my head. Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten felt up randomly here in Japan, I was starting to forget all about it. The normal response when some old dude is feeling you up, I believe, is to run, deck him square in the jaw, or perhaps a nice combo of both. But I was in the middle of a SFIV match! I couldn’t get up off the machine, and taking my attention away from the match could have been disastrous. Yes, Street Fighter is serious business, folks. I tried my best to shoo him away and move my head out of the way of his gently caressing hands (dodgehead?) while keeping my attention on the match.

Needless to say, my concentration had been broken pretty fucking hardcore, and I lost the first round. But I’ll be okay, right?

I shooed the old guy away, so just re-group in round 2 and make my comeback like LL Cool J. Again, it’s always the escalation. Old dude comes back in the middle of round 2.

And nowhe’s feeling up my tits! Ok, I don’t have tits, but he’s got himself a nice handful of my manly chest. I know Japan has a big problem with groping and all, but I’m pretty far removed from a young Japanese girl. The head thing maybe, maybe I can understand, but my chest? Why wouldnono no no, scratch that, I don’t wanna know. At this point, any hope for winning the match is just lost.

I’m thoroughly freaked out now. I shoo the old guy away again but I can still sense him hovering nearby. He’d gone from stroking my hair to feeling up my tits. I’m not a woman, so I don’t fully understand the process of getting violated, but the rules of escalation dictate that there was only really one more area he could have gone for – the Golden Zone, and I’ll be damned if I was going to let that happen. I lost the match, grabbed my player card, and bailed the hell out of there. Old guy is, of course, looming in the area.

“Oh, too bad you lost,” he says in Japanese. “Yeah, my opponent was really tough!” I say as I continue to speedball my way out of the arcade. Maybe I could have put up a better fight if you weren’t fondling me half the damn time. Is there no place I can go in Japan without getting felt up? And why can’t the 18-40 year old women of this nation have the same interest in me that young boys and old men do? Why am I asking myself this question yet again?

I refuse to accept that this is my fate. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to say thisbut I’m not making this stuff up, swear to goodness. *** It’s pretty common knowledge that girls and video games don’t exactly mix. That’s a pretty broad stereotype of course, and as is the case with many stereotypes, it’s often off the mark.

Girls do like video games to some extent. Mostly stuff like Animal Crossing or Wii Sports or Barbie’s Horseback Adventures, or The View: The Game. What the fuck ever women play. But they’re not really suited to the beat-em-up/shoot-em-up/kill-everything-that-moves games that we men love. Again, I realize there are exceptions. But if you step into an arcade in Japan, 95% of the people there will be guys.

4% may be girls playing the Beatmania games or UFO catchers, or perhaps just accompanying their boyfriends. 1% may actually be there to play games.

So when we guys see a girl in an arcade, much less playing a fighting game, it’s kind of a rare sight to behold. Sort of like the magic of seeing Jordan, Bird, and Johnson together on the original basketball Dream Team. Half the time, we have to actively restrain ourselves from proposing to her on the spot; or if not marriage, at least offering to engage in some sweaty awkward sex while discussing the best ways for Ryu to combo into his super hadouken fireball.

One day, I was out drinking with some friends. Its sort of a semi-weekly event, and the venue we choose just happens to be located above an arcade. We’re all gamer nerds, bite me. I got a phone call, and as the place was crowded and noisy, I left to go outside and take the call.

As I was coming back and passing through the arcade, I noticed a girl playing Street Fighter IV. I figured she was a girl because of the pink frilly dress. This was such an eyesore, such a “Find The Leprechaun” moment for me, that I just had to circle around to get a better look at this girl gamer.

Which, unfortunately, I did. In the words of the great Austin Powers”It’s a man, baby!” Yep.

The girl in the pink frilly dresswas actually some middle aged dude, in a pink frilly dress. Playing Street Fighter. And using E.Honda, no less. I knew that people weren’t going to believe me when I told them, so I had the good sense to take a picture. Upon taking a closer look, I saw that his player name was “Cross-Dressing E.Honda Player”. Well, if nothing else, it’s accurate Okay, so you’re a middle aged Japanese dude.

Who likes to wear pink dresses. That’s far out there, but whatever gets you your kicks, man. And you like to play Street Fighter. Yeah, it’s a great game. But what I can’t figure out for the life of me is – why E.Honda? I always figured cross-dressers would go for Chun-Li, or I dunno, maybe even Zangief, but Honda? I’m going to guess that this is also something I just don’t want to know.

I feel bad for the guys playing next to him. I mean, I completely lost my shit when some old dude came and felt up on me, but I can’t even fathom trying to play seriously when there’s some middle aged guy in a pink frilly dress playing Honda next to me. It’s these moments of random, unthinkable circumstances coming together to form incredible WTF situations, that really makes life worth living, I think. One of these days, I’ll learn to take my own advice. If it were up to me, I would never set foot in a Japanese hospital, ever again.

Didn’t matter what ailed me, it could be a head cold, or I could be missing an entire limb. Just give me a Band-Aid and some Bufferin and I’ll be good to go.

And that’s not just tough guy talk – I fear that going to a Japanese hospital would put me in a worse state than before I went. If I went for a missing limb, I’d come out with cancer. Unfortunately, as it turns out my wife is a major worry wart. So whenever the smallest little health concern comes up, her immediate and unwavering response is “you need to go to the hospital!” My fear of contracting the Ebola Virus from a Japanese hospital aside, as I’m unemployed I don’t have health insurance at the moment, so a trip to the hospital will set me back about $100. I always find it amazing that my wife, who is usually a penny-pincher in every other way, is so nonchalant when it comes to the hospital Me: Say, let’s eat out tonight!

Her: We don’t have the money for that Me: C’mon, we don’t have to go to a fancy place, at most $10-15 per person. Her: If we can afford to spend that, then we should keep it and save it for an emergency. Me:.*disgruntled* Me:.*sneezes* Her: Oh no, is that a cold? You should go to the hospital! Me: I’m fine, I don’t need to go. Her: But you should, just in case! You never know, it could turn into something serious.

Me: I’m fine. And besides that, we don’t have money for the hospital. Her: Sure we do!

I’ll pay for it! Me:.Can we stop at a nice restaurant on the way? Her: We don’t have the money for that! If only the hospitals served a nice steak or something. Anyway, a few weeks ago I developed a painful swollen something-or-the-other on the back of my left leg, just below my ass.

It seemed sort of like a spider-bite, but in all honestly I don’t know what happened. The wonderful location made it a bit uncomfortable to sit, so after a few days I popped it open and drained as much blood and pus out of it as I could (hope nobody was eating while reading this). It still remained fairly swollen and painful, so at my wife’s urging I went to the hospital to get it looked at (*cash register sound here* there’s $100 gone). If it had been a poisonous spider, I guess it would have been prudent to get the venom drained or something.

I went, but all they really did was further drain the blood and pus. This reduced the swelling, and I felt greatfor a day or so. But then the swelling came back with a vengeance. It blistered up even bigger than it was before. Again, at the wife’s urging I made another trip to the hospital (*cash register sound* that makes $200).

Now, with all previous attempts to drain it having failed, the Japanese doctor turned to the next logical step – to just remove the whole damn thing. At the time, I didn’t know what was going on. Again, remember that this wonderful little bundle of despair and death was located on the back of my leg, just under my ass. I’m pretty sure that this is an area of my body I’ve never, ever seen in my life. What occasion would I have to want to look back there? I felt a sharp, piercing pain at first, which I assumed to be just cutting open a hole for more drainage, but after that it didn’t really hurt at all. Afterwards, the doctor used a laser to “seal the hole” as she put it, and at the time I recalled smelling a distinct smoky barbecue smell.

Like baby back ribs or a tender sirloin. I know now that that was my own flesh. And no, I don’t know why I’m apparently so delicious.

Good news – if any of you happen to be trapped with me in some sort of desperate, life-threatening situation – say stranded on a freezing mountain or stuck in the desert with no sign of civilization in sight – and you’re forced to do the unthinkable, the in-human act of actually eating me to stay alive – well, at least you will be in for a good meal. After the doctor finished up, the nurse – a cute young Japanese girl (aren’t they always?) began explaining the details of the situation to me.

“Now, you have a hole in your leg” she says, and tries to show me with her hands the size of the hole. However, just one hand is insufficient, so she has to use both hands to illustrate the size of the new crater in my leg. “Because of the difficult location, you’re going to have to have your wife take care of disinfecting it and applying gauze daily.” I’m not sure why, perhaps they slipped me some wicked painkillers when I wasn’t looking or something, but the nurse’s explanation didn’t really register with me. Even when they slapped a diaper-sized grip of gauze on my leg, I didn’t really think anything major had happened back there. More than anything, I was kinda hungry for some juicy prime rib. Later that night, I was having my wife take care of the wound as instructed.

She removed the gauzeand nearly fainted. “Have you seen what your leg looks like?” she asks, while trying to resist the urge to vomit. Why no, that particular area of real estate just happens to be outside the area of my brain’s Google Maps. She gets me a mirror, and for the first time I’m allowed to see for myself what’s going on back there. It really was a hole in my leg. It was roughly the size of one of those small Haagen-Daas ice cream containers. For those who lack perspective, let me put it this way – upon seeing this chasm in my leg, I could clearly picture the Roadrunner and Wil E.

Coyote running down my ass, with the Roadrunner stopping abruptly before the hole and Wil E. Running past it. Stops, defies gravity for a few moments as he realizes he’s no longer on terra firma, silently holds up a sign illustrating just how fucked he is, then drops down the hole for a few seconds, complete with the “THUD!” and small puff of smoke at the bottom.

Literally, it was a hole in the back of my leg. “Is this something doctors are supposed to do?!” The wife asks, shocked. I too am a little taken aback my having a new Grand Canyon carved out below my ass, so when the wife insists I go to a late-night emergency room (*cash register sound* $300), I don’t put up a fight. We arrived a little after 3AM. Luckily, there weren’t too many people there, so I was seen fairly quickly. The on-call doctor was a young guy who looked like he was fresh out of med school. The wife explained the situation, and upon showing him the leg his response was “Yupthat’s a hole all right.” Thank you, Detective Holmes.

Remember back in the Octopus entry when I said that doctors in Japan only specialize in one part of the body, and are completely ignorant about every other part? Well, I dunno what this guy specialized in, but apparently holes in the back on one’s ass was not it. He looked at it and commented on how beautifully it had been lasered-off, but couldn’t really offer an opinion as to whether or not this was a viable treatment. Luckily though, the doctor who did specialize in holes in the ass – or whatever it is that you need to specialize in for this – had just arrived at the hospital and was on duty. He called her over to look at my leg, and her reaction was very, very casual. Oh, this is a very common treatment procedure! This is completely fine.” Her tone was as if to say “Why did you even bother coming in here at 3 in the morning for?” Well, if I cannot go to the hospital for a gaping hole in my legthen what can I go for?

The hole has since mostly healed (the human body really is something, isn’t it?); its mostly filled in and doesn’t hurt at all anymore. It will probably leave a decent scar though, which will serve as a constant reminder to never trust Japanese doctors, and what started out as a simple insect bite may eventually turn into a hole in your leg and a $300 hole in the bankbook. If only I could see it. Before actually coming here, anyone I talked to regarding my plans to live in Japan invariably responded with “I bet you’re going to get married over there.” As if this was some immutable rule of the cosmos or something. “Gravity pulls things down; space is really cold; and Az will get married to a Japanese girl in Japan.” Even my own parents got in on it, with my Mom predicting that I would give her cute little half-Japanese grandchildren in the future.

Leave it to me to go and prove them right. However, thinking back on it, what did that say about me – that I was going to be an irresistible chick magnet to the Japanese, or that the people who knew me had no confidence in me succeeding with an American girl?

What’s up with that, anyway? I will admit though, a certain part of me also hoped this would be the case. Though I have since fully recoveredyesat the time, I did have Yellow Fever.* It wasn’t a terrible strain as I’ve seen in some of my other fellow men, but it was a fairly strong outbreak.

Looking back at my porn collection of that time is downright embarrassing. “Why the hell did I download this? Just because the girl is Asian? She looks like a 13-year old boy and why is she crying?! This isn’t even remotely sexy!”.

*For those not in the know, “Yellow Fever” refers to the phenomenon of non-Asian men only having an interest in Asian women. Yellow Fever is particularly strong among white males, but black, Hispanic, and men of other nationalities have been documented with the affliction. Why does Yellow Fever happen anyway? See, these are the kinds of questions I want those government-funded studies to answer. I don’t give a shit if rats can count up to four or if a duck can learn his own name – these are the pressing questions our society needs answers to.

The interesting thing about Yellow Fever is that not only is it about unnaturally loving Asian women, it also includes a case of actively disregarding non-Asian women. And that’s just bizarre. I can only assume that it’s something that develops from early childhood. In video games, we got Chun-Li, a strong female fighter who kicked really high and gave us plenty of up-skirt panty shots. On the other hand, we also got Princess Peach, who put Mario through hell – poor guy had to fight evil turtles and mushrooms and shit, jump over blazing lava pits and dodge falling rocks and ghosts and fucking cannonballs, and after all that, he finally gets to the Princess and she rewards all that hard work with a kiss on his cheek. If I’m gonna be jumping over fire pits and shit to save your ass, some panties better be dropping.

It’s called gratitude honey, learn it. I believe this sort of thing started to condition us at an early age.

Asian women like Chun-Li are strong and independent – she doesn’t need your help. Also, she has thick thighs and isn’t afraid of showing you her panties, which is never a bad thing. American women like Princess Peach are difficult and needy, and ultimately ungrateful even if you do jump through all their hoops. To all the women in the audience ready to lynch me right now, I’m just saying, I think this is the message that we poor men were bombarded with when we were kids. At any rate, I’m cured of my Yellow Fever.

At one point, I actively disliked Japanese women in general (I’m sure this shows in some of my earlier work). I think that’s a common response for those who idealize something, and then come to find that the reality is far from the ideal. Every Japanese woman who walked around with a hairstyle 3x bigger than her head, a face so caked in makeup you could scrape it off and use it to mortar a house, carrying some ridiculously expensive designer bag that you know she had some guy buy for her, and with a screeching laugh complete with hearty gasps of breath between each wail that makes one just want to rip their own ears off and throw them at her – these women only served to fuel my fires of hatred and contempt. And they were always plenty to be found. During this time, I would have loved to have dated any woman who wasn’t Japanese. The only problem was actually finding them, and then finding one who didn’t want to sit back and let the man do all the work in pursuing her.

It was near the end of my Japanese-female-hating ways that I met my wife. I was coming out of the miserable funk anyway, but she just happened to be a girl who didn’t have the big hair and 3-hours worth of makeup, she had no designer bags, and her laugh actually made me smile too, instead of wanting to massacre kittens. During my time dating her, I found her to be a wonderful young woman who I knew I could rely on – she just happened to be Japanese. After dating for two and a half years, living together for a year and a half, I proposed to her on Christmas.

I had been thinking about a two or three year engagement. She, however, had different plans. “How about May?” she asks. That was only 5 months down the line! I managed to talk her into September, which still wasn’t the two or three years I’d envisioned, but I figured 9 months would be more than enough time to prepare. Silly me, I didn’t realize just how short 9 months actually are.

As for actually getting married, we actually did that in March. I think I explained this before, but the wife said that we should go ahead and turn in the paperwork. I suggested that we wait until the actual marriage ceremony, but she had her heart set on doing it now.

And there was no argument that I could make that she wouldn’t hear as “I’m having second thoughts.” There really was no reason to wait it out, so we turned in the paperwork and were legally married in March. So, I’d fulfilled my prophecy. I’d gotten married to a Japanese girl. Personally though, I rarely ever think of it as an “international marriage”.

When we first started dating, I used to say things like “Well, Americans are like this” and “Japanese people may do that”. She would point out however that I usually hated getting stereotyped/generalized in other aspects (such as “all Americans own guns” or “all black people like rap”), and as I would say “everyone is different”, why can’t that apply to relationships as well? So I’m me, she’s her, and whatever strengths or weaknesses we have in this relationship, it’s not as an American and a Japanese, but as Azrael and Mrs. I think things work better that way.

That having been said, there are still some areas where I have to un-Japanese her. For example, she watches Japanese TV and actually enjoys it. I’ll fix her yet. It’s not at all unusual for those of us living here in Japan for our parents to come visit us at some point. For them it’s a nice vacation and for us it’s a chance to show the folks where we live and work.

Since Japan is a safe and developed country, we only have to worry about our folks ducking under too-small doorways and whether or not they can stomach raw foods. However, I’d been here for over 5 years, and my parents had not yet come to visit. This was mainly because of my mother, and her paralyzing fear of airplanes.

She used to fly – she was in the Army at one point, and had been stationed overseas. I always thought that she’d watched too many airplane distaster movies on the Lifetime Channel, but as she explains it, one day she was on a small plane and they were hit with heavy turbulence.

Not the kind of shaking that you blow off as a part of air travel, but the kind where oxygen masks drop from the ceiling and you start to see the flight attendants freak out a little. My mother prayed, and said “God, if you let me off this plane and on the ground safely, I swear I’ll never get on one of these things again!” Up until now, she’d kept good on that promise. She’d said that she would only brave the airplane and come to Japan for two occasions – my wedding ceremony, or to see her grandchild. Well, one down. With me getting married here in Japan and no plans for a ceremony stateside, Mom was forced to put aside her fear of planes, and for the first time, my folks came to visit me in Japan.

I’m sure many of you may be expecting wacky adventures and hilarious hijinks, but there just weren’t any. They weren’t able to stay for very long, but while they were here, everything went smoothly. Despite the language barrier, they got along wonderfully with my wife’s family – something that doesn’t always happen even when the two families speak the same language.

It was also nice to see that they hadn’t really changed much. My Dad is former Army, and while you can take the man out of the military, you can’t take the military out of the man. Even though he’s in his 60’s now, he keeps up a steady training regimen and healthy diet – I wouldn’t hesitate to say that he’s stronger than me. “I’d fear your father much more than I fear you,” one of my former co-workers said to me. Considering that I’m considerably taller than my father who is about average Japanese height, I think that’s really saying something.

Mom is the quintessential worry-wart. The day after the wedding ceremony, I bicycled down to their hotel room just to spend some time with them. However, the whole week had left me exhausted, so I fell asleep on their bed. When it was time to go home, Mom worried about me.

Mom: Are you going to be okay on the bike? Me: Yeah Mom.it’s a bike. I only live 2.5km away.

Mom: But, you’re really tired. I don’t want you falling asleep.

Me: On a bike?! Mom: You fell asleep driving* Me: That’s entirely different.

It would take a new level of genetically-engineered super-fatigue to fall asleep on a bike. Mom: I dunno. Maybe you should stay here for the night. *That’s a whole ‘nother story there.

My parents have a talent for saying extremely embarrassing things, especially sexually, but this time no incidents happened. The only thing that came close was Mom referencing an incident in the past.

My brother-in-law was wearing a shirt that said “Trojan Records”. At a first glance, my Mom thought it read “Trojan Condoms”.

Luckily, we got that sorted out in a hurry, but it did remind her. This is a story I’d never told my brother-in-law, so Mom told it from her POV. “I was so embarrassed,” she says, “I tried to wait until the line at the cashier was completely empty before going through, and I had nothing else to buy so I had to pick up some beef jerky and a soft drink.” I didn’t have the heart to explain to her that, from the cashier’s POV, now she was buying condoms, a Coke, and beef jerky, and he probably spent the remainder of the day wondering what kind of night she would be having. Considering that this happened a full two years before I met my wife, and the condoms were used on a woman who isn’t her, this could have turned all sorts of awkward, but luckily it did not. My wife knows the story and can laugh about it as well. I think maybe that’s because I still have a box or two of Mom-sent Trojans at home.

She sees them and perhaps figures that I didn’t really use them all that much. What I didn’t tell her is that the boxes I have now are the 5th or 6th generation. Ignorance is bliss, right? Mom did however make sure to point out that she hadn’t brought along any new condom boxes with her this time. “Its time for grandchildren,” she said. I didn’t bother to translate that one to my wife and her brother. But as it turns out I didn’t need to, as apparently the brother shares the same sentiments.

A few weeks later the two of us were having drinks in a bar, and he says to me, “You know, grandma and I really want to see your kids.” I try to explain that now isn’t the best time, what being jobless and all, but he has his heart set on it. “We just really want to see your kids, I’m sure they will be adorable.” The message is clear; you need to knock up my older sister immediately. I promised I’d do what I could. Maybe it’s just because I’m an only child and therefore do not understand the intricacies of sibling relationships, but I can’t imagine telling my new brother-in-law “C’mon man, why haven’t you knocked up my sister yet? Where are those kiddies?” At any rate, my parents enjoyed their time here (Dad is now a huge fan of Japanese beer) and returned home safely. They both want to return, but with Mom asking about possible boat trips over (it takes 3 months one way.

She didn’t seem to mind so long as the boat didn’t go airborne). I’d love to have them come back, especially to show them more things I couldn’t this time around. I guess the only way to get Mom back on the plane now will be to see her grandkids.

Which, apparently, I’d better get cracking on. I’d finally hit my breaking point and quit my job. I had no new job lined up and with a wedding sucking on my finances, no money saved either. Needless to say, it was far from an ideal situation. But I was at my mental and emotional limit, so it was something that had to be done. Amazingly enough, merely quitting would not mark the end of my problems with this company.

Sometime in the middle of August, a week or two after I’d originally turned in my notice of resignation, the president handed out two papers. One was sort of a “promise to the company” where we’d sign this form promising to be good little workers and work hard or whatever.

Another was a proof of identity – this one was tricky, because we had to have two co-signers sign for us. I believe I’ve mentioned before that co-signing in Japan is a pretty big deal. For most Gaijin, if we need a Japanese co-signer, we turn to our work colleagues, who’d spend a good amount of time soul-searching and consulting with the Lost Gods of Mt. Fuji before giving us an answer (which isn’t always yes!). If its work asking for co-signerswellthat creates a bit of a problem doesn’t it?

Since I was quitting the company, I figured these documents didn’t apply to me. I stuffed them in my desk drawer and didn’t give them much thought. However, in my last meeting with the president, a day or two before my last day, he told me to be sure to turn the papers in – “or else you might not get paid.” Nothing about that seemed right to me, but I took the papers out of my drawer and stuffed them in my bag anyway. My last day of work was somewhat uneventful.

About half of the company – including the president and the supervisor – were away on a company trip. I actually preferred it this way.

The remaining staff did give me a proper send-off though, which I was very happy for. Officially, to explain why I was quitting, I cited my wedding ceremony in September and that I wouldn’t be able to work properly. Most people though, knew that this was a pretty lie. “What’s your real reason for quitting?” One Japanese lady asked. With the president and supervisor gone, I could have laid it all out on the table, but I just didn’t feel like doing that.

I simply just wanted to quit and be done with it. “Saa” I said, which is the Japanese way of saying “Well, I don’t really want to go into detail about that.” Even if I didn’t explain my woes, most of them had seen the supervisor’s treatment of me in person, or heard about other incidents through the gossip mill. Besides, most of them had their own personal gripes with the company as well.

So, they understood. I can tell you, not having to go into work the following Monday was a wonderful feeling I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I did miss my Train Crew though. I wasn’t completely done with the company yet though. There was still the two documents the president had handed out. I thought I’d make an attempt to at least turn them in, so I went to my mother-in-law. She read over the documents, but caught something she didn’t like.

She told me that if I signed these papers, got the co-signers, and turned them in, it would give the company the power to hold me liable for anything for the next 5 years. I quit in August, but let’s say the computer I used broke down in December, or hell, even 2 years from now. Legally, the company could say that the computer breaking down was a result of things I did to it, and hold me responsible to pay for a new one. My mother-in-law knew about my woes with this company, and she just didn’t trust them.

“You don’t even work there anymore!” she exclaimed. She told me that she wasn’t going to sign, and that I should just forget about it. I didn’t exactly trust the company either. So I took her advice and simply forgot about the papers. However, maybe a week or so later I got an email from the company reminding me to turn the papers in. They said that even though I quit, I was an employee when the papers were handed out, therefore they applied to me as well.

Though the person who sent the email wasn’t the president, at the end of the email he included a message from the president. This message more or less said that this was something the parent company had decided, and as such, people who failed to turn the papers in would have their paychecks withheld. I asked my mother-in-law about this latest development, and she suggested I talk with the Labor Bureau, which I did. The counselor I talked to said that the papers themselves weren’t at all uncommon.

Perhaps not a norm anymore, but not uncommon. What was weird, was the timing – usually, these papers are handed out when people first join the company. None of us had done this paperwork, so okay, maybe its something he’s starting late and wanted to retroactively get the current staff on as well. And it was very strange to be demanding these papers from someone who no longer worked there.

The counselor said that turning in the papers was ultimately my decision, but withholding paychecks for any reason was illegal. He even made a copy of the page in the law book where it states that withholding of paychecks is not allowed. He advised me to reply to the email I’d gotten and say that I wasn’t turning the papers in by my choice, but as withholding a paycheck is illegal, please pay me on the proper pay date. He said that if I didn’t get my paycheck, to take it to the Central Labor Bureau in Osaka.

Fire Emblem Ds Rom English. So I did exactly that – I wrote an email saying I wasn’t turning in the papers because I no longer worked there, withholding paychecks is illegal so please pay me, and if I didn’t get paid I would take the matter to the Central Labor Bureau. I even scanned and sent the copy of the law book page the counselor had given me.

I sent this email, but got no response to it. The only thing to do now was to wait to see if I actually got paid or not.

Given everything that had happened with this company, and the president’s attitude, I fully expected not to. I hoped, however, that he would prove me wrong. If I may, allow me to present a short timeline. My parents arrived in Japan on a Thursday afternoon.

The following Friday, I woke up early and checked my bank account, as it was payday. It was empty – as I’d expected, I did not get my paycheck. The next day, Saturday, was my wedding ceremony. I was angry – of course, not getting paid for the work you’d done is a maddening thing – but more than that, the president knew about this. He knew what day my parents were coming and he knew the day of my wedding ceremony. Despite that, he did it anyway. I can only assume that this was an intentional malicious act – is there any other way to see it?

I was angry, but I had to put that behind me. My parents had come to Japan for the first time ever, and I was about to get married. But once the dust settled, it would be time to fight. And fight I would. Bet you were expecting me to end the entry here, huh? Not this time! The day after my parents left Japan, I went to the Central Labor Bureau.

Although I had to go through a couple of bonehead counselors, the lady who was eventually assigned to my case was very nice and also seemed shocked/outraged at the series of events at the company. She arranged to go down there personally to have a talk with the president. He seemed to be avoiding her to some extent – the meeting got rescheduled twice – but she did make it out there.

She asked if anyone else had gotten their salaries withheld, and he admitted that it was only me. She asked the reason why, and he had said “kekkyoku kanjouteki” – “ultimately, emotional.” She then pointed out that withholding salaries is illegal, to which he reportedly replied “Oh, is that so?” With the law against him, he was forced to pay me, which he did one month after the scheduled pay date. As the lady explained the meeting to me, she also said, “right as we were finishing up, the president asked me to ask you if you would still turn in those papers.” I almost laughed over the phone. “No, I don’t think so.” “Right. I’m just conveying the message,” she says.

I could hear the incredulity in her voice, as if she were almost embarrassed to ask such a thing. To date, I don’t know why getting those papers was so important to him, especially from an employee who’d quit. I’d also asked about my cut salary, but apparently it is legal to cut someone’s salary – to a point. Unfortunately, there was nothing further I could do about that, and my final paycheck was still under the cut wages. My case advisor seemed apologetic about that, but was very happy that I was getting my pay.

She was a nice lady and helped me tremendously. At the same time, I’d also phoned the consultation department of the parent company. Since the president liked to blame them so much, I just thought I’d “confirm” all the things he’d put on their shoulders. I asked about my cut salary and my paycheck being withheld, and told them that he’d said that this was their call. They promised to look into it, and a representative did talk to the president at some point.

A few weeks later, they contacted me to report the results of their findings – the president was forced to admit that the pay cut and the withholding of the paycheck were all 100% his doing. Apparently, though I’m not familiar with the details, the president also got a stiff talking-down to from one of the representatives at the parent company. That was all I wanted to accomplish – to catch him in the lies and for someone in a position of power to give him a talking-to, although I doubt the message got through. And with that, finally, I was done with this company. *** Sour Apples – Aftermath It’s been two and half months since I quit my job. I’m still unemployed – I’ve been looking for work but the pickings are still slim.

I’ve been to a few interviews even but didn’t get them. I also went to Tokyo for job interviews, but those didn’t pan out either. The job market should start getting better in the next month, so I’m hoping to find something soon. If the president was trying to screw me over with the timing of the pay cut and withholding my paycheck, he royally succeeded.

The pay cut threw off my calculations for saving for the wedding. As a result, I had to use up most of my August check for the wedding, which meant that I couldn’t pay bills. And then I didn’t get my September check, which left those bills unpaid – I only had about $15 dollars in my bank account, and this was with my wedding taking place and my parents in Japan. Finally getting the check in October, as well as donations I received from Gaijin Smash (thank you very much!) let me at least catch up with August and September, but I’m still two months behind on most bills. When I quit, I had planned to do outsource translation for the company – I was familiar with the work and while the pay was low compared to the standard, at least it was something. However, after getting my paycheck withheld, I lost any and all desire to do that – I didn’t want to help them out in any way, especially considering that their pay rates are so low (the existing outsource staff under my tenure also realized it was a low pay rate, and I had to sort of lower my head and apologize and blame management. The president wanted to cut it even further!).

Given the situation, the smart thing to do would have been to either keep working the job, or cancel the wedding. The job was making me miserable everyday, and canceling the weddingI can’t imagine trying to look my wife in the eye and saying “you know that wedding you’ve been looking forward to all year? Yeah, we can’t do that now.” So, this is just one of life’s tough spots, but I’m no stranger to that and I’ll get through it somehow. I still keep up with many of my former co-workers. As I’ve said before, they’re all good people. A-san found another job with a company in a similar field.

She tried to get me a job there but things just didn’t work out. The former computer programmer is still unemployed as well, but he admits that he hasn’t been looking. He has money saved up, so he’s just taking it easy for the moment and is considering taking a trip somewhere. Curly and Ms.

Shocker are also doing okay, though both also are looking for their way out. Curly hasn’t been subjected to any bad treatment, yet, but really dislikes what has happened to everyone else, and can’t help but to wonder when it will be his turn. Shocker actually wrote an email to the president in which she tried to tell him that she felt that people were being treated unfairly. He called her out for a private talk and, from what I understand, basically just called her names.

Apparently, he said that if people had problems with him, they were best to just keep their mouths shut about that. The next time I saw Ms.

Shocker, she had all sorts of colorful adjectives for him, including “that fucking asshole bastard.” Both Curly and Ms. Shocker said that I’d changed since leaving the company – I seemed to be much more happier and stress-free overall.

As for the company, 2-3 more people have quit since I left. Doris quit a few weeks before I did, primarily to go back to China but not without her own gripes with the company. One Japanese girl, a relatively new hire, was outraged at the idea of withholding paychecks, and quit. Those who haven’t quit are quietly plotting their escape. Apparently, there have been a lot of new hires in the past few months. There are three new computer programmers to replace the old one. We all couldn’t help but to wonder “why couldn’t you have done that sooner to help out the first guy?!” Just taking a quick mental survey, aside from the president, the supervisor, and Small Wonder, I can’t think of anyone else working there who’d been there when I first joined the company a little less than 2 years ago.

All in all, it was an experience. Not entirely a pleasant one, but I learned a lot. Hopefully I can take everything I learned and put it to good use somewhere down the line. And now, finally, I can put this story to bed. After a half-year of being miserable at the job, I finally gave my notice of resignation on a Tuesday at the beginning of August.

I sent the email at the end of the day, so on Wednesday I went to work not really knowing what to expect. But for Wednesday as well as Thursday, it was business as usual. Neither the president nor the supervisor mentioned my notice of resignation, and my supervisor actually seemed to be avoiding me. I was fine with this – so long as they honored my final working day, I would have been content to just continue working and then no longer show up. However, on Friday the president called me out for a private talk. He asked if I’d cooled down and changed my mind, which explains why neither of them had brought this up sooner.

I explained that this wasn’t some hasty decision I’d made in the heat of passion – it had been building for months until I’d finally reached a breaking point. He then said that he didn’t want me to quit – he asked me to write up all the grievances I had with the company. The following Tuesday we would talk about it and he would make his plea to get me to stay. I agreed to write out my complaints at least, with the president telling me to hold nothing back. We did meet the following Tuesday – I was expecting a talk within the company, perhaps with the supervisor included.

Instead of that, we ended up going to an izakaya drinking bar (the one the president now owned), just the two of us. There, I presented him with my list of complaints I’d had over the past year. I tried to include everything that had frustrated me since the beginning of the year – getting ridiculed over errors, given tremendous amounts of work with no help and no acknowledgement that it was a lot of work, the supervisor’s constant riding of mewell, you’ve all read the story up until now. The president read my list and seemed to sort of take it in, but there was one area he stopped at – where I listed being accused of not working hard, and even getting my pay cut for it. “You admitted that you were only working 20% of the time,” he said.

“No,” I explained, “you went into that meeting convinced that I was only working 20% of the time, and I realized nothing I could say or do would change your mind. Certainly, I’d had my moments where I wasn’t exactly working, but it wasn’t the 80% you think. I only agreed to that to keep it from becoming an argument that went nowhere.” His response was, “Oh, I see,” and he kept reading. After studying my list for a few minutes, he said that if I would “give the company another chance” he would work to change these issues. He also began to talk about lofty long-term goals, such as opening a branch office in America and having me be the manager of it – everything I’d been doing up until now was sort of training to get to that point. He asked what I would do if I did quit. I hadn’t really thought about it – the immediate focus was the wedding that would take place next month.

I said I supposed I would search for jobs for awhile, and if I found nothing good I’d have to go back to English teaching. He said that would be a tremendous waste – he saw great potential in me, which is why he didn’t want to let me just quit like that. I could even take the entire month of September off to plan for my wedding and to recuperate afterwards. But there was still one big, burning issue on the table – my cut salary.

I said that the idea that I hadn’t been working hard enough was a false assumption, and I didn’t like losing a big chunk of my paycheck because of it. I wanted it back. As Japanese people are prone to do, he gave an answer that deflected the question – he insinuated that he personally wanted to give me back my cut salary, but since this was something that was decided by the parent company, it was out of his hands. The president told me that I didn’t have to give an answer right away. Take the weekend to think about it, and then give an answer next Monday. But before any deliberations were to be done, there was one other thing I needed to resolve if continuing to work there was even going to be an option – the supervisor. Actually, I wanted to resolve that issue regardless of whether I continued there or not.

My mother taught me that sometimes, you just have to be the bigger man and take responsibility for things, regardless of who you think fired the first shot. I felt that I’d been wronged first by her actions at the beginning of the year, but in this bitter and pointless war of emotions, I hadn’t been perfect either.

No matter what my reasons, wrong is wrong. So I sent an email to the supervisor later in the week, and we met privately as well. During our talk, I noted that we’d had bad blood for quite a few months now. I said that I had my reasons for it, but ultimately that didn’t matter – some of my attitudes and responses were not suitable for a professional working environment, so I apologized. That was all I wanted to do, whether she accepted that or not, I’d done what I needed to and should have done. However, she accepted that and also apologized as well, admitting that she’d been especially hard on me. She said that it was only because she expected so much of me – because she knows I can succeed, she’s especially tough on mistakes and failures, even little ones.

She pointed out that she can be very hard on herself as well (somewhat true), but acknowledged that such an attitude can be discouraging and frustrating, so she promised to back off (and to her credit, she did for the remainder of the time that I was there). She seemed very concerned about if I was going to continue the job or not. I told her I hadn’t decided yet, but this was something I needed to do regardless of whether I was there for another year or another day. We ended the discussion with a friendly handshake. I knew we probably couldn’t go back to being all smiles and what not, but at least now maybe we could work together in peace. She even went back to calling me “Az-chan”, something she’d done before the war started. As the weekend came, I had a lot to think about.

Despite my recent misery, there were a lot of reasons to keep the job. Financially, I was most certainly in no position to quit, with the wedding already taking a major toll on my back account. I knew from experience that this time wasn’t any good for job hunting. Aside from the president and supervisor, I liked all my other coworkers a lot. I was completely fine with the content of the job as well. If the president and supervisor could actually change, then why shouldn’t I keep working? I wasn’t thinking about long-term, but I could at least stick to the original plan of working until the end of my contract in January.

The job market would be much better, hopefully financially I’d be better prepared, and I could also search for new jobs while still working. I see-sawed quite a bit, but going into Monday I was leaning towards keeping the job. I decided not to volunteer that information – if they were serious about wanting to keep me, they’d have to come and ask. Monday came and went with no talk of what I’d decided. By the weekly meeting on Tuesday afternoon, my decision still had not been addressed. Which was a good thing, because it was about to change.

To start off the meeting, Doris asked our computer programmer about something customer service related. We’d recently renewed the website and the internal systems. Overall, things would work for the better/more smoothly, but for now there were still a lot of bugs and kinks to iron out. A certain automated daily report that the customer service department used to get wasn’t being processed. Doris noted that it’d been over a month since she’d asked about it, but they still didn’t have it. It’s important to remind our readers here that we only had one computer programmer. Again, for a business that operates solely on the web, you would assume there’d be a team of programmers, but no.

Just one guy. He tells Doris that he hasn’t forgotten about her request, but it’s just been queued among a billion other things that has to be done. And there were a lot of things that were much higher priority that had to be taken care of first. Doris accepted this answer, but the supervisor, perhaps sensing blood, took this opportunity to pounce on the programmer for – wait for it – not doing his job. She says that even if he can’t do the task, the least he could do is update Doris on the timeframe or give her a progress report. The president started to get in on it as well, accusing him of making the same mistakes he did at his last company. The programmer is a very short-tempered Japanese guy.

He’s been known to snap at food servers for not responding to table calls fast enough. I don’t know about everyone else at the meeting, but I was thinking that he was showing incredible restraint for simply taking the dressing-down from both the president and supervisor without snapping back. He did make one mistake though. The president said something, and the programmer responded back with “Isn’t that just your way of thinking?” The key word here is “you”. As some of you may know, Japanese as a language has many different levels of politeness. The programmer used a word for you that wasn’t very polite, and in some cases would be considered rude (for you Japanese speakers/scholars out there, he said “omae”).

It’s certainly not a word you would use to address a boss. Essenziale Di Economia Mankiw Pdf Printer there. Well, the president flips out at this point.

“What’d you call me? What’d you call me?” He just starts laying into the guy, and this continues for a few minutes. Needless to say, it was extremely awkward for everyone else sitting there – at least 10 other employees, not to mention the 5-6 people who weren’t actually a part of the meeting but were within earshot.

After a few minutes, even the supervisor is feeling that this is excessive. When she finds an opening, she jumps in and gets the meeting back on track. But the president was far from done. At one point in the middle of the meeting, he starts up again! “You know what I really like about Korea?” he says. “They have well-defined levels of politeness, and they treat the people above them with proper respect.

Isn’t that right?” he says to the Korean guy. The Korean guy is good friends with the programmer, and regardless of that, anyone in that situation would want to deflect as much as possible, which is what he did. “Well, I can’t speak for all of Korea,” and “Well, there’s lots of different situations” he’d repeat as the president continued to pressure him to confirm Korea’s “outstanding” social levels.

“Ah, okay, you don’t want to be dragged into this. I understand,” the president says, and continues to lay into the programmer, saying things like he’s “raising him to be a productive member of society” and he should be respected like a father. The supervisor jumps in again and gets the meeting back on track. We finish all the issues on the table and everyone starts to pack up their things in anticipation of a conclusion. However, the president is still not done. Literally, people starting to make getting-up motions and he starts in again on the computer programmer guy.

“I think you should write a 2-page essay on the importance of good manners in society,” he says. The programmer has just about had it at this point. “I don’t think I have to do that,” he says. “Sure you do,” the president fires back. “No I don’t,” the programmer responds.

“And why not?” “Because I’m quitting. Please stay after the meeting so we can talk about my terms.” With everyone else finally set free from that spectacle, the programmer, supervisor, and president stayed behind and the programmer kept true to his word, setting his final work date for the end of September. Seeing what happened in the meeting more or less confirmed for me that I was done as well.

The president had promised to change things, but that day I simply did not see him having a capacity for change. Before he could fix the issues, he had to fix the source of the problem. And I just didn’t see that happening – he didn’t even seem aware there was a problem. It was all of us who were wrong, and only he who was right. If I’d stayed, maybe things would be okay for a little while, but I saw things invariably inverting back to the way they were.

It was best to get out now while I had the chance. Later that day, I drafted up my response email where I confirmed that my last day of work would be the end of the month.

This feels like a place where I would write a conclusion to this sagabut as you all know, we’re not done yet.