Re: [tlug] (OT) The enigma of Japan (was: UNIX jobs on TLUG)

[Doug McLean <dmclean635@example.com>]

On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen@example.com> wrote:
> Martin Killmann writes:
>
> As pointed out, there is often a technical requirement (eg, frontline
> customer support) for a fairly high level of skill in Japanese.  But
> you can often work around that by entering a job that doesn't require
> customer contact.  What you can't avoid is office politics, though,
> and that is extremely difficult to participate in on equal footing.
> You have to play a different game.

Respectfully, I think this is true for immigrants anywhere.  We take
for granted that we don't have to worry about that in our home
countries, but people I know who are immigrants to the US would no
doubt say similar things about us.  Those subtle nuances and jokes
that only native speakers who grew up in the culture would understand
put immigrants, even fluent-speaking English immigrants, on uneven
footing.

Immigration is never an easy thing, but more and more I appreciate
what my wife and others like her have endured in the US and even more
so since we moved to Ireland. Even here in Ireland, where I am now an
immigrant, I find that that despite speaking the same language
fluently, I didn't grow up in the culture and somehow miss out on
things.  It's not intentional exclusion at all, just that I can't
relate on a cultural level, and people pick up on that.  Doesn't mean
I don't have good friends here though.

> That's certainly good advice.  However, if you've done the same in
> another culture before, you will discover that in Japan important
> parts of the barrier remain in place even after you've become
> "fluent".

Again, ask an immigrant to the US or any Western industrialized
country, and they'd probably say the same thing.

Still, people can still thrive in different environments.  I often
find myself inspired by the example of Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish
author better known Yakumo Koizumi (小泉八雲) who came to Japan in his
40's, but mastered the language well enough to write some cracking
ghost stories in the 1800's.  No doubt he was still treated
differently, but Japan became his home nevertheless and he did very
well there.  :)

-- 
Doug McLean

Blog: http://nihonshukyo.wordpress.com/