Thread: Moving to Japan
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Old 09-03-2011, 10:49 AM   #86
Peter Goldsbury
 
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Re: Moving to Japan

Going back to the thread topic and the question posed by the opening post, I had the idea of going to Japan to study when I was a student in the US. My initial idea was to go to the Aikikai Hombu, but I was disabused of this idea by a shihan, who was affiliated to the very same Hombu. He strongly advised finding suitable employment first, whether in Tokyo or elsewhere, and then think about aikido. He was strongly against going solely for aikido: by which he meant asking the Hombu to sponsor a visa and then doing odd jobs. (The Hombu no longer do this.)

So, I looked for university jobs and found three: at Tohoku in Sendai, at Hiroshima, and at Oita in Kyushu. I was lucky to obtain tenure very quickly, and thereby entered the 'system'--but had to learn Japanese quite intensively, in order to teach my classes in Japanese and participate in the meetings. This was quite a struggle but was well worth it. Aikido training was never a problem, because of the very small number of classes and the flexible teaching schedule.

In Hiroshima there are a number of foreign communities, all having devised systems of mutual support. If we consider only native English speakers, there are Ford & Mazda employees, many of whom are here for three years and inhabit a kind of ex-pat bubble, so do not have much incentive to get to know the culture at a deepening level; there are the English teachers at local schools (including the international schools), again on fixed contracts; there are the university people. All of whom tend to live in separate groups with fairly limited interaction.

And there are those from all three groups who have learned how to live with(in) the system and found their niche. All these people are committed to Japan for the long term and have put their kids through the Japanese school system. They also have good abilities in Japanese. I think members of this group also tend to have a good number of close Japanese friends with whom Japanese is the normal language of communication. They are well aware of the omote and ura aspects of Japan--and also the BS levels of some nihonjinron.

I know that this situation is also replicated with the Chinese, Korean (two groups), Brazilian and Filipino communities.

This has been my experience FWIW.

Last edited by Peter Goldsbury : 09-03-2011 at 10:51 AM.

P A Goldsbury
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