![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
Jul. 21st, 2011 11:39 amI suppose I should start at the beginning: This week, I managed to finish a online TEFL course that I had done with the company i-to-i, after months of dithering and procrastination. Only a few days later and I find out that the TEFL dispatch company that i-to-i works with as a job placement service has been indulging in quite a few illegal practices, including being found guilty of illegal dispatching in both Tokyo and Osaka.
I went on a chat room (well, it's a MUSH, which is kind of like a MUD except not) that I usually frequent yesterday, and I mentioned this. Now this same chat room, in previous occasions, railed me for my interest in Japanese culture and food, in a way which I can't really seem to understand. Are they really annoyed about my liking for Japanese culture? Well, when I talked about TEFL today, I got people telling me I was better off not going to Japan because I'm apparently such a weeaboo that I would repel them:
"pretty much all the outfits there do not have much respect for those they bring over."
"also, weeaboo thing. Weeding you out would be about as easy as that part in Roger Rabbit where the judge lured Roger out by tapping the first bit of 'shave and a haircut.' 'cept in your case it'd be Yapapa or something. You wouldn't make the first round of cuts."
"They do filter on anime/manga types, because there is a notorious stereotype about these people going to japan to teach english, fucking off on the job because they were there for anime and not actually to teach as primary reason to be in Japan, and end up not respecting their time tables, getting fed up because they didn't get to live near Tokyo/Akiba, etc."
"You are comparing your experience so far with JET programs as being someone who visited disney land fo ra week, not realizing that the people operating the rides for you are all college students wearing Depends because their A: their bathroom's a good 20 minutes walk about B: they have a 10 minute break every 4 hours to use it. FURTHER that person operating the ride had to compete with OTHER college students to even get into thata position that pays so little they're living in the slums an hour away from the magical kingdom, and will happily fire someone the moment god forbid walking around in dirty daipers gives them a raging case of e. coli, because omg such valuable internship opportunity! Incidently, this is an internship opportunity Disney Corp basically sat each and every person down during the prelims BEFORE the actual interviews and said 'do you own more than one Disney video' and rejected everyone, without a second thought, who said 'yes'.
Visiting and living/teaching there are NOT the same."
This is especially ironic that they would damn the Japanese like this, considering that most of the other people in this chat room were taking the names of either anime characters, or characters from Japanese games...
I have no idea what kind of idea warrants this: apparently according to this one person, the very idea that a foreigner would be interested in Japanese things makes them automatically repellent to them, and that the Japanese workplace is apparently going to be inhospitable to me just because I'm foreign. One of the people reccomended teaching in South Korea instead of Japan, even though I read an anecdote that suggests that South Korea's working conditions for English teachers are even worse than Japan's.
I don't know what I've done to suggest to these people that I'm some daydreaming idiot who believes that Japan is the greatest country in the world, or that I have no idea how the world works, but it seems that whenever I talk about anything Japanese that isn't say, playing a video game or watching a movie, I get these people coming down on my head and calling me a weeaboo or a Japanophile and hectoring me.
"Okay. here's the thing. Jet programs/ ran by conservative old guys and constantly being flooded with applications. I know, in your absolutely mind boggling view of the world, that there's nothing wrong iwth being a jawdroppingly dense weeaboo of epic proportions, but they odn't LIKE people like that in japan. they really don't~ It'd be like someone wanting to come to the US for a love of what used to be saturday morning cartoons. Only really, really obsessive and frightning about it. to the point where they can't picture life without their scooby doo pajapamas. So. In a field of applicants of well adjusted college students, a good number of them who just want to teach, and others who actually give a shit about Japan other than their anime and anime culture -- yeah, the weeaboos get doors slammed in their faces.
You are RANK with weeaboo and patheticness. You're competing with people who actually want to do shit with their lives other than curl up in a basement somewhere and watch anime until the rest of the world goes away. You do not stand a chance in hell."
I can see why it pays to have no illusions about whatever foreign country or culture that you're interested in. But most of the time, it seems that I only get people who would prefer people who just endlessly complain about the Japanese, or point their fingers at them and go "HEY EVERYBODY, LET'S ALL LAUGH AT THOSE LOSERS!"
Maybe this view is a little bit black and white, but I do not like being insulted for liking Japanese culture or being the victim of prejudice, just because it is what it is: an interest in a foreign culture.
I went on a chat room (well, it's a MUSH, which is kind of like a MUD except not) that I usually frequent yesterday, and I mentioned this. Now this same chat room, in previous occasions, railed me for my interest in Japanese culture and food, in a way which I can't really seem to understand. Are they really annoyed about my liking for Japanese culture? Well, when I talked about TEFL today, I got people telling me I was better off not going to Japan because I'm apparently such a weeaboo that I would repel them:
"pretty much all the outfits there do not have much respect for those they bring over."
"also, weeaboo thing. Weeding you out would be about as easy as that part in Roger Rabbit where the judge lured Roger out by tapping the first bit of 'shave and a haircut.' 'cept in your case it'd be Yapapa or something. You wouldn't make the first round of cuts."
"They do filter on anime/manga types, because there is a notorious stereotype about these people going to japan to teach english, fucking off on the job because they were there for anime and not actually to teach as primary reason to be in Japan, and end up not respecting their time tables, getting fed up because they didn't get to live near Tokyo/Akiba, etc."
"You are comparing your experience so far with JET programs as being someone who visited disney land fo ra week, not realizing that the people operating the rides for you are all college students wearing Depends because their A: their bathroom's a good 20 minutes walk about B: they have a 10 minute break every 4 hours to use it. FURTHER that person operating the ride had to compete with OTHER college students to even get into thata position that pays so little they're living in the slums an hour away from the magical kingdom, and will happily fire someone the moment god forbid walking around in dirty daipers gives them a raging case of e. coli, because omg such valuable internship opportunity! Incidently, this is an internship opportunity Disney Corp basically sat each and every person down during the prelims BEFORE the actual interviews and said 'do you own more than one Disney video' and rejected everyone, without a second thought, who said 'yes'.
Visiting and living/teaching there are NOT the same."
This is especially ironic that they would damn the Japanese like this, considering that most of the other people in this chat room were taking the names of either anime characters, or characters from Japanese games...
I have no idea what kind of idea warrants this: apparently according to this one person, the very idea that a foreigner would be interested in Japanese things makes them automatically repellent to them, and that the Japanese workplace is apparently going to be inhospitable to me just because I'm foreign. One of the people reccomended teaching in South Korea instead of Japan, even though I read an anecdote that suggests that South Korea's working conditions for English teachers are even worse than Japan's.
I don't know what I've done to suggest to these people that I'm some daydreaming idiot who believes that Japan is the greatest country in the world, or that I have no idea how the world works, but it seems that whenever I talk about anything Japanese that isn't say, playing a video game or watching a movie, I get these people coming down on my head and calling me a weeaboo or a Japanophile and hectoring me.
"Okay. here's the thing. Jet programs/ ran by conservative old guys and constantly being flooded with applications. I know, in your absolutely mind boggling view of the world, that there's nothing wrong iwth being a jawdroppingly dense weeaboo of epic proportions, but they odn't LIKE people like that in japan. they really don't~ It'd be like someone wanting to come to the US for a love of what used to be saturday morning cartoons. Only really, really obsessive and frightning about it. to the point where they can't picture life without their scooby doo pajapamas. So. In a field of applicants of well adjusted college students, a good number of them who just want to teach, and others who actually give a shit about Japan other than their anime and anime culture -- yeah, the weeaboos get doors slammed in their faces.
You are RANK with weeaboo and patheticness. You're competing with people who actually want to do shit with their lives other than curl up in a basement somewhere and watch anime until the rest of the world goes away. You do not stand a chance in hell."
I can see why it pays to have no illusions about whatever foreign country or culture that you're interested in. But most of the time, it seems that I only get people who would prefer people who just endlessly complain about the Japanese, or point their fingers at them and go "HEY EVERYBODY, LET'S ALL LAUGH AT THOSE LOSERS!"
Maybe this view is a little bit black and white, but I do not like being insulted for liking Japanese culture or being the victim of prejudice, just because it is what it is: an interest in a foreign culture.
