So the next two days are exam days, which means I come to school but have no classes and essentially have nothing to do all day. I suppose I'll use the time to try and do a little Japanese studying, but still so boring (hopefully I don't go crazy). Oh but my dad has been sending me a few questions about environmental policy issues for projects he is currently consulting on, which is nice I actually get to produce something of some use (i hope) related to what I actually studied.
now time to share the gossip in the English teacher work of my area. An ALT (assistant language teacher, what I am) was arrested this week for drug possession. This guy was not with the JET program, but rather is a privately hired ALT from America. While the stories have not been completely confirmed, it is believed the this guy had someone mail him marijuana from the states. they discovered it in the package at the airport, then set up a bit of a sting operation, where they nabbed him as soon as he signed to accept the package. now whatever your opinion of marijuana may be,this was just incredibly stupid. there is a no tolerance policy here in japan (especially for civil servants, that would be us!). so this fellow will loose his job, have to serve a prison sentence here in Japan and then be kicked out of the country.
in addition to just being a stupid idea, this guy has also created problems for other ALTs in the area. This all occurred in the town next to mine (where Tamae lives) so there are now many speculations that all ALTs do drugs. Teachers and principles have been asking a lot of us JETs if were friends with this guy and that we should not be doing drugs if we are (haha) just kind of annoying to have to face these questions when you haven't really done anything. And right after this story broke Tamae and I were at dinner in Kamisu and we defiantly received more speculative looks than normal. Thats the thing that is so frustrating, is that as foreigners, we already have a hard enough time trying to get the local Japanese people in the country to accept us, and then you have people do these things and it just pushes back the progress that years of ALTs have been working on.
Anyway, thats enough venting about that I suppose. I hope that everything works out for the guy, but he was pretty stupid.
In other unrelated news, some family friends from Guam will be flying through Narita this evening, so I will be meeting up with them for dinner, which will be nice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I feel like I am caught up on your life, finally. Your blog posts were so infrequent I was wondering what you were doing. Too bad Hiroshima didn't work out but looks like Tokyo with friends was fun too. We missed having you for Thanksgiving, especially to help me tease Matt. I will teach Nathan to refer to everything as fabulous for your arrival at Christmas. BTW, he still occasionally sings "to the left, to the left" that Sophia taught him but he says Aunt Phia taught him.
We are used to being in the majority in the US so it is strange to go abroad and be looked at as different at times or to be generalized about. I think it's definitely a good lesson in perspective, even if it's annoying. As we all know I am not a super patriotic American, but I have found myself defending the US here at times.
I can't believe Nathan still sings that, that makes Aunt Phia very happy :)
Post a Comment