Sunday! No work!

My first Sunday off since probably some time in....August perhaps. I was going to go out and do something but I think instead I will post things on the internet, play videogames and maybe even shower-ahh the life of an english teacher!

Japan has a bit of a bad rap among english teachers concerning...xenophobia? I'm not sure if that's exactly how I would describe it. Japanese people seem fascinated with foreigners-just not as neighbours. What I'm really reffering to is official government policy regarding foreigners which is pretty draconian. Apparently according to a new law that Koizumi is putting forth, all foreigners will now have to be fingerprinted when entering the country. I've read lots of stories about police officers asking for ID (ie "gaijin" alien registration card) for absolutely no reason whatsoever. If you believe what you read on the internet then apparently this kind of discrimination is rampant. I, on the other hand have never experienced any of this. Although I always carry my gaijin card with me wherever I go, I can honestly say that I've never felt that I've been a victim of any kind of discrimination whatsoever.

My roommate Jared on the other hand can not. He has been asked three or four times by police officers to show ID and everytime he comes to me crying 'racial profiling.' He's been in a bit of culture shock for the past couple of weeks, feeling some real hate for Japan because of the last incident. One night he went out to rent a movie and on the way to the video store he saw a fire burning in a field and it was getting dangerously close to a house. So when he got to the video store he told them (in pretty darned fluent Japanese) that there was a fire and they needed to call the police. Apparently they looked at him like he was crazy so he biked 5 minutes out of his way to the koban (police box) to tell the police directly. When he got there and explained his story, he was shocked when they asked him if he had any weapons and if they could look in his bag and apparently they even patted him down! They didn't even care about the fact that he was there to report a fire. I don't think he's had a nice thing to say about Japan since.