The year is ending in Japan, and things are starting to fall apart. I am getting a lot more ready to come home now.
In Japan, there's a very long-standing tradition of enforced transfers, particularly in bureaucratic jobs. The modern-day explanation is that constant transfers ensure that employees have a wide variety of experiences, in a number of fields and with different coworkers and bosses. I suppose that since most Japanese people would never complain about their work environment, it also keeps anyone from getting trapped in an awful place for too long. In the samurai days of the Tokugawa shogunate, when the tradition originated, it was actually designed to keep the bureaucrats - who were all samurai - from formenting rebellion against the state. By shuffling around, no employees of an office gained enough trust and familiarity to plan against their superiors.
Anyway, the end result is that every March becomes a hand-wringing stressful period of wondering which friends are going to be sent away, possibly never to be seen again. No one is safe from the rule, although senior teachers have some measure of protection. Last year, my supervisor Hayashi and the principal of Icchu were transferred, which was unfortunate but withstandable since both were transferred just to other sections in Natori city hall. This year has come a lot harder.
From Nichu, I only have loose reports so far, but two of my English teachers are being transferred, both of whom are friends of mine. I don't know who else is leaving, but I'll find out. More painfully, my good friend Saito is being transferred out of Icchu! I am sure we'll stay in touch as he doesn't live too far away, but this still comes as a pretty hard shock. It's not going to be anywhere near as homey at Icchu without Saito around to have lunch with.
To add insult to injury, another good friend at City Hall is being transferred right out of Natori to some place I've never heard of. She's very upset too, as she'd just started to get very settled into her position on the international exchange committee, and we'd just started working out plans for the next year.
All these transfers have made my imminent departure from Japan a bit more poignant. I'm going to feel rather detached in these next few months, with several of my Japanese friends gone away now.
Comments
transfers
It used to be that way in Canada, too, my son. It was called lateral transfers, and it happened to most everyone in bureaucratic positions. In the Forest Service they transferred your grandfather anywhere from once a year to a maximum of once every three years - for no apparent reason - no pay raise, no position change, just a new community. Policemen were in the same position, and, I think, all government related jobs. In many of the communities where I grew up the children and families of those people formed little transient communities of their own, the locals didn't have much to do with us because we were too soon gone, and we would re-unite with Highways or Fisheries families in other towns two or three moves down the road. I hated it with a passion. RCMP could be moved anywhere in the country in those days, and I am not sure it is too different now for them. It is gone from the regular sort of bureaucratic jobs now - I expect unions had something to do with that. Now the only time you have to move is if you are bidding on another job in another region and we no longer have the dreaded April community shuffle... My heart goes out to our happy friend down at city hall - and to our other friends there who will miss her as much as you do.
yer MOM!
yikes
Oh, Eric's mom, that's really sad. I did not know that.
Warm fuzzies
You are a good kid, missy rabbit.
eric's MOM!