Big Danger in Little Osaka: Introduction

(Big Danger in Little Osaka #1, 2008)

For the next year I will be living in Osaka, Japan, where I will be teaching English at a local high school. Each week I will chronicle what it is like to live and work in a country that is, at times, very different to our own. Laugh along as I embarrass myself in front of my superiors! Weep as I inspire classrooms full of impressionable young children to pursue their life-long dream of speaking English! Read in awe as I attempt to compete in the epic contest of strength and agility that is Ninja Warrior (allowing for time constraints and how chilly it is on the day)!

Having majored in Japanese at Otago, I feel I have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Japan then your average man on the street. You won’t be reading crap like “hey, wow, Japanese people are CRAZY!”, or “whoa, Japanese comics are so WEIRD!!!”  in this column. In my hands, those same observations will become “it appears that the rapid industrialisation of Japan has resulted in an unnaturally fast and, some might say, incomplete modernisation of Japanese society” and “Japanese post-war manga represent a community-oriented masculinity that contrasts with the Emperor-worship and militaristic obedience enforced during the period of Japanese imperialism.”

Hey wait, come back! It’ll be fun, honest. There’ll be heaps of stuff about weird vending machines and bizarre Japanese television shows, I promise. And hey, I hear there are bars in Japan where you can drink all you want for a flat rate – that’ll be good times, right?

But sadly, this will all have to wait until I actually get to Japan. For some reason, the Japanese government was unwilling to start the school year five weeks earlier to coincide with the Critic schedule. Seriously uncool, Japan. Because of their lack of cooperation, I will have to pad out the next five columns with miscellaneous facts about Japan, anecdotes about my previous visit and, if I get desperate, long-winded rants about gun-control in the US. So please, bear with me.

Finally, I should clarify that just because I studied Japanese doesn’t mean I’m one of those fanboys who has an unhealthy obsession with Japan. I’ve never really been into anime, I’m not going to Japan with the sole intention of finding a Japanese wife and I don’t casually drop Japanese words into the middle of sentences like it ain’t no thang – because believe me, it is a thang. However, I do think that Japan is a fascinating place and have met many fantastic Japanese people over the years (many of whom I look forward to seeing again). Although integrating into Japanese society may have its difficulties, I’m sure that Japan will be a subarashii place to live. Uh, I mean a great place to live. Remember: not a fanboy.