This Heart’s Rendition in Ryogoku

Alternative-hard rock group This Heart’s Rendition, some guys who live in the Kashiwa-Matsudo area, will play Four Valley at Ryogoku next week.

The show is on September 20th, starting at 6pm. It’s ￥2000 at the door.

To get to Four Valley, take the train to Ryogoku Station. You can see the local map here. You can read more about Four Valley’s schedule here.

違法 Illegal working conditions of ALTs

The last six months, I’ve been a shoulder to cry on and source of information for some young foreign teachers who have been hired by dispatch companies to work in public elementary and junior high schools in the Chibaraki area.

The conditions that they live and work under are shocking. The dispatch company helped the teachers find accommodation, btu for the most part, the apartment rentals the company set them up with eat up close to half of their net pay.  I did some research on affordable rented apartments and found apartments in the same area for half the rent.

It got worse. Some of them were not paid their full salary. The contract stipulates that they were to be paid once a month on a specified date, and sometimes they were paid late or incompletely. They do not receive the same salary every month – if there is a holiday, their salary is reduced even though the contract school board pays the same fee monthly to the dispatch company. The agreement also stipulated that transporation fees would be paid, but the company failed to compensate the workers, and in the summer, told the employees they were going to change the contract, and transportation would be partially paid. The stress on the employees was too much and some quit.

I was shocked when I learned that some of the employees had gone to the schools and the school board to complain. Under the labour rules, the contracting company must give and receive communication to the employer, not the contracting school. Now, they had the employees so frustrated that they were breaking the law in order to get some straight answers and expose the dispatcher’s failure to pay.

I helped fuel the fire, I suppose, by advising the employees  and providing them with lots of ammo – labour and contract law information in English, labour union contacts, and labour relations offices in their areas. I told them to take it to the media, too. The thing is, these employees were scrambling to survive and formulate exit plans. They did not have the time or resources to expose this incompetent dispatcher. 

This problem with unregulated, illegal dispatching of foreign employees to work in public and private schools is chronic here, and the Japanese media is just beginning to pick it up.

I know, you might wonder, why do I call the ALTs employees? First, there are no regulations from the Ministry of Education (MEXT) to require these employees to be actual teachers. It’s true that some are qualified, licensed teachers from home, or have post-graduate degrees or recognized TESOL diplomas or certifications. But these teachers are the exception, not the rule. At a junior high parent-teacher meeting some years ago, I met parents who did not realize the foreigners in the classroom were not qualified or licensed, and they were quite angry about this situation. Often the school teachers who work with ALTs don’t know anything about the selection process for the ALT jobs.

Even the term ALT is not descriptive of the job performed by these foreign teachers. When I was hired by a dispatch company to work in a Chiba junior high school, I agreed on a contract which described my job as ALT work – assisting a Japanese teacher. When I arrived in Tokyo, I was assigned to be the primary teacher for an entire section of the school. I was essentially responsible for everything in my classroom, and the dispatch company continued to describe my job as (and paying me the salary of) an ALT.  I left after a few months because of a wage dispute, and later learned that the school had three different ALTs in only one year, mostly due to conflicts between the foreign employees and the dispatch company.

No regulation on either end hurts the foreign employees, the students, the teachers and the quality of education in the schools.

Finally Nippon Television (NTV) has exposed the conditions, often illegal, under which ALTs and other foreign English teachers work. Japan Probe did a great job of providing subtitles on these videos.

In the story, you will see a foreign English teacher in Musashino City, Chiba Prefecture, and another from Osaka City. The NTV story does an awesome job of exposing the failings of the Ministry, the dirty practices that hurt the teachers, viable solutions to the problem (direct hires), and the most important part of this situation - the impressions of the children who receive English education from foreign teachers.

Jazz at Nardis

Paul, TC, Larry and I crashed Nardis jazz bar near Kashiwa Station one night a few weeks ago and the guys had an impromtu jam session. Komine-san the proprietor, a talented musician himself, has been producing jazz festivals in Matsudo and Kashiwa cities for some time. That’s Komine-san at the piano. The guys noodled with a broken guitar, and mad N did over-the-top improvisations, jamming along to Jimmi Hendrix vinyl spinning on the vintage record player. He cracked up laughing a few times.

Nardis has a packed September schedule of live blues and jazz sessions. The few nights there isn’t, Komine-san’s vast collection of vintage jazz records provides the soundtrack.

This Saturday night, Nardis has a blues jam session. Let’s see what the folks get up to. Maybe I’ll get inspired and dust off the box of harmonicas on my bookshelf…

End of the LDP era

Revolutionary? Bold? Courageous? These are not adjectives Japan watchers would use to describe beaurocracy politics here in Japan.

But this week, there is a whole new regime after a landslide victory in this week’s national election. The Democratic Party of Japan beat the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party, putting party leader Hatoyama in the PM’s office. The DPJ campaigned on a platform of pulling Japan out of recession and redefining Japan’s relationship with the US. Will Japan really challenge American-Japan relations? We shall see.

The most impressive aspect of this election, for me, anyway, is the record voter turnout – about 70% of eligible voters participated. People here are fed up and want change.

Of course, we resident foreigners do not have the franchise, and only get to watch and eat popcorn while the government happily spends our tax money.

New PM Hatoyama was campaigning for suffrage for non-Japanese permanent residents. This is not the only social welfare policy that the LDP has campaigned on. The party has plans to provide a monthly child allowance to families, fund welfare programs and turn the economy around.

Over at Japan Today, the editors ask “For you personally, what changes would you like to see the new DPJ government bring about in Japan?” and readers responded here, with calls to limit working hours, suffrage for foreign residents, and maintaining highway tolls to keep the traffic and pollution down in Tokyo.

How about you? What would you like to see change? You don’t have to register to comment on this blog. Fire away!

Edit: I forgot my own preferred changes! Ok, here are some of them –

1. A government-sponsored program like Canada’s Katimavik, which places youths in other regions of the country where they work on social, agricultural and other local projects 30-40 hours a week, and participate in workshops on environmental issues, leadership skills, healthy living and the diversity within their own country. A youth program of this kind would stimulate small town economies, increase the labour force to help Japan achieve food sufficiency, and give young people a real stake in changing their country and giving them a break after high school.

2. Legislation to prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination. The Japan Civil Liberties Union hosted a presentation by Doudou Diene, the former UN special rapporteur on racism and discrimination issues. The indigenous peoples and minorities need this legislation as much as the Korean and Chinese residents and foreign nationals living here.

3. Universal parental leave for new parents, either regular or contract workers, and legislation that protects new mothers’ jobs. This, like the first point I made, would provide an economic boost by ensuring that half the brains in this society are not penalized for having children and are not shut out of career development. Japan needs all hands on deck to remedy the economic malaise.

 

Turn your radio off and your open mind on

The radio stations in Tokyo, I find, are really talky. Not much music gets played, and most of the airtime is taken up by descriptions and interviews. Some programs are in both English and Japanese, but these are not the norm. Some J pop is listenable, but you tend to hear the same stuff again and again.   And enough aimless talk already!

Samurai FM is an online internationa streaming audio site that features Japanese music. It’s great to share with your Japanese friends because the website is bilingual in Japanese and English.

There are some awesome podcasters out there doing their own thing, too. Some are more frequent than others. Podgy’s Tokyo Talk has a lot of podcast friendly music, indies, and he gives you an insight into life on the ground in suburban Tokyo in English.

But what about Japanese music in English and Japanese? Japan Indies is a bilingual Japanese and English site and podcast that promotes independent local artists and lets you in on events, artist bios, and the scene in Tokyo. Japan Indies brings you all genres which means that they’re about music, communication and community.

Ukiyoe iPhone app

During the recent wicked weather, I’ve spent a lot of time indoors playing with my iPhone and downloading apps. Much of the photography on Chibaraki was shot with either an old Sharp camera phone and iPhone.

This application, Edoshop, uses photos to make ukiyo-e-like images. Ukiyo-e is the woodblock print art that became highly refined in the Edo Period.

This is the gate at Shimizu Park on the Tobu Noda Line north of Kashiwa. This photo was taken with the old Sharp V6o4SH and Edoshopped.

Below is the Kamakura Daibutsu, the original photo shot with the iPhone.

Kutsche at Otomachi

This year marks the fourth year for Otomachi, the music project in Kashiwa which features unsigned acts performing outdoors and at venues around Kashiwa. After their performance on the plaza in front of Kashiwa Station,  Kutsche, an indie trio that does all original music, came over to my neighbourhood for Sunday night dinner at White Gyoza.

The next presentation for Otomachi on the plaza will be August 30th.

Dinner time earthquake

This evening while having dinner in Kashiwa with friends, a 7.1 earthquake rocked us for what felt like a whole minute. A search of the ‘Net with our mobile phones and my iPhone turned up the US Geological Survey world report of recent earthquakes and the Japan Meteorological Agency’s weather, climate and earthquake infomation. JMA reported the quake as 震度４ shindo 4, or level 4 in Kashiwa on the scale which measures the intensity of the quake at a given location. Level 5 is when walls crack and stone monuments fall over.

We were lucky to merely experience a rolling sensation and some rattling of glasses. When I got home I found that only one thing had fallen over, and it wasn’t anything breakable.

Antique Market at Fuse Benten

 On the first Saturday of the month, from 8am-4pm, the parking lot in front of 布施弁天 Fuse Benten is the site of an antiques market. There are vendors with bonsai, textiles, porcelain and curiousities.

The neighbouring Akebono Park is a sea of sunflowers now and a huge lawn to play on, and Fuse Benten has some seasonal celebrations going on. 

Nihon Teien, the garden next door, is a good site for taking photos.

 

 

View Larger Map

Hiroshima Memorial in Kashiwa

On August 6th at 5am,　諏訪神社 Suwa Shrine in Kashiwa City will hold a memorial service for the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Here is a video of this peaceful place which can be found on the little hill right in front of Kashiwa City Hall.