The Japanese Way

During the morning meeting two weeks ago at my largest school, many of the teachers were doling out accolades and receiving congratulations (the rugby team, cross country, etc.), when suddenly my friend Nomi pops up out of his seat and starts bowing to great applause. I was puzzled, as Nomi doesn’t sponsor a sport. He finally sat back down, and the meeting continued with the vice principal barking out the daily instructions through his megaphone (this school’s teacher room is enormous, so the VP either uses his megaphone or microphone to spread the morning message; he alternates between both, though it isn’t clear why he picks one over the other). When he was settled, I asked Nomi whether he won an award – and he acted like he had no idea what I was talking about, as if he’d been conked on the head with a rock and had blanked out during the last five minutes. After gathering himself, he said “Oh, yes. I won the gold medal in an essay writing contest. About school activities.” Wow. The Japanese really do compete at everything, I thought, including an essay competition about competition.

… fast forward to this week …

Nomi was AWOL for most of the day, which made for a boring afternoon for me. Japanese teachers typically have about three classes a day, leaving them with a lot of time to spend in the teacher room. Now, at schools like this, many of the teachers, who are forced to work on Saturdays for no extra pay, manage to look as tired and busy and put upon as possible, and in truth they do have a lot of work, but from my perspective, they have more than enough time to finish their work without all the theatrical moaning. Anyway, Nomi typically is very cheerful, and more than happy to chat away, even (or maybe because) it goes against the grain of the overall teacher room atmosphere. Just after lunch, he shows up wearing an expensive suit, as opposed to his school suit, and carrying two giant, framed certificates that, he tells me, he just received at and awards ceremony. He didn’t look all that happy.

Turns out, the winner of the essay competition not only received a couple of ho-hum framed plaques to hang on the wall, but two checks for 100,000 yen each, or about $2,000 (why there were two checks wasn’t clear). Only, Nomi had just found out that the principal had ruled against the VP, who said the money was Nomi's to keep, and decided the money belonged to the school, and not to Nomi.

“That’s bullsh---, you know,” he said. “I was thinking maybe a new bike, a vacation.
"Now, there is nothing.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the office manager walks up and hands Nomi two ornamental envelopes, which apparently held the prize-winnings checks. Nomi opened them, held them up to the light, and just to confirm the sad reality, notes they are “empty.” And next, office guy hands Nomi a single sheet of paper, of which is a photocopy of both checks. Talk about rubbing your nose in it. I’m told they are to “remind him of his achievement,” yet I suspect all they're going to remind Nomi of is how he got screwed out of 2,000 bucks. Nomi lets the photocopied checks sit on his desk for a bit, mumbles to himself some, and pulls out a three-ring binder. He places the photocopied checks on top of a stack of papers, and snaps them into place.

“It is the Japanese way.” I guess.