BASIC INFO
Housing in the JET program can be your worst nightmare. Although
a few somehow manage to obtain a comfortable flat, most AETs are
condemned to substandard housing, even by abysmal Japanese standards.
A lucky few AETs win the lottery and get acceptable housing. You
can read their bubbling comments in their websites. But AETs with
good housing tend to stay for the full three years, meaning that
those with crappy housing tend to leave annually. You can guess
what that means for your odds of getting a school that offers optimal
housing. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but it's what I saw.
Whenever I mentioned that I was unhappy with my housing situation,
my Japanese coworkers would usually ignore me. Provincial officials
would occasionally promise to "look in to the matter" but forget
about all problems when they hung up the phone. One typical comment
I got several times (from Japanese) was that even Japanese have
a hard time finding good housing, so all that is left for "you foreigners"
is the worst of the pickings. Gee, thanks.
One acquaintance, a long timer in Japan from the west, told me
the secret to living in Japan happily is denial. Deny that you are
cold, deny that you are unhappy, deny the humidity, deny the crowds,
the unfriendliness, the racism, the boredom, the isolation, the
fact you would rather be anywhere else.
All I can say to potential AETs is to mentally steel yourselves
for some of the worst physical and psychological living accomodations
you will probably ever face in your lifetime. And if your flat's
not too bad, consider yourself lucky.
One thing I really wonder: JTEs constantly tell AETs that we are
overpaid, and make as much money as a teacher with many years of
experience. (By the way, that's a total lie. With their bonus, AETs
make the same as a JTE with six months experience.) But if we are
making such a high salary, why, generally, do we find ourselves
living in the shittiest housing in Japan?
MY FIRST YEAR
Kyoto, the city of temples, ancient culture, geishas, tradition,
every AETs first choice on the application and I got it! As with
many aspects of Japanese culture, this was soon exposed as just
another marketing scam to attract tourists.
My first year, I was picked up at the Kyoto orientation by a Japanese
English teacher from my base school and driven to my house. Even
though I spoke extensively by phone with my predecessor, who warned
me of the lack of charm of my assignment, I was not prepared for
the squalor and industrial ugliness of my neighborhood-to-be.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Lots of broken, rusted, heaps of cars lined the roads around my
base school and house. Some lots were heaps of wrecked cars piled
maybe 5 deep, other lots were of various auto parts: a pile of mufflers
20 meters high, car doors, tires, engines, etc. There were many
smoke belching factories all around, most were steel recycling plants
or car crushing plants. I felt like I was in the movie "Terminator"
in that scene where the guy in the future is attacked on all sides
by machines, and just collapses in exhaustion dealing with the inhumanity
of it all.
My house was on the main highway on a curve. Trucks loaded with
wrecked cars would drive by all hours of the day, applying their
annoying squeaky brakes on the curve, then revving their engines
to speed up. All this just 10 meters from my rattling, single-glaze
window.
The house was at the bottom of a manmade hill, basically on a
flood plain of a river.
When I first shown the house, I was stunned. I tried not to express
my disappointment with the neighborhood to my future coworkers,
trying to be diplomatic. I asked them what the huge factory like
building was in the lot next to my house. They consulted dictionaries,
and came up with the translation: Sewage treatment plant for the
city of Kyoto.
THE HOUSE
The house was two stories, joined on one side by another house,
in a development of about 30 houses. It backed up to a major industrial
throughway. The house did have three redeeming features.
First, it was only a seven minute walk to an express stop on Keihan
train line. Second, it was comparatively spacious with 2 rooms upstairs
of 6 and 4.5 mats with big closets, a 4.5 mat kitchen and 4.5 mat
room with closet downstairs. A separate bath and toilet and entry
way. It had new tatamis, but old wallpaper discolored with cooking
oil, cobweb covered walls, but, worst of all, no hot water. My predecesor
assured me there was a hot water heater in the kitchen sink, but
it was not there. I never found what happened to it, but my predecessor
assures me that someone at my base school stole it for personal
use. Third, the neighbors were relatively friendly compared to the
neighbors of other AETs I knew.
The bath had no running hot water. Many people claim this is typical
in Japan, but in my own experience, almost all Japanese have running
hot water, most AETs are given the old places with no hot water.
In my case, I had to fill the cube-shaped bathtub with cold water
(10 minutes), go outside and light the gas fire, wait till the water
gets hot (30 minutes in the winter).
Maybe a few of you reading this think it sounds traditional, rustic
and quaint. Let me tell you, the rustic and quaint wear off pretty
quick. There is a reason that we don't live in old shacks anymore,
and lack of running hot water is one of them. This is especially
important in a cold climate like Japan's. All winter, we suffered.
If you have the time to spend all day in the bath, fine. But when
you get up on a cold winter morning and need a little hot water
to wash your face or shave, it sucks. Don't even think about using
cold tap water, you get numb fingers and a minor case of frostbite
even attempting that.
OTHER PROBLEMS
Some problems with the house came up later. One major problem was
the infestation -- of slugs. My god, I shudder when I think back
to it. We would be sitting on the floor of the ground floor room
at the kotatsu eating, and feel a slimy slug crawling on our leg,
foot, etc. Slugs proliferated in the moist conditions around the
flood plain; no doubt having a swim next door in Kyoto sewage before
coming over to our house for a bite to eat and to slime up the tatamis.
They were somehow able to flatten themselves and squeeze through
the tight cracks between the tatamis. We would find several everyday,
somedays we found 20 slugs around the kitchen, bath and living room
on the walls, dishes, drying rack, in the bathtub, toilet, walls,
everywhere. I tried bait, beer, shallow dishes, the works, nothing
stopped the onslaught of the primeval mollusks.
Once we lifted up the tatamis to try and find out how the slugs
were getting in. We were surprised to see that there was nothing
under the tatamis downstairs. The tatamis were simply balanced on
a few beams of wood. It was half a meter down to the cement slab
under the house with no other insulation. No wonder sitting on the
tatamis was so cold in the winter.
We vacuumed the cobwebs when we first moved in, and the wallpaper
was sucked right off the walls. Not that the vacuum was overly powerful;
but the wallpaper was simply so shoddy. The construction of the
walls amazed us: There were wood beams spaced evenly, the half meter
gaps between them were filled with what appeared to be mud. Let
me say, this mud was not effective whatsoever in insulating the
house in the winter.
At that point we realized our situation. We were paying a small
fortune to live in a mud-walled hut with a straw floor, no hot water
and infested with local pests. I had friends in the Peace Corps
deep in undeveloped Africa who lived in similar lodgings. At least
they had the tropical weather.
Heating was miserable. We bought a natural gas heater and a long
hose which could reach anywhere downstairs. Upstairs would be too
far for safety with a rubber gas hose. We didn't like the smell
of kerosene heaters, so the two upstairs rooms were basically out
of bounds for the winter, and they were freezing cold. My wife and
I lived in the 4.5 tatami room downstairs, shifting the kotatsu
and bedding back and forth to the closet in the warmer (slug infested)
room downstairs all winter long. And yes, we did have slugs all
winter long. We usually found them smashed on the tatamis when we
folded the futons in the mornings.
I by chance learned how to prepare myself for the day with cold
water from reading Toni Morrison novels. One about slaves in the
American South was particularly instructive. It said that to wash
with cold water on cold mornings, the trick was to bend over with
your head below your waist, so that when you wash your face and
wet your hair the cold water drips off your chin instead of running
down your back in cold rivulets. It took too long to heat up the
water in the tub in the morning, so I had to use the chilly bathwater
that was covered and left from the hot bath the night before. Icy
cold tap water was out of the question. My tip, therefore, to would
be AETs: read novels on slavery for tips on living in Japan!
One positive note about my first year living conditions. The neighbors
turned out to be pleasant and helpful. My school was in an working
class neighborhood with a fair share of ethnic Koreans, and with
many foreign workers from Brazil, Egypt, et al living nearby. The
working class Japanese and especially the ethnic Koreans were wonderfully
friendly and accomodating as a whole, they tried to help us out
as much as they could with neighborhood festivals, trash recycling,
noisy dogs, etc. They brought baked goods, food, gifts, even tickets
to cultural events in Osaka. Their kids were friendly, curious but
not irritatingly so. We felt accepted, as one of the fellow foreigners
in Japan, living amongst the foreigners denied citizenship in Japan
even though their families had lived in Japan for generations. We
missed the people when we left more than we thought we would.
PHOTOS
We took photos of our house before we went home for Christmas.
Everyone we showed the photos to commented on how beautiful the
house looked. We were stunned. Then we realized, Japanese houses
look nice in photos. Small rooms frame up nicely in photos, especially
if you clean up the mess before you shoot. But looking good does
not mean it IS good! What the photos didn't show was: the cold that
easily permeates the mud insulation of the walls; the ever present
slugs leaving slime trails across the walls and tatamis; the deafening
clatter from the trucks; the icy cold tiles on the ground in the
bath.
Maybe this is a synopsis of Japan. It looks good in the tourist
brochures, but actually going there is a whole different thing.
And housing there is crap.
GETTING NEW ACCOMODATION
When I decided to stay a second year, I definitely wanted to upgrade
to a better living situation if at all possible. Luckily, a hard
working and knowledgable AET was working in the provincial office
who helped me immensely to do this.
I was told that I basically had to change base schools, and I
would be given housing close to that new school. If I stayed at
the first year assignment, they would promise new housing, but could
easily renege and probably would to save money for the province
at the expense of a lowly foreigner. My best route was to request
a reassignment in my second year.
Also, the new school would go out and find me and my wife a place
to live. But since we were already living in Japan, we could find
our own place and negotiate with the school to pay the necessary
deposits up to a national government approved limit, something around
50-man yen (500,000 yen or roughly 4500 dollars US). I was led to
believe that this was the amount Tokyo granted for each AET to pay
for accomodation.
It turns out that many provinces do NOT pass this on to the AET,
and keep it for themselves, either in the budget or funneled into
their private pockets throught some illicit means. Many schools
simply look for the cheapest and shoddiest housing available, which
usually requires a minimal or no deposits, allowing them to keep
the money Tokyo allocates for AET housing. In Kyoto Province, I
met strong resistance from officials who did not want to spend money
allocated for individual AETs on the individual AETs. I still question
what was done with the money.
BLOOKING FOR HOUSING, FINDING RACISM
My wife and I went to several rental agencies before one of them
would even agree to show foreigners any possible rentals. Many rental
agencies are openly and insultingly racist, an aspect of modern
Japan that is upsetting no matter how prepared and informed you
are of the fact that it will happen to you.
The fact that my wife is ethnic Asian and frequently mistaken
for Japanese did not help whatsoever. Japanese assume all other
Asians are dirty people who cook their food instead of eating it
raw (the Japanese way) and therefore dirty up the kitchen and get
oil all over the walls. Therefore, it is okay to exlude all Asians
from most rental agencies. This is exactly what one agency told
us, to our face, with all due seriousness. Another agent told us
that: "We Japanese" (a common phrase amongst Japanese) do not approve
of mixed race marriages (I am caucasian) and cannot show you any
of our available rentals for fear of frightening the neighbors.
We did finally find a few agencies that showed us apartments.
All of the apartments were beautiful, in good areas of town, with
running hot water, within our budget and, most importantly, under
the 50-man yen deposit limit from Tokyo. It made me wonder why so
many AETs in Kyoto Prefecture live in such shoddy housing if so
many decent ones are available. This is when I dug a little deeper
and figured out the deposit scam.
HOUSING OFFERED BY SECOND SCHOOL
Meanwhile, my future base school, just a few kilometers away, faxed
me a copy of the floor plan and contract for the housing they had
picked out for me. It was a 2DK, with no running hot water anywhere
in the flat, and would be rented as-is, in a decrepit building with
no maintenance.
I went to look at it. I was in total disbelief that they thought
a human could live there. Mold covered one bare concrete wall, the
cabinets were filled with dead roaches and would NOT be cleaned
before we moved in, the wall paper was peeling off the walls, glass
panes were missing on the balcony door -- a disaster. I was a little
angry and a lot insulted that they could even offer me a place this
horrid. When I examined the contract more closely, with the help
of a Japanese interpreter, I found why they chose this one. It had
no deposit. Therefore a windfall of 50-man yen for whoever gets
the deposit from Tokyo intended for me.
WE FIND AN ACCEPTABLE APARTMENT
We finally found a fantastic place. This apartment was a palace
compared to any other AET's housing I had seen. It was a 3 LDK,
with tatami and tiled rooms of 6, 6, 4.5 and a kitchen/living room
about the size of 10 mats, with 2 terraces, front and back, huge.
Hot running water, air conditioned, modern bath, on good train lines,
12 minute walk to a station, western toilet, view of a river, fourth
floor of five in a relatively new building, in a decent neighborhood
with minimal factories nearby. Also, only 2 train stops from my
base school, easily reached by bicycle. And, just a tad under the
500man deposit, for only slightly more rent monthly than the first
year house.
The landlord had no problem renting to foreigners. I found out
later that this area was traditionally an ethnic Korean neighborhood,
so foreigners were more accepted living there. We figured we could
happily live in this place.
THE SCHOOL REFUSES
Meanwhile, my wife went back to an agency to ask them to hold the
apartment we had looked at and liked.
The agent we dealt with called my second year base school to make
sure we were employed and had someone to sign for the apartment
as a guarantor. He spoke to the JTE (Japanese Teacher of English)
who handled the AET affairs.
She immediately started screaming at him, my wife could hear it
across the desk. She told him not to rent us any apartment, the
school would not guarantor it, and not to show us any apartments.
She insisted on speaking to my wife. She berated my wife for embarassing
the school and ordered her to go home immediately, stop looking
at apartments and that she was nothing but trouble because she is
ethnically Asian. She hung up on my wife before hearing any reply.
We became depressed and miserable over this turn in the process
of finding an apartment and almost decided to leave Japan for good.
But this teacher's reaction is not atypical; this really is how
Japanese society works, for you who are unitiated. Her meaning was:
Obey me, don't even ask for anything, I don't want to have more
work by having to deal with your apartment hunting. Nothing in Japan
is really negotiated or discussed, the top person makes the decision,
everyone under him agrees and obeys. That's it. Everyone in power
acts pretty much like a little dictator.
We didn't obey. We are foreigners, we are not Japanese. And no
matter how much we try to be like them, they will NEVER accept us
as Japanese. Foreigners will always lose when we meet them on their
own ground. So we fought them.
THE MEETING
We spoke to the AET working at the prefectural office. He was calming
and soothing, and when I think back now, I have incredible respect
for that guy. He knew his job, he was fluent in Japanese and American
cultures, he cared about making the JET program better and would
constantly stick up for wronged AETs letting no injustice pass on
his watch. His is a rare breed in the JET program, from my experience.
First, he had us relax. Then he assured us that we would prevail;
we would absolutely without a doubt get the apartment we wanted
over the depositless roach pad the school had picked out for us.
God, we needed that assurance!
Then he gave me a quick primer in how to negotiate. He told me
I would have a meeting with my present base school principal. He
recommended that I speak very few words, just insist I was "searching
for alternatives to the apartment suggested" by the future base
school, and the ultimate decision was for him to make. Be calm,
take five minutes of total silence if you have to before answering,
show zero emotion, don't rush anything.
I did exactly that. We spoke only 10 sentences in a meeting that
lasted 2 hours. In the end, the principal sided with me and told
the future base school to give me the new apartment. Maybe it was
my lucky day, maybe the principal was in a good mood, who knows.
All I knew was I was glad the housing problems were solved were
over. Or so I thought.
I sent seasonal thankyou cards to my future base school to try
and smooth over relations. They were well received by most, but
noticeably ignored by the JTE in charge of AET affairs and the vice-principal.
REVENGE OF KYOTO
But I had just taken 50-man yen out of some corrupt official's
pocket. Little did I know that I would be crushed for being disobediant
and insubordinate.
First, my base school said they would definitely NOT be able to
help me move my belongings from one place to another. Strange, I
hadn't even told them when I planned to move.
Second, when I moved into the new apartment, I found the following.
I would not be receiving the obligatory ceiling lights, refrigerator,
vacuum, stove, etc. which were written into the Kyoto Prefectural
contract. It seems the previous AET had decided to stick around
Kyoto an extra month after her contract was up, and the school wanted
her to be comfortable at my expense, even though her contract was
finished.
Third, I would not be receiving the obligatory telephone line
for one month, since it would inconvenience the leaving AET.
So there we sat, in our palacial apartment with no lights, no
refrigerator, no telephone until the previous AET at my second year
school decided to give them up.
FED UP
By this time, my wife and I were definitely tiring of the constant
problems we encountered in trying to live a better life in Japan.
All we wanted was a decent place to live, and we go through all
this just to sit around a dark apartment with rotting food because
we were adamant in receiving deposit money alloted to us.
I threatened to quit, effective immediately. We instantly were
sent an enormous refrigerator, American sized. Wow. Next I didn't
show up for school. They couldn't phone me to ask where I was. The
phone appeared soon after, we went 15 days without it. I insisted
that the previous AET pay her share of the monthly phone bill, they
agreed, but we wound up footing the bill for her, or our phone would
be cut off.
It turns out I wasn't the only one getting this sort of treatment.
A few phone calls got me caught up on the rumors. Three other people
had already quit from Kyoto Prefecture, and it was still the first
month of the new contracts, in August 1997. One woman quit suffering
the same problem as me. Her housing was horrible, with mushrooms
growing on her tatamis, the school and prefecture promised new mats
in the new contract, but reneged. She just walked away. Good for
her. Another guy signed up, changed his mind, just left. A third
apparently flew in, took one look at the living conditions and isolation
of the assignment, and flew out. It seems Kyoto was already looking
bad in Tokyo's eyes, they couldn't afford a fourth AET (me) leaving.
Maybe they were afraid Tokyo would find out about their questionable
accounting procedures as to deposits, housing, etc.
CONCLUSION
Good housing exists in Japan, at least in Kyoto and Osaka. The
problem is that most officials do not have your best interest at
heart. If you can search out your own housing, it is definitely
worth the effort, but don't let your fellow Japanese teachers see
your apartment. They will hate you if you live in a better place
than them. I would say this is probably a worse problem in Kyoto
than in most other places, Kyoto being a tradition bound city. Japanese
do not like to see foreigners living in a better place than they
do, and might punish you later for having a better life.
Consider going off on your own and paying the deposit for your
own apartment a month or two after showing up for the JET program.
The school is responsible for the lease, it is their problem to
end it, not yours. And if you can get your own place, especially
if it's in a city, you can more easily leave the JET program and
get other employment. The added benefit is that you are not living
in company housing and your coworkers are less likely to visit you
spontaneously.
-end-
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