Eight Percent

A week ago as I was leaving work, Katsumoto told me that there could be a strike the next morning, a two-hour walkout. The union was negotiating with Hyogo prefecture over teacher salaries. Negotiations were going to carry on through the night and that he wouldn’t know if there was a walk out until the following morning.

The next morning, when I arrived at work the bike rack was empty. Oyama arrived about the same time. Oyama is considered a temporary teacher, she has yet to solidify her position, so she isn’t a member of the union, yet. She noticed that the rack was empty too. I asked her if the strike had actually been called. She didn’t know. As we walked upstairs, it wasn’t until we walked into the teachers’ office that we saw the union teachers. The strike had been averted.

During the daily morning faculty meeting Katsumoto slide a piece of paper over to me. It contained the summary of the negotiations. On average, the union negotiated an 8% CUT to teacher salaries. Cuts were deeper for older teachers.

This week, Christina returned to the states and I requested to miss a meeting to walk her to the bus to the airport. I didn’t think it would be too much of a problem. The weekly meeting’s agenda doesn’t change much. In fact, it’s really only the date on the top of the page that changes. The meeting covers our schedule, which has been established well into April. Also, I have been working Wednesday nights with elementary school teachers, interviewing students in the afternoon, as well the weekends. This weekend I was scheduled to work at an international fair in downtown. They have been asking a lot of extra work. So asking to miss a repetitive meeting I didn’t think would be much of a problem. State side, this type of thing is standard practice. In Japan, I was wrong.

Sakurai, my boss, told me that I would have to take a half-day paid vacation. I offered to trade her my afternoon, Sunday, at the international fair for the afternoon meeting. She checked with her boss and rejected my solution. I took the half-day vacation and then backed out of the international fair.

There is a book called “The Geography of Thought.” I recently ran across a reference to it in a local magazine. The magazine article outlines the differences between Western and Eastern thought processes. Where Western thinking is rooted in logic, Eastern thinking focuses on balance; Westerners try to find the correct solution, Easterners try to harmonize relationships. I have run across some situations like this, mostly in the books I have been reading, but this is the first time that I have encountered something close to a cultural impasse. Each of us understood the words the other spoke, but the thinking that we exhibited may have been confusing.

When looking at the pay cut the teachers received, the lack of flexibility in scheduling, and the constant expectation to work beyond contracted hours I am beginning to understand better the condition of the teachers in Japan. Coming from the outside, though, the frustration that I feel is obvious and I have ways to deal with the frustration that the Japanese teachers don’t have. I can say, “no,” and I don’t have the social expectations that the natives do.