By nature, both my husband and I are creatures of habit. If we're comfortable, then we stay where we are. It takes a pretty strong push to move us off in a different direction and this more than anything has kept us in Japan for 20 years.
Life in Japan has largely been "as usual" during most of our time here. Generally speaking, the level of comfort and familiarity has increased as the years have gone on. We can watch foreign television via cable or DVD rental. We can talk and even see family in real time through the internet and foreign food is easier and cheaper than it was when we first arrived. Setting up a comfy refuge from the sometimes oppressive Japanese environment has never been easier and the number of pop culture touchstones between the Japanese and Westerners have never been greater. I can talk for quite some time with students about shows like "Lost", "House", "Ugly Betty", and "Desperate Housewives."
However, the times, they have been changing. The Japanese government is starting to put policies into place so they can remotely track foreigners with computer chips that contain biometric data. This will make identity theft easy and makes it look like we are criminals who need to be watched. If you step outside your home without your card, you will be fined about $2,000 if a cop scans you and finds your card missing. He can do this from the comfort of his koban (police box). It adds a whole new level of possibility to the usual police harassment of foreigners in Japan.
In addition, the Japanese government is looking to forcibly add foreigners to the Japanese pension scheme. This would be ideal if it weren't for the fact that you have to live here for 25 years to collect your money back. The scheme is clearly an attempt to fill Japanese pension coffers with money from people who won't get it back. And, while this doesn't apply to me, Japan is currently attempting to bribe foreign residents to leave who were issued permanent residence based on having Japanese ancestry.
You can add to this the increasing numbers of violent crimes in Japan as the economic situation continues to worsen. News of finding dismembered bodies and people going on stabbing sprees is no longer shocking in Japan. I'm not saying other countries don't experience violent crime, but it's no longer a place where a lack of economic disparity keeps crime at bay. It's a place where the gap between the haves and the have nots continues to grow and crime is increasing as a result. If you consider that Japan has twice its GDP in debt and a problem with the birthrate falling and an aging population which they are unwilling to solve through immigration, you can see which way this train is rolling.
The writing is on the wall. Japan is becoming a more foreigner hostile place with social and economic problems. That doesn't mean it'll be terrible or that people can't still enjoy their lives here, but it's a sign of the times. For these reasons and more personal ones (which I will get to shortly), my husband and I are setting in motion a long-term, but concrete plan to leave Japan. When I say "concrete", I mean there is a departure date in mind. That date will be some time in April 2012. It will be shortly before my husband's current and final work visa expires.
The proposed foreigner-hostile changes in Japan have been the catalyst for finally pushing my husband and I to do what we would have done long ago if we weren't so comfortable where we are. We're also 44 and 46 years of age respectively and there are age-related issues at hand. The bottom line is that we have to go soon or never go at all. If we leave in 2012, we will have saved a bit more money and we will still have time to go to school for higher degrees in America and start new careers in a different field. If we linger much longer, that narrow window will have closed and we'll essentially be too old to start anew back home.
In addition to the other issues that are at hand, we have to consider that neither of us had worked long enough in America to qualify for retirement benefits in the U.S. If we go back soon, we will have put (and paid) in enough years to do so. If we remain, then we're resigning ourselves to the idea that we will have to retire only on savings from our earnings in Japan up until the point when we won't be able to work anymore due to age or infirmity. While we're good savers, I'm not sure I'd like to stake my entire future on that money.
The reason we're choosing 2012 is mainly because that is when the visa will expire and it's a good kick in the pants to know that it'll be a hassle to stay beyond that date. Beyond that though is that it's not easy to just pack up 20 years of your life and walk out the door so quickly or easily. While I have assiduously attempted not to hang on to too much junk, there's still a lot that needs to be dealt with. If we wanted to leave as soon as possible, it'd be hard going to get out successfully in six months given our possessions and connections to people who have the right to have some time to make up for our future absence. Also, honestly, this decision was made fast, but the full acceptance and arrangements for what is to come on the other end will take some time. I don't take well to change and I need some time to prepare myself mentally for walking away.
At the moment, the plan is for my husband to go to graduate school at his Alma Mater in California. I'm hoping to attend simultaneously with him, but I don't know if I qualify as a state resident so that plan will have to wait. I may just have to find some stop-gap work to defray the costs. For now, I've investigating the possibility on-line and looked into the finances in a rough way. It all looks good on paper, but my husband will look into it in person later this year when he goes home in the fall for a visit. Another part of having to make arrangements for our future plans will be taking the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) before going.
One way or another, I can't imagine us staying after 2012. The prospect of leaving is terrifying, but also exciting. It'll be the fourth stage of life for my husband and I. The first was our long distance relationship which spanned a little over a year. The second was our brief time living together in California and the third has been our life together in Japan.
Leaving a comfortable and stable life is very difficult, but moving on to a greater challenge is enticing. Unless something serious happens in the next three years (like a serious illness which requires a change in plan), we'll be blowing this Popsicle stand in a little under 3 years.
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Friday, June 5, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
My Mother-in-law's Keeper
When I was growing up, there were certain inequalities of life of which I was acutely aware. For instance, I noticed that one of my many aunts, Judy, had a house which was much bigger than my family's. I also noticed that she had nicer furniture, a much, much newer car, and brand name snacks were always in the house. From a kid's point of view, having a relative who always had Hostess Ho-Ho's on hand or my favorite brand of barbecue potato chips was pretty significant. My family was scrimping together returnable bottles for their deposits and hunting up stray change at the end of every month so they could afford milk, and her refrigerator was always fully-stocked.
Though I wasn't aware of this so much as a child, my mother was always competing with my aunt in a battle that she could never win. That is, a lifestyle battle. She overspent and got my family into debt because she wanted to keep up with Judy, but Judy had an edge in more ways than one. For one, her husband wasn't disabled and living on social security benefits like my father. For another, she lived with my grandmother and grandfather whose pensions helped augment her family's lifestyle in numerous ways.
It was the latter which I think galled my mother most. My aunt Judy was constantly being helped out by my grandmother from funds to finance a nicer home with better furnishings to new cars to free babysitting and support for her children when they were born. I think it was more upsetting for my mother because Judy was "the baby" of their large family and always had been my maternal grandmother's favorite.
All that being said, my aunt Judy paid a price for the relative affluence of her life. My grandfather was bedridden and had to be looked after all the time. He had worked in coal mines and suffered from black lung disease. He died when I was still too young to understand just how much of a burden this would have placed on those living in my aunt's house, but, as an adult, I now see the hardship clearly in retrospect.
As the years went on, my maternal grandmother also became increasingly weak, sickly, and somewhat senile. In the end, my aunt ended up having to look after her as well. To be fair, my other aunts and my mother did their best at times to stop in and look after their father while he was alive to give my aunt Judy and my grandmother a break. My mother actually lived closest, so she helped out more often than most.
At any rate, one lesson I learned from my upbringing was that the children who end up living with their parents benefit immensely for quite awhile materially, financially, and in terms of support for their young children, but then end up bearing a burden for awhile as well. My family was poor and lived in a really terrible house and my aunt lived in a nice, middle class place, but she also had a lot of the responsibility and stress as both of my grandparents became enfeebled.
As of late, this situation has come to the forefront for my husband and I, but not through my family. It has become an issue with my husband's family. His sister has been living with their mother and father for the past 19 years and now their mother has developed a degenerative disease which has left her showing increased signs of senile dementia and unable to walk or look after herself. She needs round the clock monitoring, careful scheduling of medication, and assistance with many basic needs like using the bathroom and washing.
My sister-in-law at first was not intimately involved with my mother-in-law's care, but merely gave breaks to my father-in-law. Now, her role has expanded greatly and she's become increasingly frustrated and stressed out by the responsibilities coupled with my father-lin-law's resistance to complying with her method of caring for his wife. She has two brothers, but both of them are residing in Japan so they cannot help in any measurable way. It's simply logistically impossible.
Usually, I don't get very involved in my in-laws' lives because the truth is that they have never had much interest in us. About 16 years or so ago, my sister-in-law needed some help with Photoshop and both my husband and I tried to establish a cordial relationship with her via e-mail. After she got what she wanted though, she begged off on further correspondence claiming she was too busy to really keep up much of a written conversation.
Additionally, and I believe I have blogged about this before, but I'll repeat it as a reminder. My husband and I were flat out refused when we asked to temporarily reside with them when we lived in California. We lived with my husband's best friend's family instead. When we left for Japan, his father begrudged storing some of our boxes in his garage and wanted us to put our items in paid storage. In other words, his family has not done much to support us when we needed help nor shown more than a cursory interest in our lives, particularly if maintaining a relationship with us has required any more effort than talking on the phone.
As of late, my sister-in-law has been pelting my husband and brother-in-law with long, detailed letters venting and explaining about the details of her situation with her parents. She has even intimated that, if her parents exhaust their copious financial resources, she may call upon my husband and his brother to bear some monetary burden. The ludicrousness of that can't be overemphasized. Both my sister-in-law's husband and my father-in-law make a great deal more money than my husband and I combined.
At any rate, my husband doesn't have a talking relationship with his sister from a distance for the aforementioned reasons, but my brother-in-law does. Today, my brother-in-law called my husband to vent about a conversation that he had with their sister. Apparently, she expressed some anger and resentment that she is bearing the brunt of the care of her elderly parents and is increasingly burnt out from coping with it. She is especially put out by the fact that she's had to put "her" life on hold to deal with these new responsibilities.
While I do feel empathy for my sister-in-law, I also know that she has benefited greatly from living with her parents from free babysitting services for her two kids when they were younger, to free food when they used to have meals together, to having the opportunity to invest in and live in a piece of prime real estate in one of the most lucrative areas in California, to a certain level of support and security, she has had benefits that one brother (my husband) was overtly and specifically denied and the other has not been present for.
Because I grew up around extended family who had such a markedly improved life via their association with my grandparents, I have always been aware of both sides of the coin. It strikes me that anyone who benefits from cohabitation with their parents should see that the road ahead is likely to end in a particular way, but some people are too self-involved to realize that they had it better than their siblings and too selfish to realize that their responsibility will be proportionally greater when the time comes.
Though I wasn't aware of this so much as a child, my mother was always competing with my aunt in a battle that she could never win. That is, a lifestyle battle. She overspent and got my family into debt because she wanted to keep up with Judy, but Judy had an edge in more ways than one. For one, her husband wasn't disabled and living on social security benefits like my father. For another, she lived with my grandmother and grandfather whose pensions helped augment her family's lifestyle in numerous ways.
It was the latter which I think galled my mother most. My aunt Judy was constantly being helped out by my grandmother from funds to finance a nicer home with better furnishings to new cars to free babysitting and support for her children when they were born. I think it was more upsetting for my mother because Judy was "the baby" of their large family and always had been my maternal grandmother's favorite.
All that being said, my aunt Judy paid a price for the relative affluence of her life. My grandfather was bedridden and had to be looked after all the time. He had worked in coal mines and suffered from black lung disease. He died when I was still too young to understand just how much of a burden this would have placed on those living in my aunt's house, but, as an adult, I now see the hardship clearly in retrospect.
As the years went on, my maternal grandmother also became increasingly weak, sickly, and somewhat senile. In the end, my aunt ended up having to look after her as well. To be fair, my other aunts and my mother did their best at times to stop in and look after their father while he was alive to give my aunt Judy and my grandmother a break. My mother actually lived closest, so she helped out more often than most.
At any rate, one lesson I learned from my upbringing was that the children who end up living with their parents benefit immensely for quite awhile materially, financially, and in terms of support for their young children, but then end up bearing a burden for awhile as well. My family was poor and lived in a really terrible house and my aunt lived in a nice, middle class place, but she also had a lot of the responsibility and stress as both of my grandparents became enfeebled.
As of late, this situation has come to the forefront for my husband and I, but not through my family. It has become an issue with my husband's family. His sister has been living with their mother and father for the past 19 years and now their mother has developed a degenerative disease which has left her showing increased signs of senile dementia and unable to walk or look after herself. She needs round the clock monitoring, careful scheduling of medication, and assistance with many basic needs like using the bathroom and washing.
My sister-in-law at first was not intimately involved with my mother-in-law's care, but merely gave breaks to my father-in-law. Now, her role has expanded greatly and she's become increasingly frustrated and stressed out by the responsibilities coupled with my father-lin-law's resistance to complying with her method of caring for his wife. She has two brothers, but both of them are residing in Japan so they cannot help in any measurable way. It's simply logistically impossible.
Usually, I don't get very involved in my in-laws' lives because the truth is that they have never had much interest in us. About 16 years or so ago, my sister-in-law needed some help with Photoshop and both my husband and I tried to establish a cordial relationship with her via e-mail. After she got what she wanted though, she begged off on further correspondence claiming she was too busy to really keep up much of a written conversation.
Additionally, and I believe I have blogged about this before, but I'll repeat it as a reminder. My husband and I were flat out refused when we asked to temporarily reside with them when we lived in California. We lived with my husband's best friend's family instead. When we left for Japan, his father begrudged storing some of our boxes in his garage and wanted us to put our items in paid storage. In other words, his family has not done much to support us when we needed help nor shown more than a cursory interest in our lives, particularly if maintaining a relationship with us has required any more effort than talking on the phone.
As of late, my sister-in-law has been pelting my husband and brother-in-law with long, detailed letters venting and explaining about the details of her situation with her parents. She has even intimated that, if her parents exhaust their copious financial resources, she may call upon my husband and his brother to bear some monetary burden. The ludicrousness of that can't be overemphasized. Both my sister-in-law's husband and my father-in-law make a great deal more money than my husband and I combined.
At any rate, my husband doesn't have a talking relationship with his sister from a distance for the aforementioned reasons, but my brother-in-law does. Today, my brother-in-law called my husband to vent about a conversation that he had with their sister. Apparently, she expressed some anger and resentment that she is bearing the brunt of the care of her elderly parents and is increasingly burnt out from coping with it. She is especially put out by the fact that she's had to put "her" life on hold to deal with these new responsibilities.
While I do feel empathy for my sister-in-law, I also know that she has benefited greatly from living with her parents from free babysitting services for her two kids when they were younger, to free food when they used to have meals together, to having the opportunity to invest in and live in a piece of prime real estate in one of the most lucrative areas in California, to a certain level of support and security, she has had benefits that one brother (my husband) was overtly and specifically denied and the other has not been present for.
Because I grew up around extended family who had such a markedly improved life via their association with my grandparents, I have always been aware of both sides of the coin. It strikes me that anyone who benefits from cohabitation with their parents should see that the road ahead is likely to end in a particular way, but some people are too self-involved to realize that they had it better than their siblings and too selfish to realize that their responsibility will be proportionally greater when the time comes.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Dining With the "Enemy"
Earlier this week, the CH and I had dinner with his brother and his Japanese wife. This is the brother-in-law whose behavior contributed directly to the demise of my former blog and is essentially responsible for the birth of a different blog. I've had problems with him during most of my time in Japan, but he suggested to the CH that we all get together and I wanted to at least try for the CH's sake.
To be honest, I was surprised that the brother-in-law suggested a get-together. Despite the fact that my back problems have kept me from working outside the house and have seen me be essentially bound to my immediate neighborhood for the last two and a half years, I think he believes our not visiting his apartment for social reasons is a personal affront, though hopefully my telling him that I haven't left a limited area for a long time will make him understand that it isn't personal. However, it's generally been the case that he hasn't believed my claims in the past and this is one of the reasons he hasn't suggested coming by our place much. I believe he wants the mountain to come to Muhammad as often as the reverse and he feels he's done more than his share of trekking to our particular mountain.
At any rate, he seems to be rather oblivious to how his behavior has affected me or has decided to pretend it all didn't happen now that time has passed so we all got together and tried to make the best of it. There were some high points and only one low one. The high points mainly related to the fact that his wife may yet "train" some of his more obnoxious behaviors out of him.
One of the problems I've had with my brother-in-law in the past has been with his tendency to treat possessions like they are part of a status competition. That is, he mocks and makes fun of old items in our apartment like our ancient 15-year-old CRT television, old computers, or even the speed of our modem. When he started in on that the evening of the dinner, his wife mumbled something about her not wanting him to do that anymore and him saying he'd try not to. I was glad to see that she was pointing out his bad behavior and attempting to get him to stop it, though he did say the CH and I were "family" so he could do what he wanted.
Rather than get angry at his competitive possession fixation this time, I simply said that I'd rather have an extra $2,000 in my savings account than a new television and that television quality really wasn't that important to us. Since he mentioned the T.V. twice, I responded with this twice and his wife was shaking her head in agreement both times. The brother-in-law has a fixation on high-priced man toys, and I have a feeling that his wife may not feel this is for the best. Clearly she is not the sort of person who cares how new your gadgets are when dealing with others and I really respect that. Another brief discussion of taking one's own lunch to work rather than eating out again seemed to indicate that they may not concur 100% on how money is handled in the relationship as she agreed with us that its fiscally more prudent to carry your own rather than patronize local fast food.
Generally speaking, my brother-in-law showed the same levels of opinionated selfishness that I have come to expect, but having his wife there really helped. She's clearly more sensible and down to earth than he. Though she didn't go out of her way to be confrontational with him (as would be expected), she also didn't hold back on agreeing with us on various points.
The "low points" for me included my slipping up and saying he was "close minded" about the effect of things like reiki treatments (which his wife studies and practices) and therefore it would never work with him as he would actively block any benefits to validate his strong view that it doesn't work. He contended that it came across as a generalized comment that he's close minded about everything and I asked the CH if this was so and he said he believed it could be seen that way. I apologized for having spoken in a manner which could be viewed as a big insult and got a very ungracious, loud and overly exaggerated "thank you" for it. It was clear that he felt this apology was some sort of victory on his part rather than me saying I misspoke and regretted the impression it created. Once more, it's as if this was a competition and he felt my apology was a "win" in his column and I got a bit of "victory cheering" from him for my troubles.
Other than that, we were treated to rants about how the public services, particularly the trash not being picked up during the holidays, were a major inconvenience to him. I guess the idea that these people doing these unpleasant jobs should be entitled to enjoy their holidays along with the rest of the country (including him) wasn't important to him. We were treated to arguments that the shops managed to stay open and that there was no reason they couldn't do some sort of rotation or temporary service so he didn't have to hold back his trash for a few days. My response that trash handling is probably more complex than post card delivery and that people want to be with their families while the family members are also not working fell on deaf ears. After all, he was being slightly inconvenienced.
I'd say the dinner went well. The food I made, pork roast and Welsh onion, potato soup, and carrot salad, was a big hit as was the wine choice we made, though my husband got a big headache later from the wine. They also generously brought us several gifts including cookies, bread, caramel pastries, and a cheesecake (though the cheesecake was real "cheese" flavor and not cream cheese so it's pretty weird). I don't know if I made any progress in healing the relationship with my brother-in-law, but I did learn that I like his wife and have hope that she'll file away some of his social sharp edges through time and, at the very least, I don't think things have gotten any worse.
To be honest, I was surprised that the brother-in-law suggested a get-together. Despite the fact that my back problems have kept me from working outside the house and have seen me be essentially bound to my immediate neighborhood for the last two and a half years, I think he believes our not visiting his apartment for social reasons is a personal affront, though hopefully my telling him that I haven't left a limited area for a long time will make him understand that it isn't personal. However, it's generally been the case that he hasn't believed my claims in the past and this is one of the reasons he hasn't suggested coming by our place much. I believe he wants the mountain to come to Muhammad as often as the reverse and he feels he's done more than his share of trekking to our particular mountain.
At any rate, he seems to be rather oblivious to how his behavior has affected me or has decided to pretend it all didn't happen now that time has passed so we all got together and tried to make the best of it. There were some high points and only one low one. The high points mainly related to the fact that his wife may yet "train" some of his more obnoxious behaviors out of him.
One of the problems I've had with my brother-in-law in the past has been with his tendency to treat possessions like they are part of a status competition. That is, he mocks and makes fun of old items in our apartment like our ancient 15-year-old CRT television, old computers, or even the speed of our modem. When he started in on that the evening of the dinner, his wife mumbled something about her not wanting him to do that anymore and him saying he'd try not to. I was glad to see that she was pointing out his bad behavior and attempting to get him to stop it, though he did say the CH and I were "family" so he could do what he wanted.
Rather than get angry at his competitive possession fixation this time, I simply said that I'd rather have an extra $2,000 in my savings account than a new television and that television quality really wasn't that important to us. Since he mentioned the T.V. twice, I responded with this twice and his wife was shaking her head in agreement both times. The brother-in-law has a fixation on high-priced man toys, and I have a feeling that his wife may not feel this is for the best. Clearly she is not the sort of person who cares how new your gadgets are when dealing with others and I really respect that. Another brief discussion of taking one's own lunch to work rather than eating out again seemed to indicate that they may not concur 100% on how money is handled in the relationship as she agreed with us that its fiscally more prudent to carry your own rather than patronize local fast food.
Generally speaking, my brother-in-law showed the same levels of opinionated selfishness that I have come to expect, but having his wife there really helped. She's clearly more sensible and down to earth than he. Though she didn't go out of her way to be confrontational with him (as would be expected), she also didn't hold back on agreeing with us on various points.
The "low points" for me included my slipping up and saying he was "close minded" about the effect of things like reiki treatments (which his wife studies and practices) and therefore it would never work with him as he would actively block any benefits to validate his strong view that it doesn't work. He contended that it came across as a generalized comment that he's close minded about everything and I asked the CH if this was so and he said he believed it could be seen that way. I apologized for having spoken in a manner which could be viewed as a big insult and got a very ungracious, loud and overly exaggerated "thank you" for it. It was clear that he felt this apology was some sort of victory on his part rather than me saying I misspoke and regretted the impression it created. Once more, it's as if this was a competition and he felt my apology was a "win" in his column and I got a bit of "victory cheering" from him for my troubles.
Other than that, we were treated to rants about how the public services, particularly the trash not being picked up during the holidays, were a major inconvenience to him. I guess the idea that these people doing these unpleasant jobs should be entitled to enjoy their holidays along with the rest of the country (including him) wasn't important to him. We were treated to arguments that the shops managed to stay open and that there was no reason they couldn't do some sort of rotation or temporary service so he didn't have to hold back his trash for a few days. My response that trash handling is probably more complex than post card delivery and that people want to be with their families while the family members are also not working fell on deaf ears. After all, he was being slightly inconvenienced.
I'd say the dinner went well. The food I made, pork roast and Welsh onion, potato soup, and carrot salad, was a big hit as was the wine choice we made, though my husband got a big headache later from the wine. They also generously brought us several gifts including cookies, bread, caramel pastries, and a cheesecake (though the cheesecake was real "cheese" flavor and not cream cheese so it's pretty weird). I don't know if I made any progress in healing the relationship with my brother-in-law, but I did learn that I like his wife and have hope that she'll file away some of his social sharp edges through time and, at the very least, I don't think things have gotten any worse.
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