Cultural contrasts! Everywhere there are traps. I was late when I left home yesterday so I quickly kicked off my slippers as I ran out the door. Later, I returned with a Japanese friend. She laughed when she saw my slippers. "We would never do that!" she said. Do what? I asked. Of course. I should have arranged them neatly before leaving. Everything else in my apartment was in perfect order but my slippers marked me irrevocably as a gaijin.

How refreshing it is to have friends who will tell me these things! I remember my first cherry blossom party shortly after arriving in Japan. All day I spoke of the beautiful sakana, fish, instead of sakura, cherry blossoms. And nobody told me. They just said how well I spoke Japanese.

Here's another. I had once told a friend about how surprised I was to find dirty toilet rooms in a well-known Japanese hospital. A clean bath/toilet room is high on any list of Western, or at least American, priorities. She explained that the toilet in Japan is accepted as a dirty place. Of course the bath, which is a clean area, is separated from the toilet in a Japanese house; Japanese must wonder (shudder?) at the Western proclivity to put them together. She explained that in Japan, it is a matter of good etiquette to keep the toilet room door always closed. Dirty things should not be visible. She said when she lived in the U.S., she was told always to leave the door open. Otherwise, everyone would be waiting for whoever was in there to leave. But why close it? In America, the room is often a focus of artistic efforts; we like our bath/toilet rooms to be pretty, or interesting, we decorate them.

There are always many ways of looking at any subject. I wrote recently of a highly qualified Pakistani gentleman who is unable to find a job in Japan. Others report that their telephone applications go well until they get to the question, "What color is your skin?" After that, the conversation is ended. The school is effectively ruling out the "foreign" teachers they don't want, but they may then hire a white-skinned foreigner whose English may be questionable and experience nonexistent. It's the students who suffer.

That said, I would like to quote from a letter from an Indian professional who, among other outstanding recommendations, has taught English as well as literary theory at Indian universities. She writes (poems, short stories, novels) and edits in both languages. She speaks 10 languages. She could not find work in any teaching capacity. However, she now works as an editor, making already-translated books sound "more English."

She writes, "I was never enraged -- exasperated is more like it -- and I have no quarrel with prejudice. You can be as prejudiced as you like within your own mind. Your mind is your own business and not mine, but your behavior is my business since behavior is social, interactive. In today's world it does not seem possible to eliminate prejudice from people's minds; if we can eliminate it from their behavior we should be content. That will at least get rid of the guns, mines, missiles and yes, nuclear weapons. There is much to recommend the Japanese way in this endeavor. I have never -- except with immigration officers and English-teacher recruiters -- met a single offensive person in any Japanese city or town. One cannot say that of many other cities in the world, of which I have seen a lot.

"I have found Japan one of the easiest countries to come to terms with prejudice-wise. The rules were clear and set out quite forthrightly. If you followed them, you met no discrimination in an overt way. No one jostled you, jeered at you or threw things at you. You may have trouble getting an apartment or a job as an English teacher, but you will eventually find enough 'enlightened' people to house you and employ you. None of your neighbors or colleagues is anything but invariably polite. You may even find friends among them. Your halting essays in speaking the language are greeted with tremendous applause and almost everybody will go out of his/her way to help you. There are very few countries in the world -- believe me -- where this is true."

Remember her words the next time you complain about discrimination in Japan.