From: ishikawa@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp (Chiaki Ishikawa)
Newsgroups: fj.misc
Subject: Re: No Response to English Articles? [English]
Date: 30 Jul 92 10:43:15 GMT
	<CLAUDE.92Jul28180617@tokyo.trc.mew.mei.co.jp> <2185@aegis.or.jp>
	<CLAUDE.92Jul29093529@tokyo.trc.mew.mei.co.jp>
	<ISHIKAWA.92Jul29171510@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp> <2200@aegis.or.jp>
Reply-To: ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp
Organization: Personal Media Corp., Tokyo Japan
In-reply-to: davidg@aegis.or.jp's message of 29 Jul 92 22:32:57 GMT


>>>>> On 29 Jul 92 22:32:57 GMT, davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane) said:

Dave> ishikawa@ds5200.personal-media.co.jp (Chiaki Ishikawa) writes:

>>>>>> On 29 Jul 92 00:35:15 GMT, claude@trc.mew.mei.co.jp (Claude Huss) said:

>Claude> AT LAST, I found a place, but my landlady "forced" me to sign
>Claude> a contract with clauses like "You must pledge to don't speak in loud
>Claude> voice", "You must pledge to don't invite friends from your
>Claude> country", "You must pledge to don't invite friends from yourcountry",
>Claude> "You must pledge to don't laugh", etc. etc. 
CI>	Gad. This is RIDICUROUS! Couldn't you do something to avoid
CI> this??? 

Dave> How did she "force" you, put a gun at your head? Call in her yakuza
Dave> brother? What exactly?

Dave> [* other stuff omitted *]

CI> My guess for the best remedy is that there is a japanese legal
CI> counselor's office to weed out this kind of blutant racism. You may
CI> want to contact them via your Japanese colleagues or your Japanese
CI> friend. 

Dave> Sorry, but I fail to see the connection between the problem and the
Dave> suggested remedy. He wants to get a place to live. He has trouble
Dave> with a landlady. He takes up the question of blatant racism? Sounds
Dave> like overkill to me...

	Sorry, I used the word "racism" cause I couldn't find the
better word on (at?) the spur of the moment. But, it is some kind of
segregation, isn't it? (Like telling "don't bring in friends from your
country"? Do I miss something here? Is Mr. Hess from South Africa,
Yugoslavia, or Iraq with which foreign government including Japanese
government have a touchy relationship and the landlady is following
the political wind? I don't think so, but again I don't know.

Dave> If you walk into a restaurant and they don't have what you want,
Dave> do you file a charge with some legal counselor's office? No, you
Dave> find another restaurant.

	Sure, sure. Exactly, but looks like he was turned down(?) in
other places before coming to this place. I wonder what kind of
neighborhood or town this could be. 
	It is true that many small real estate offices or
landladies/landlords are reluctant to rent to foreigners for the first
time. The often mentioned reason is that

- the rules which the tenants are supposed to obey are
  available only in Japanese, and they(owners) can't exlain
  to the potential foreign tenants, and they are afraid
  the tenants may not follow the rules. Then what to do?

- the Japanese legal system/conventions are pretty tilted
 toward the tenants' right once they live in there. (You
 can't evict tenants like, as I hear, you can do in New York
 City.) This puts in the landladies/landlords in very
 protective, and  cautious mood. If the tenants don't pay the
 rent, etc., it takes so much effort to evict them, so the
 landladies/landlords want a guarantor to
 pay instead. Foreigners often don't have any Japanese person
 to be willing to be their guarantor. (Of curse, there are
 many exceptions.) Thus the reluctance on the
 landladies/landlords part.

Of course, the first reason is rather weak, and I have noticed that
some aparments now put the rules (such as on what day of the week you
can put the garbage bags at the collection point, etc.) in
Japanese/Chinese/English/and other language combinations. I have seen
them with my own eyes, so some people have learned to cope with this problem.

I don't know how people manage the second problem.

Dave> But of course he says that he "AT LAST" found a place. What does
Dave> this mean? I mean how did he go about finding a place? For example,
Dave> did he talk to somebody who didn't have any problems and ask them
Dave> how they went about it? 
	That is also one thing I am curious. Isn't there any foreigner
within let's say, 5 km range of where Mr. Hess lives?
(In Tokyo, one of these days, there are sections where many foreginers
live. I wonder if they had to put up with the kind of strange
restraints imposed on Mr. Hess.)
	Also, the reason I suggested talking to his Japanese colleage
or Japanese friends was that it might be easier for the Japanese
acquaintances to find out what is going on: Is the landlady just
racist, or did she have a bad experience with a former foreign tenant
and thus the overreaction, or she is just an klunky old lady who would
not listen to reason, etc...
	Anyway, a big company tends to have a former experience of
hiring foreigners, and thus they may have good tips to offer.

  Dave> IMHO, the infamous "I was the object of blatant racism" complaint is
  Dave> because there are a certain number of people who come to Japan and
  Dave> believe "the wheel that squeaks is the one that gets oiled". Thus
  Dave> they go around saying how badly they are treated in hope that
  Dave> somebody will help them. But, unfortunately, this isn't how things
  Dave> work here and the more you complain, the more problems you cause
  Dave> yourself. 
	How true. You have lived here too long to know this, Dave :-) 
This is why I also said:
    CI> But, be diplomatic and tactful about this, if you surprise your
    CI> landlady by a call from the legal counselor or something out of blue,
    CI> she may get nastier.
This is a "common sense" here. (with due respect to the discussion
about the one-truth-... ):	

	 Do in Rome as the Romans do. 

Sorry I can't give out better quote or anything :-) 

(BTW, If you do as the Romans do, and the Romans don't treat you as
part of the Roman society, then too bad, though. But what can we
do/say about this potential outcome? Do you want to become part of
Roman society?)

  Dave> And even more unfortunately the people who don't have any
  Dave> problems tend to be quiet so you have to search them out...
	Yes. It is kind of difficult to search and ask foreigners at
random in your neighborhood. Again, I believe Mr. Hess's office is
part of a big company and I believe he can get some helpful tips from
his colleagues. Or if Mr. Hess has a Japanese guarantor, talk to the
guarantor and see what his/her opinion is.

  Dave> Only my experience ;-)
	My experience, too :-)   

(don't misunderstand. I AM a Japanese born and grew up in Japan in a
small city and have been living in Tokyo. It was just that I was asked
to mediate the negotiation when someone from Canada tried to rent an
office/room, and when a French engineer wanted to rent a room. But
this is MUCH more experience than average Japanese man/woman have, I
think.)

--
------------------------------------------------------------------
    Chiaki Ishikawa                       Phone:+81-3-5702-0351
  Personal Media Corp.                      FAX:+81-3-5702-0359
 MY Bldg, 1-7-7 Hiratsuka,   UUNET: ... uunet!pmcgw!ishikawa, or
 Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 142                ishikawa%pmcgw@uunet.uu.net
        JAPAN                JUNET:     ishikawa@personal-media.co.jp
------------------------------------------------------------------