immigrants

Today was kind of a difficult teaching day. My Reading and Writing classes were fine but my Developmental Writing class was a bit difficult. In general Japanese students will not answer open questions to the class. For example, if I say ask, can anyone name a city in Japan, (I know stupid question), no one will volunteer an answer. If I want them to tell me the answer I have to have them talk about it in pairs and then I have them report on their partner's answer. They don't want to stand out, they don't want to seem like a brown noser so they won't answer, no matter how simple the question is. But there are some times when I am just trying to elicit something from them to start an activity and I don't want to go through the longer process of going through pairs etc.. Anyway I was asking the class a couple of questions and predictably they gave me nothing. Of course it is not surprising but at times it is very irritating. These are all students who profess to wanting to be interpreters, English teachers etc. I also had a couple of your ladies giving me attitude which I also found a bit trying. I must remember they are teenagers and young teenagers at that.
My other fun experience today was a conversation with a student after class. I have talked to this young guy several times after class before. He is kind of an eager kid, he seems like he really wants to learn and he will be going to Colorado to study next semester. So he started talking about how the birthrate is really going down in Japan. I asked him if he thought this was a good thing or a bad thing. He said it was bad because Japan will need more immigrants and that is a bad thing. I asked why and he said it is because Japan will become more dangerous and it will lose its culture. I suggested that immigrants might bring some good thing s to a country. He didn't seem convinced. I said that the immigrants are doing many of the 3 d jobs in Japan, dangerous, difficult and dirty. If the immigrants leave, Japanese will have to do these jobs themselves. I also suggested that of course Japan could close themselves off but then Japanese also shouldn't be able to immigrate to other countries. They can't have the best of both worlds. He didn't understand this logic.
He said that immigrants are bad for the economy. I asked how and he said the English teachers he knew at language schools save their money and send it home and then they go home. I guess to make a long story short it is painful to hear from the students that you are trying to help that there are too many of you, foreigners, in Japan and that is hurting the country. Honestly that is a pretty common idea here. Most Japanese think there are too many foreigners in Japan. In Japan 1% of the population are foreigners. About 50% are Koreans who might have been here for generations. The second largest group is Chinese and Americans are about 1% of the foreigner population. Japanese attitudes towards foreigners is something I am well aware of but I choose to ignore because it is an unchangeable fact of life of living here. But every once in a while I am in a situation where I can't ignore it.

Attached is an article with some similar information.


http://www.davidappleyard.com/japan/jp42.htm