Let's Japan.org

I read and hear a lot of rants about Japan, usually stating this or that Japanese custom, tradition, habit, or mode of behavior sucks. It's easy to say that such and such sucks, which it usually does here, but I find it more interesting to try to get at the core of the suckiness, try to really understand how something could possibly suck as bad as it does. What I'm attempting here is a unifying theory, that will unite and codify all the usual rants.

For those of you who haven't read my previous piece, it compares Japan to the Planet of the Apes. On the message board, Rob asks a very good question: "Is there any escape from the Planet of the Apes?" This recalls the question often asked griping foreigners by their apologist counterparts if things are so bad here, and so great back home, why do you stay? I can't speak for the others, (I imagine that it beats flipping burgers back home), but can only share my own experiences trying to Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

As I mentioned in my previous column, I'm divorced. My Japanese wife left me and took our son back to Japan. Once I became numbed to the shock and horror of having lost everything, I tried to take a more pragmatic approach. "Well," I thought, "Now at least I'm free to have a meaningless series of sexual relations with women of every race, color, and creed. I had considered myself a pretty decent player before I had been married, and thought that I'd have no trouble picking up where I'd left off.

There has been a lot of discussion on the message board as to what makes a good English teacher and if, within the confines of the eikaiwa system, it's even at all possible to be a real teacher at all. I'll give you my secret for being a successful teacher here in Japan. Note, I wrote successful, not necessarily good teacher. What makes a successful teacher?