Japan Rant

I have lived in my apartment now for nearly two years. Next door to me live an elderly man and woman and their son. I never see the son and the guy is always friendly and says hello to me.

The old woman however gives me an evil stare every time she sees me in the corridor outside of the apartment. You would think she would let up after nearly two years of it.

I know I can be a bit noisy sometimes and have the very occasional party at home, but nothing too crazy. One time my girlfriend stayed in my apartment and I went to work. She must have known I was out, so she came and complained to my girlfriend how noisy I was! It was pretty funny how she wouldn’t complain to me. Her way of revenge it seems, it to get up early on the weekend and start cleaning her apartment - vacuuming, banging cupboards and doors.

It is government housing, so their rent hasn’t gone up for years and I am paying more than double than what they pay.

I am looking for a job at the moment and a Japanese friend suggested I go to “Hello Work”. Hello work is a government run place to help people find work in Japan.

My experience with Hello Work is that no one in the office could speak English and there are little or no jobs for foreigners. Their job search system is bilingual but it is a waste of time. I came home disillusioned from my Hello Work experience and searched on the internet if any other foreigners had used Hello Work.

I found a story about a guy who found a job at Hello Work writing the English for a Japanese porn site!

From next month all foreigners entering Japan and those already living there will need to be fingerprinted. The move is to prevent terrorism in the country even though to date there has never been a terrorist act committed in Japan by a foreigner.

“It certainly doesn’t make people who’ve been here for 30 or 40 years feel like they’re even human beings basically,” said businessman Terrie Lloyd, who has dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship and has been based in Japan for 24 years.

A few years ago you needed to have your fingerprints taken when you registered for your Alien registration card, but the practice was later stopped.

Read more: Japan to take fingerprints, photos of foreigners