Assimilation

Assimilating back into American culture has not been easy. I am still fighting it. FIghting against eating fast food all the time, watching retarded tv shows, becoming ignorant as much of my fellow countrymen, and losing track of happenings and friends in Japan. It has been really tough. I have a lot of great friends in Japan with whom I had a lot of great times. I'm hoping they'll still be around when I go back, I know it won't be the same...it'll be different; but in a good way. I am looking forward to it.

That is all fine and good, but it is not the assimilation I am actually referring to. The one I am having the most difficulty with is the one into the American corporate culture. In Tokyo the companies I worked for were very liberal, young, fast paced, fun to work in offices. Nothing was all that serious most of the time. I had more fun at work than I did outside of it.

Working for a large investment bank here in NY has been an awakening, at times a most unwelcome one. Certain things that upset certain people in the office make you shake your head and wonder how people like that function in society. How can they walk around and not be constantly offended. I have been labeled a racist, a chauvinist, and so on.

For example...Ray Killen, the "Mississippi Burning Killer," who was made famous by a movie of a similar name, was on trial for a while. He was found guilty. The judge, after a great explanation and diatribe about how each life is held in equal regard no matter how old the defendant is and each should be treated with respect, tossed my man in jail for 3 consecutive 20 year terms. This guy is in a wheelchair on an oxygen tank. He might last 1 year in prison. With that being said there were two reactions in my office...one of total disgust at the fact they would put such an old man in such a terrible condition in prison...the other reaction of complete victory, one person actually said "they're going to love him in prison." Which I'm sure they will. In the lobby of my office building, where I joined close to 100 people watching the verdict read live on CNN, all the black people were screaming and cheering and hugging eachother like it was a victory for civil rights.

Not for nothing, but two white men were killed...1 black man. I think they seem to forget that. Not that their lives mean any more than the black man's life, because they don't...but don't treat this as some major victory for civil rights when it really isn't. It is a victory for morality...for justice as a whole. This guy got what he deserved, just wish it could have been back when he committed the crimes because this piece of shit got to live a full, complete life...the young men he killed, all younger than me, never got to. As much as I have done in my life, there is so much left to do. I couldn't imagine having it all end that soon. He robbed them of something much more valuable than anything money can buy...hopefully his last years of life in prison will make him wither away more painfully than he could have in the care of his family, at home, in a nice warm bed.

All of the blacks in my office disagree with me...they see it as a civil rights thing...everything is a civil rights thing with them. It all reverts back to slavery with them. Not to take away from that atrocity, but it was over 160 years ago that slavery was abolished and the country was left in tatters to make sure it never came back. Somehow I am a racist, according to a black co worker, because I thought that Mandom debacle in Japan was funny. It was...period end. I don't get how finding that funny makes me racist.

One other thing I also don't get...if they can convict Ray Killen after 41 years how is OJ walking a free man, how is Jacko innocent? If Jacko is honestly innocent then OJ will eventually find the real killers...might they be his caddies?

My fetish for Asian girls has led some of the cute white girls in my office, who came on to me when I first started working there, to call me a chauvinist. The fact that I speak Japanese, eat Japanese food, watch Japanese tv, and read Japanese newspapers has nothing to do with it...just my interest in j-girls...I think, if nothing else, my interest in J-girls stems from my interest in all things Japanese...I have always been really interested in Japan, even before I lived there. Living there was like pouring feul on the interest fire, if you know what I mean.

Those girls, whom I turned down, said the only reason I like J-girls is because they are brought up to be submissive slaves that are their boyfriend's personal whores, and that they practically throw themselves at good looking white guys...it's funny because I have also noticed that. However, the one girl I ever truely loved was the most American acting, thinking, and mannered J-girl I ever met. Ask Paul, he knows her fairly well.

I guess I am screwed because once I finally get used to the ass backwards, uptight, stuffy, bullshit political correctness of NY I will be on a plane back to Tokyo. I can't wait to escape.

On a side note, my room mate Ion is being transferred to London next week...lucky bastard. I'm going to miss him. I'll be over there to visit him soon though. Oz better watch out. He'll be within striking distance : )

Sorry I haven't posted more often lately, I have had serious writer's block as a result of the stress work is putting me through with all the studying for My Series 7 and the rediculous work load I have...will try to update more often.

Going to the Yanks-Mets game today at the Stadium....GO YANKS!!!