Thursday, April 01, 2010
Persona Non Grata
It seems I am experiencing first-hand the downside to living an online life: my residence in Japan is now in jeopardy.
As I mentioned on Twitter I spent a good chunk of the last two days gathering forms and applying for a new visa. The "education" work visa I received in 2007 is up this summer and having gotten my money's worth I figured now was the time to finally switch over to a spouse visa. Yes, I could have gotten one as soon as Mako and I got married, but it would have definitely been a single year visa which would mean an extra trip to the immigration office (not to mention more fees). So I rode out my work visa to make everything a little easier.
Convenience comes with a price, it seems. Based on the "curt" phone call we received today, the people in the visa office were suspicious as to why I waited nearly three years to apply for a spouse visa. They started making phone calls and I guess I they gave this assignment to the one person in the office who spoke English because that person found my blog and Wired Game|Life.
One phone call to my Board of Education revealed that my freelance writing career is incompatible with my present work visa. While none of this would, strictly speaking, have any bearing on my new spouse visa, the fact that I've been sneaking in non-education work on the side means that everything I submitted to them is now being treated as potentially false.
What does this mean? Right now I don't have any answers. Nothing has been revoked (YET) but clearly the immigration people are upset. My BoE is upset. The JET coordinators in Osaka are upset. That's way too many upset people for this story to end on a happy note.
My options are extremely limited at this point. I haven't technically been punished yet for technically breaking the law and I have to wait and see what they decide before I take any action. This website offers some hope, as there are cases there similar to mine where everything ended up (more or less) restored to normal. Certainly, there's no prison time on the table or anything crazy like that, but there could be a steep fine or even deportation (though that's an extreme example).
Points on my side? I'm not that easy to replace because I work in elementary schools where a fair amount of Japanese knowledge is required to communicate. I am, in fact, married to a Japanese national and we have a baby who is also a Japanese national. Without me in the picture they would have no means of supporting themselves and would likely be forced to leave with me. Japan is stupid sometimes but they rarely deport their own.
OK, it seems waaaaay too many people fell for this so I'm just going to stop you right there: WHAT DAY IS IT TODAY? Where does that link above go to? Sorry if anyone was actually scared.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
As I mentioned on Twitter I spent a good chunk of the last two days gathering forms and applying for a new visa. The "education" work visa I received in 2007 is up this summer and having gotten my money's worth I figured now was the time to finally switch over to a spouse visa. Yes, I could have gotten one as soon as Mako and I got married, but it would have definitely been a single year visa which would mean an extra trip to the immigration office (not to mention more fees). So I rode out my work visa to make everything a little easier.
Convenience comes with a price, it seems. Based on the "curt" phone call we received today, the people in the visa office were suspicious as to why I waited nearly three years to apply for a spouse visa. They started making phone calls and I guess I they gave this assignment to the one person in the office who spoke English because that person found my blog and Wired Game|Life.
One phone call to my Board of Education revealed that my freelance writing career is incompatible with my present work visa. While none of this would, strictly speaking, have any bearing on my new spouse visa, the fact that I've been sneaking in non-education work on the side means that everything I submitted to them is now being treated as potentially false.
What does this mean? Right now I don't have any answers. Nothing has been revoked (YET) but clearly the immigration people are upset. My BoE is upset. The JET coordinators in Osaka are upset. That's way too many upset people for this story to end on a happy note.
My options are extremely limited at this point. I haven't technically been punished yet for technically breaking the law and I have to wait and see what they decide before I take any action. This website offers some hope, as there are cases there similar to mine where everything ended up (more or less) restored to normal. Certainly, there's no prison time on the table or anything crazy like that, but there could be a steep fine or even deportation (though that's an extreme example).
Points on my side? I'm not that easy to replace because I work in elementary schools where a fair amount of Japanese knowledge is required to communicate. I am, in fact, married to a Japanese national and we have a baby who is also a Japanese national. Without me in the picture they would have no means of supporting themselves and would likely be forced to leave with me. Japan is stupid sometimes but they rarely deport their own.
OK, it seems waaaaay too many people fell for this so I'm just going to stop you right there: WHAT DAY IS IT TODAY? Where does that link above go to? Sorry if anyone was actually scared.
Labels: extra extra, Internet issues, Japan, teaching, writing
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Defending the Indefensible
Two recent stories jumped out at me this weekend. Initially unrelated, the more I thought about them the more I realized they touched on the issue of "free speech" and the curious habit of people on the Internet leaping to the support of people/organizations that don’t need (or deserve) any help.
First off, Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight because he looked too fat, emphasis on "looked" because he flew on that same airline later in the day without losing any weight. This frightens me because the airline has done this before and it wasn’t any more justified then than it was this time; some ignorant staffer just made a gut decision that a paying customer didn’t safely fit in one seat without actually confirming said suspicion. Any situation where people are being denied service because they look fat is of obvious concern for me, even when the discriminators are operating a business 5000 miles from my present location.
Given that Kevin Smith is famous, it didn’t take long for the PR people at Southwest to realize that they needed to respond to this mistake. However, they made the curious choice of apologizing for mistreating him while simultaneously asserting their right to do so. That’s like Denny’s refusing to serve a black guy and after they apologize, insisting that "in our defense, you really are black and we’d rather not have your kind in our restaurant."
The other details thus far are irrelevant (talk of safety concerns, standby status, and how many seats were purchased doesn’t matter when the person in question clearly fits in the allotted space) but what nags me are some of the comments on the Southwest Airlines "apology" page. More than a few people are in favor of ejecting passengers who appear obese, with one crazy person even citing the corporation’s right to "free speech."
While the right to refuse service is a logical one, as it protects businesses from legitimately unruly or disruptive customers, should we really accept that people are subject to superficial discrimination like this? Sure, Southwest has the option to remove fat people from their airplanes, but even if you’re not overweight this should be disturbing news. I don’t think an airline should be allowed to decline a passenger based on how they look any more than a hotel or a landlord should.
We’ll get back to that, but let’s get to that second news story that caught my eye: someone made threatening remarks over Xbox LIVE and the police were called. Again, there are commenters jumping to the defense of the angry young man, asserting his right to "free speech" and lamenting Microsoft’s meddling into the privacy of its customers. Even the article initially used the verb "rats out" in its headline before softening its stance.
Never mind the fact that the First Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t apply to private forums, it’s frightening to me that anyone alive today would take a stand against investigating threats of violence. If the 1999 Columbine massacre is too hazy in their memories, perhaps they can recall the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007? Aggressive statements and actions should never be ignored. I don’t know whether this guy was serious or not, but if he’s going to announce his intentions to kill people I want him questioned by the authorities.
How do these two disparate stories connect? In both cases, defenders of the wrongdoers rally behind "free speech" as an excuse for unconscionable behavior. This offends me because the more often people incorrectly cry that their rights are violated, the less impact legitimate complaints have. Call it The Boy Who Cried Free Speech; eventually people stop listening even if you’re telling the truth.
The basic misconception at work in both these situations is that free speech does not equal consequence-free speech. Just because something cannot be outlawed doesn’t mean it cannot go unpunished. I have the right to declare aloud "God hates fags" in San Francisco or proclaim "I hate niggers" in Harlem, but the anger that would follow could not be waved away with the Bill of Rights.
Southwest Airlines may have the right to turn away fatties and this angry Xbox user may have the right to shoot his mouth off, but they both need to face up to their actions when the outraged response arrives. Citing policies or the Constitution is not a defense and I cannot fathom why outside parties would weigh in with such statements.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Any statement on the Internet, no matter how ignorant, is bound to draw at least one friendly response. It just puzzles me to see strangers defend discrimination and potential violence by citing the same lofty source.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
First off, Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight because he looked too fat, emphasis on "looked" because he flew on that same airline later in the day without losing any weight. This frightens me because the airline has done this before and it wasn’t any more justified then than it was this time; some ignorant staffer just made a gut decision that a paying customer didn’t safely fit in one seat without actually confirming said suspicion. Any situation where people are being denied service because they look fat is of obvious concern for me, even when the discriminators are operating a business 5000 miles from my present location.
Given that Kevin Smith is famous, it didn’t take long for the PR people at Southwest to realize that they needed to respond to this mistake. However, they made the curious choice of apologizing for mistreating him while simultaneously asserting their right to do so. That’s like Denny’s refusing to serve a black guy and after they apologize, insisting that "in our defense, you really are black and we’d rather not have your kind in our restaurant."
The other details thus far are irrelevant (talk of safety concerns, standby status, and how many seats were purchased doesn’t matter when the person in question clearly fits in the allotted space) but what nags me are some of the comments on the Southwest Airlines "apology" page. More than a few people are in favor of ejecting passengers who appear obese, with one crazy person even citing the corporation’s right to "free speech."
While the right to refuse service is a logical one, as it protects businesses from legitimately unruly or disruptive customers, should we really accept that people are subject to superficial discrimination like this? Sure, Southwest has the option to remove fat people from their airplanes, but even if you’re not overweight this should be disturbing news. I don’t think an airline should be allowed to decline a passenger based on how they look any more than a hotel or a landlord should.
We’ll get back to that, but let’s get to that second news story that caught my eye: someone made threatening remarks over Xbox LIVE and the police were called. Again, there are commenters jumping to the defense of the angry young man, asserting his right to "free speech" and lamenting Microsoft’s meddling into the privacy of its customers. Even the article initially used the verb "rats out" in its headline before softening its stance.
Never mind the fact that the First Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t apply to private forums, it’s frightening to me that anyone alive today would take a stand against investigating threats of violence. If the 1999 Columbine massacre is too hazy in their memories, perhaps they can recall the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007? Aggressive statements and actions should never be ignored. I don’t know whether this guy was serious or not, but if he’s going to announce his intentions to kill people I want him questioned by the authorities.
How do these two disparate stories connect? In both cases, defenders of the wrongdoers rally behind "free speech" as an excuse for unconscionable behavior. This offends me because the more often people incorrectly cry that their rights are violated, the less impact legitimate complaints have. Call it The Boy Who Cried Free Speech; eventually people stop listening even if you’re telling the truth.
The basic misconception at work in both these situations is that free speech does not equal consequence-free speech. Just because something cannot be outlawed doesn’t mean it cannot go unpunished. I have the right to declare aloud "God hates fags" in San Francisco or proclaim "I hate niggers" in Harlem, but the anger that would follow could not be waved away with the Bill of Rights.
Southwest Airlines may have the right to turn away fatties and this angry Xbox user may have the right to shoot his mouth off, but they both need to face up to their actions when the outraged response arrives. Citing policies or the Constitution is not a defense and I cannot fathom why outside parties would weigh in with such statements.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Any statement on the Internet, no matter how ignorant, is bound to draw at least one friendly response. It just puzzles me to see strangers defend discrimination and potential violence by citing the same lofty source.
Labels: free speech, I hate people, Internet issues
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Monday, June 01, 2009
Digital Life Management
For my 1000th blog post, I need to ask you readers a question: do I share too much?
I hope your answer is "no" because I don't feel that way at all, but I just recently ran into some Japanese Internet issues that forced me to think about what it is that I do, digitally speaking.
For starters, I picked this domain name in 2004 because it is a pun featuring my own last name. I subsequently went on to use feitclub as my username on a number of online forums and other websites (most of which are gathered on my contact page). It's a pretty thin veil of anonymity because I didn't really consider using my own name online to be a problem. Yet I can remember a lot of people being extremely nervous when they heard I was starting a blog and writing about myself on the Internet using my own name. They felt something about that was inherently dangerous and I couldn't understand why.
Flash forward to today and I live in a country where that attitude is widespread: Japan is afraid of the Internet. I had heard that before from What Japan Thinks but this article (and this recent non-controversy) really sum up the matter quite well. I had always assumed Japanese web pages sucked because they were designed with mobile phones in mind, but he argues that the real reason is a general distrust of the Internet as a medium. Fear of new technology isn't unheard of but sometimes I feel like Japan is almost trying to wait it out, as if the Internet is just going to go away someday.
This fear hit home not too long ago when Mako casually commanded me to never post a picture of our baby on the Internet. She said she had no objections to sending pictures to friends or family, but putting up a picture for everyone to see is apparently out of the question. When I asked why, all she could say was "It's my baby." I didn't argue because she is very pregnant right now and completely unstable, so she says a lot of things that don't make sense or at least contradict her own long-held opinions. At one point last month she said she never wanted to go to America again, but this weekend she couldn't stop talking about visiting Boston after seeing a TV special about the city (and its cuisine).
Even if she reverses herself or doesn't even remember making such a declaration, I am wondering if she is actually right. Between this blog, Twitter, and Facebook, I am producing a steady of stream of words and images featuring and starring me. My life is hardly an open book (there's plenty of stuff that cannot/should not be made public) but I offer the Internet a substantial look at my life. That's something I have chosen to do and I enjoy it. If nothing else, it's a fun exercise to keep myself writing and it serves as a record of what I'm up to should I ever need to recall what Mako and I ate on our first date. Mako is basically along for the ride, posing for silly pictures knowing full well they will end up on the Internet. However, it will be years before our son is old enough to grasp what the hell an Internet is. Is it right to simply decide that he is on board with all this?
Allow me to answer my own question, because I just realized I'm looking at this the wrong way: Yes, it is OK for me to make these decisions for my son because I am his father. It's going to be my job to decide a lot of things concerning my son for decades. These decisions will run the gamut from trivial (i.e. choosing when we take family vacations) to fundamental (disciplining him if he steals something), and that will include encouraging him to embrace certain cultural phenomena that I enjoy. There's nothing sinister or Orwellian about it; in fact, the reason I know the word "Orwellian" is because my father gave me Animal Farm to read when I was in second grade.
Indeed, there were a lot of interests my father tried to pass on to me when I was growing up. My father loved baseball when I was a kid, and so did I. I would hope my son will learn to love it too (He doesn't have to love the Yankees, of course, just so long as he doesn't choose the Red Sox). My father was fascinated by history, especially military history. He took us to Civil War battlefields as a family and played strategic war games with his friends. He loved skiing and sailing. I didn't embrace all of these things, but I know that being exposed to all of them had an affect on me. I'm sure all the traveling we did encouraged me to visit Japan when I did.
As for me, I am not scared of the Internet and I hope my son grows up accepting it as a part of his life. He doesn't need to write his own blog or anything, but I don't want him to feel like the Internet represents some kind of threat to his privacy. Of course, I am not a dictator. These kinds of decisions will be made by the two of us and if Mako holds her ground, you may not be seeing any pictures of our son on the Internet at all. She has just as much right to shape our child as I do, and in the big picture this isn't something worth fighting over. It's not like she'll be raising him as a Luddite. Whatever happens, I hope my son will at least come to view the Internet as something that can be both fun and useful. After all, no matter where he decides to live in the future, he will need to use it to keep in touch with half of his family. I don't want that to become a chore that he loathes.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
I hope your answer is "no" because I don't feel that way at all, but I just recently ran into some Japanese Internet issues that forced me to think about what it is that I do, digitally speaking.
For starters, I picked this domain name in 2004 because it is a pun featuring my own last name. I subsequently went on to use feitclub as my username on a number of online forums and other websites (most of which are gathered on my contact page). It's a pretty thin veil of anonymity because I didn't really consider using my own name online to be a problem. Yet I can remember a lot of people being extremely nervous when they heard I was starting a blog and writing about myself on the Internet using my own name. They felt something about that was inherently dangerous and I couldn't understand why.
Flash forward to today and I live in a country where that attitude is widespread: Japan is afraid of the Internet. I had heard that before from What Japan Thinks but this article (and this recent non-controversy) really sum up the matter quite well. I had always assumed Japanese web pages sucked because they were designed with mobile phones in mind, but he argues that the real reason is a general distrust of the Internet as a medium. Fear of new technology isn't unheard of but sometimes I feel like Japan is almost trying to wait it out, as if the Internet is just going to go away someday.
This fear hit home not too long ago when Mako casually commanded me to never post a picture of our baby on the Internet. She said she had no objections to sending pictures to friends or family, but putting up a picture for everyone to see is apparently out of the question. When I asked why, all she could say was "It's my baby." I didn't argue because she is very pregnant right now and completely unstable, so she says a lot of things that don't make sense or at least contradict her own long-held opinions. At one point last month she said she never wanted to go to America again, but this weekend she couldn't stop talking about visiting Boston after seeing a TV special about the city (and its cuisine).
Even if she reverses herself or doesn't even remember making such a declaration, I am wondering if she is actually right. Between this blog, Twitter, and Facebook, I am producing a steady of stream of words and images featuring and starring me. My life is hardly an open book (there's plenty of stuff that cannot/should not be made public) but I offer the Internet a substantial look at my life. That's something I have chosen to do and I enjoy it. If nothing else, it's a fun exercise to keep myself writing and it serves as a record of what I'm up to should I ever need to recall what Mako and I ate on our first date. Mako is basically along for the ride, posing for silly pictures knowing full well they will end up on the Internet. However, it will be years before our son is old enough to grasp what the hell an Internet is. Is it right to simply decide that he is on board with all this?
Allow me to answer my own question, because I just realized I'm looking at this the wrong way: Yes, it is OK for me to make these decisions for my son because I am his father. It's going to be my job to decide a lot of things concerning my son for decades. These decisions will run the gamut from trivial (i.e. choosing when we take family vacations) to fundamental (disciplining him if he steals something), and that will include encouraging him to embrace certain cultural phenomena that I enjoy. There's nothing sinister or Orwellian about it; in fact, the reason I know the word "Orwellian" is because my father gave me Animal Farm to read when I was in second grade.
Indeed, there were a lot of interests my father tried to pass on to me when I was growing up. My father loved baseball when I was a kid, and so did I. I would hope my son will learn to love it too (He doesn't have to love the Yankees, of course, just so long as he doesn't choose the Red Sox). My father was fascinated by history, especially military history. He took us to Civil War battlefields as a family and played strategic war games with his friends. He loved skiing and sailing. I didn't embrace all of these things, but I know that being exposed to all of them had an affect on me. I'm sure all the traveling we did encouraged me to visit Japan when I did.
As for me, I am not scared of the Internet and I hope my son grows up accepting it as a part of his life. He doesn't need to write his own blog or anything, but I don't want him to feel like the Internet represents some kind of threat to his privacy. Of course, I am not a dictator. These kinds of decisions will be made by the two of us and if Mako holds her ground, you may not be seeing any pictures of our son on the Internet at all. She has just as much right to shape our child as I do, and in the big picture this isn't something worth fighting over. It's not like she'll be raising him as a Luddite. Whatever happens, I hope my son will at least come to view the Internet as something that can be both fun and useful. After all, no matter where he decides to live in the future, he will need to use it to keep in touch with half of his family. I don't want that to become a chore that he loathes.
Labels: family, Internet issues, Japan, marriage, pregnancy, site news
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Thank God for Small Favors
The Supreme Court declared the Child Online Protection Act unconstitutional, ensuring the rest of us continued access to free pornography, so says the NY Times. Here's an idea for parents who want to protect their children from the Internet: SUPERVISE THEM. Stop trying to ruin everything for everyone.
つづく...(Click here to read more)
Labels: Internet issues, politics
つづく...(Click here to read more)
