More about the Australians:
Actually it's been a pretty busy past week. Saturday and Sunday I was busy playing tour guide for the visiting Rotary club from Australia as they traveled around Oita prefecture.
How did I get into such a position? The answer is a long and boring story, so feel free to skip this paragraph if you don't care. But the Usa city Rotary club here in Japan has developed an exchange with a sister city rotary club in Australia. Every two years, either the Usa Rotarians or the Australian Rotarians visit each other's city for sight seeing and cultural exchange.
I don't live in Usa, but someone from the Usa Rotary club is friends with the directory of the Ajimu Board of Education, where I work, and so I was asked to help show the Australians around for the weekend.
What exactly is a rotary club? As it was explained to me, it's basically a business men's social club. It was started in the United States, but it is now world wide. To be eligible for membership, you have to either own a business, or be in a management level position. The members meet for socializing and community service projects.
Of course it is wrong to stereo-type people, but if you were inclined to do some stereo-typing, what kind of people would you think would be in this kind of club? Close your eyes and try to imagine what these Australians were like. You'd probably stereo type something like fat, middle-aged, white men, who like to smoke cigars while complaining about Unions and minorities (in the Australian case, complaining about Aborigines on Welfare).
Now to be fair, I never observed any of these Rotarians smoking. But everything else you might stereotype was pretty dead on. And it was very apparent from what they said that they did not travel in the most politically correct circles in Australia. They always used the word "Negro" to refer to people of African descent, and seemed very surprise when I said we didn't use that word in America anymore. One of the wives said (in a sarcastic voice), "Well what do you call them then? African Americans?"
I answered, yes, sometimes, or even just "black" was preferable to "negro." At this point someone said, "I guess that's just like Australia. We call Aborigines 'Dark Greens.'"
I actually thought for a moment this was the preferred term. "Do you really?" I asked.
"Well, not to their faces of course mate," he answered.
So they said a lot of stupid things, but all in all not a bad group. Perhaps because they were from a rural area their accents were somewhat thicker than my other Australian friends in Japan. I did have trouble understanding them. And there was a bit of a generation gap that perhaps made it difficult to find common interests in conversation. But a couple of them made me laugh. One of them had been to Japan in the 1960s, and when I asked he was able to give me a few stories about seeing anti-war demonstrations and the Zengakuren (student movement).
By Saturday night, I had gotten a bit sick of the whole thing. Again, they weren't really a bad group, but there was a generation gap, and I couldn't help but think of all the parties I was missing by being with these Australians. (Murphy's law, the one weekend I was playing tour guide, there were about 4 different parties I was invited to. I suspect this next weekend, when I'm going to be free, nothing will be going on. )
So, I was thinking about trying to wiggle out of my commitment on Sunday, and meet up with my friends instead, but then I decided that perhaps the problem was just my attitude, and if I let myself, I could have a good time sight seeing with the Australians. Also on Saturday night I met the daughter of one of the Usa Rotarians, and was informed she would be joining us the next day. That might have had some small part on my change of attitude as well.