If you who read Japanese, maybe you read this blog (I have a link to her on the right). Written by a girl you might call a hooker, who's worked in various different types of brothels, etc. And she blogs about it! Most recently she worked in an image club where you play a role (school girl, office lady, blah blah blah). She likes her job, and she works hard at it.
She's also married. She was told she was barren so she went back to work, but now she's pregnant! So of course she quit. Good news. おめでとう (congratulations).
Sometimes I wonder if being a hostess is more intrusive to your life than working for a "soap land" or "health" (I don't know what these things are called in English, basically working at a brothel or working as a call girl). Because you show up, you do your work, then you leave. Who knows?
So yet another section of the economic pyramid has crumbled. IndyMac went bust.
One of my mother's girlfriends had her life savings in there. She's Japanese, and she used to be married to an American man. They bought a condo in LA, and sold it and split the profit when they divorced. She got half a million, put it all in IndyMac, and went back to Tokyo a few years ago.
Now she's in a panic and calling my mother, asking her to translate everything and tell her what's going on. Her English isn't that bad, she's just hoping against hope that my mother will tell her something she wants to hear. She might have lost a huge chunk of her life's savings. Here's something I learned from all this, spread your money out and don't have more in one account than is FDIC insured (but this doesn't apply to me because I don't have any money, haha!).
The next day I walked past my father who's sitting at his computer, and he suddenly makes a really happy sound. When IndyMac went bust, he bought a bunch of cheap shares, by the end of the day the stock had more than doubled and he had made over 1,000bucks.
Does the word ironic apply here?
Japan can be a lonely place for foreign women sometimes.
Wouldn't it be great if there was some supportive organization where frustrated foreign women could go for support?
I know of one organization that you should definitely stay away from. It's called Being A Broad, and it's run by Caroline Pover. Reasons to steer clear include the following:
- She doesn't pay or severely under pays her employees
- She thinks she's above labor laws and doesn't pay overtime, doesn't honor severance pay, and has lots of illegal clauses in her employment contracts
- She claims to have "connections" at the immigration department and at the police department, and also claims to have influence over all of the professional foreign community in Tokyo. All of these things are not true, but that doesn't stop her from using these so-called "connections" to threaten her employees with.
- She outright lies about the distribution and readership of the Weekender* magazine. If you care to check on this, ask her for actual proof of readership and distribution. She won't be able to provide it.
- She's a shameless self promoter. She's connected her name to certain tragedies that have hit foreign women living in Japan, getting publicity and possibly profits in the process.
- She uses her publications to get free things. Free meals, free vacations, free products. In fact on more than one occasion she has caused problems with other foreign-run businesses when she was not given free access to their services.
- Her "Broad Minded Business" (Japan's foremost job and career network for women -- her words) claims to reach an extensive network of highly qualified women. It doesn't. And they haven't had a new listing on their site in six months. And the guy who works on it doesn't get paid.
- Here are some ventures she's been involved with that have gone down in flames.
Go Girls. This was a private English tutor service specifically for women wanting to study from female teachers. The investors had to walk away after she demanded more and more money.
Being A Broad the magazine. She lied to advertisers about the quality, distribution, and online availability of the content, didn't pay the first editor and barely had a qualified staff working on it, and it didn't last.
The Number One Shimbun magazine. When she failed to make any money off of publishing the magazine (because she fired all her staff and pushed her existing staff too far), she went crazy on the owners of the magazine until they decided to cut their losses (and their ties to her) for good.
Being A Broad the book. This was her original claim to fame. It's a thick resource book for foreign women living in Japan, but she couldn't find a publisher for it and had to publish it herself. She claims it's a best seller, but again, ask her for proof and numbers and she won't be able to provide any. Actually it was the best selling English language book in the Tower Records foreign books section in Shibuya for one week I think. And it was never updated. She tried to get an intern to update it for no pay, but that didn't work out.
etc.
Some peeps saying what they think of her here (skip to the comments section at the bottom).
There's more, but I'm tired. You get the point.
This is Osamu. He's only 12 years old, but I think he's dying. He's lost a lot of weight, his fur has lost its glossiness, and he throws up almost every day. When I pick him up he feels like paper. But he's still got the handsomest little face, and he's as friendly as he's always been. He's colored like baked bread and his little head always smells like sunshine. He lives at my mother's house, and I miss him.
I thought I might miss the club and the girls and just being a hostess in general. But I don't. Just thinking about working again kind of makes me feel tired and nauseous. It's tough working a job where you have to deal with rejection all the time. And it's tough when it's YOU that's getting rejected. How attractive you are and stuff.
So now I wear no makeup, barely brush my hair, and my eyebrows are free and wild. And I haven't had any alcohol. It's awesome.
I didn't know what to say. Besides the obvious, which is "well you guys are divorced."
I probably should have brought some leftovers over though. Oops.
When I was at the bank today with my dad, a sleazy, greasy, disgusting guy went up to the teller next to us and started speaking really inappropriately to the teller (who was a young girl). He was using a sleazy, super friendly pedophile voice and getting so close to the glass his lips were almost touching it when he spoke.
I've noticed that glass walls do something to perverts. My twin sister was stuck in a phone booth in Ikebukuro once while a man masturbated and ejaculated on the glass. The same thing happened to another friend who was using a pay phone in Amsterdam.
I couldn'st stand this guy, and I said really loudly "this guy is disgusting." I said it so he could hear me. I said it so he would know that he wasn't fooling anybody. He either ignored me or didn't hear me.
When we got out of the bank, my dad turned around and was really angry at me. He said that in Los Angeles, you can't insult people like that unless you want to get your ass kicked or have a gun pulled on you.
Whatever. People wanna talk about women overreacting or being too sensitive. That's bullshit and my dad just doesn't understand. The disgust and anger I feel towards these sleazy men is REAL, it's from somewhere deep inside me, and it's not superficial or fake. It comes from a lifetime of being objectified and talked down to.
Don't ask me why I decided to work as a hostess.
*****
My mother has been in LA for two days. She's been staying at my twin sister's apartment, but she' leaving tomorrow morning because she misses her cats. I'm gonna miss her. She's so positive and kind. She's like a buddha (as one of my friends once said).
She does freak out sometimes though. When she's driving, I have to stop myself from shouting at her when she drives too slow or gets nervous changing lanes on the freeway. Shouting will just make her panic more and it'll get worse.
When I'm with my twin sister, I have to stop myself from telling her to calm down, to slow down, and to not be so aggressive. Saying anything to her will just make her drive even more angrily and dangerously.
But somebody needs to tell her, and I'm her twin sister so I should. All her friends are too scared to say anything. She's a midget, but she's scary.
Have a California driver's license!
Have an American bank account!
Have filed my taxes (well technically I haven't sent the forms off, but I will soon)!
I feel like a citizen of the USA again : )
Everything was going well at the DMV. Honestly, I would have been pretty pissed off but not surprised if they told me that I had to take the driver's test over again. I mean I haven't lived in this country for seven years and my license has been expired for about four years (I think.)
But all I had to do was pay 30 bucks and fill out a form, and I was getting my long-expired California driver's license back.
Then the lady sent me over to get my new photo taken, then she handed me a paper and told me to fill it out. I look at it and it's a paper test. wtf. She could have TOLD me it was a paper test, she could have TOLD me that I could glance through the study book first. Anyways, I failed it by one point. So I took the handbook home and now I'm reading through it. I'm not leaving that DMV tomorrow until I get a driver's license.
My baby sister has just had a funny adventure in Cambodia. Well it's funny now because nothing really happened to her.
Until two weeks ago, she'd never been in a casino in her whole life. She does love beer though, and she's no idiot. So after winning money and getting free beer at the black jack table, she was hooked. She won money every night, and she went to the casino EVERY NIGHT!
She had fun, she got free beer, she met some fun kids/fellow gamblers. She even met a nice older Korean guy, a generous high roller. He invited my baby sister and her friend (an American guy) out to an expensive dinner. They accepted, "yay, expensive dinner, awesome!"
Of course, the night turned into a complete disaster. The Korean "businessman" was actually scary gangster who was also completely INSANE. He started speaking in scary drunk gangster Japanese and threatening to kill my little sister's male friend, who was scared, despite being ignorant of the fact that his life was being threatened! And this is just half the story (hostesses, and other things also made their appearance).
They ultimately made it home safely. I didn't find the story that amusing. I mean that gangster guy has obviously spent way too long in a consequence-free world.
My little sister's American male friend spent the next day emotionally and physically recovering (he also had a hangover). When my little sister told him what the gangster had been saying, I think he got even more exhausted. "Am I going to be beheaded now?" he asked. "Not if we stay away from the casino," said my little sister.
So that's the beginning and the end of her days as a gambler.
I've been hanging with my mom for the last two days. She moved to a totally boondocks town a few years ago after reading a big feature article in the LA Times about how this town will be the next resort town of California. She sold the house that she had only recently bought and moved with her two cats. Then she got really lonely because she lives hours and hours away from EVERYONE and there are no Japanese people. Now she said she's going to stay here because she "doesn't want to give up." She's no quitter!
