FYI - Dear readers, before reading the following, you should know a couple of things.   1)  I worked in Miharu 20 years ago for 3 years as an assistant English teacher in the Board of Education (BOE).  During that time, I helped set up a Sister City program between my home town in the US and Miharu.  Although I returned to the US after that, I continued to serve Miharu as the exchange coordinator (on a annual retainer from the Sister City Association called MIFA) for the next 10 years.  

 

2) Then in 2000, I moved back to Miharu to work as the Manager of the Rice Lake House (RLH), but my contract is with the BOE as Coordinator of International Relations (CIR) and my contract lists (among my duties) teaching English and fostering international exchange for the entire community of Miharu, in addition to "managing" the RLH.    I have also continued to serve as exchange coordinator under a seperate agreement with MIFA.  So, basically I have served the community of Miharu for over 20 years.

 

3)  When I came to the RLH, the House had been in the RED for its entire 8 years.   Things were so bad that the MIFA Board Members had to pay money out of their own pockets to cover the phone bill and stuff like that.   The Mayor at that time, Mr. Hiroshi Itoh, told me that the local government could not continue to support the RLH indefinitely and that, at some future point, he would like the RLH to become financially self-sufficient (a wise and reasonable person for a local official by any country’s standard).  Within the first 6 months, the RLH was already running almost in the black, and NOT ONCE since I have come to RLH has the MIFA Board ever had to pay from their own pocket for the RLH expenses.  We ran almost in the black (once or twice in the black by a couple of hundred dollars) for the first 5 years of my “reign” as “Manager” (this is a joke!)

 

4)  From the month I arrived, it was clear that the BOE and MIFA had entirely different expectations about the goals and scope of work for the Manager/CIR.  For the first 4/5 years I thought that I was doing a pretty good job as evidenced by the fact that a) the RLH was getting closer and closer to being financially self-sufficient, b) our membership was increasing, and c) our events were slowly but surely gathering momentum and an audience. 

 

The original MIFA Board praised me openly for doing a good job the first couple of years, but since about 5 years ago, there has been almost NO constructive feedback at all from MIFA, and NONE at all from the BOE, despite our (my staff and I) monthly requests for input.   The only official feedback I got in the past 4 years has been to "not do too much", and "not be so visible".  Which, you have to admist, is totally counter-intuitive advice when one is trying to “grow an organization” (which is what I thought I was supposed to be doing).

 

5) Then, 3 years ago, after 20 years+ of service, the Mayor (H. Itoh) resigned for personal reasons related to the health of his wife.  And the MIFA President (Y. Shirokiwa), who had served for 5 years, also decided to step down.  And about the same time, one of our first MIFA Presidents (A. Koyama), a guy who had the respect of the entire local community as well as the respect of all of the foreign community, became ill and mostly retired (and subsequently passed away in 2005).  

 

6)      Until 3 years ago (almost 4 now), things were occasionally frustrating, but mostly OK.   Then, something changed.  Even I am not sure what changed, but it corresponds with the time that I helped some local mothers start an English preschool (where I worked as a volunteer on my days off) and a couple of major disagreements with some local government officials because they were being incredibly unhelpful to a couple of the young foreign teachers in town over “taxes”.  It’s really complicated and a LONG story but, in short, the BOE would suddenly appear and expect the teacher to cough up a SIGNIFICANT amount of cash to cover some back taxes or change in taxes that no one told us about, and treated us like unreasonable prima donnas for asking questions or refusing to pay up blindly. When we tried to explore options, they tried to stonewall us, and I became irrate and yelled at them on a couple of occassions.  The problem is that yelling at someone is almost an unforgivable offense in Japan  (contrary to what you see on TV).  

 

    My frustration with the BOE continued to grow and grow, mostly due to their lack of responsiveness and lack of anyone who seemed to have authority to make decisions, and a lot of behavior that I can only describe as talking out of two sides of their face.  This also coincided with a time when the local government employees (including members of the BOE) were required to take a PAY CUT, while we foreign teachers were not subject to the same pay cuts, so it began to feel like certain members of the administration were “jealous” and out to punish us for something over which we had no control. 

 

7)      Anyway, suffice it to say, that I have worked with Miharu a LONG TIME, and something is definitely different.  Different does not have to be BAD, but when there is NO dialogue, it is easy to get frustrated and angry. Unfortunately, there is a total BREAKDOWN in COMMUNICATION between us (foreign teachers in Miharu) and the Miharu government (BOE and other departments) and MIFA.

 

8)  Then suddenly last year (Winter of 2006), I was informed that my contract would NOT be renewed.  Not even a "thank you for your 20 years of hard work, just  "find a new job and move out by end of March 2007".  All subsequent appeals to MIFA or the BOE about working parttime, or even volunteering, and being part of the discussion about future goals and activities, were met with a "we don't know yet" and "your assistance is not required in the future".   This continued for 6 months.  When they finally did come to me to ask to continue in a limited capacity as exchange coordinator (panic set in when they realized that they couldn't do some of my work), it was too late - I had already been insulted and ignored too long and all trust between us had been destroyed.  So, they began looking for someone to replace me.  

 

    However, my concern is that without any attempt to resolve the original problems, the next person will face the same problems, frustrations and misunderstandings and hurt feelings in the future.  So I wrote this article below for people that might be considering working here in Miharu  and posted it on this web site, and then SOME "concerned citizen" emailed a copy of my article to a local new magazine that HATES Mr. Itoh and they translated it (badly - but later corrected it when I asked them to) into Japanese and ran it verbatim in their magazine in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to embarrass Mr. Itoh and myself.   Of course, they didn't provide must CONTEXT and only enough to make Mr. Itoh look bad.   Anyway, as you can image, the shit hit the FAN because I dared to publicly criticize MIFA and the BOE.  

 

9        I could have erased the original article before the Japanese paper carried the article, but that would make me a hypocrit.  I stand by what I said, but I've tried to add some context.   I have added some notes in parentheses (*) to the original article for clarity and fairness.  And there are notes at the end as well.   Most of all, I hope readers will understand that, while the original article was written in anger, the heart of the matter is that I am seeking some justice and a little understanding.  From the article you can clearly see that there is a LACK OF COMMUNICATION.  And the OSTRICH method of problem-solving preferred by the local government and MIFA, is not a working solution.   Yes, Miharu could just bring a new person in every year, and not have to deal with any of these issues, but if you want quality programs and a good return on your investment, you have to allow people and positions to grow over time.  At least, that's my opinion.  

 

Anyway, here is the original article *10 Reasons Why You Wouldn't Want to Work for Miharu":