I work in Japan as an English teacher at a Christian High School. I have been working there for nearly 3 years. I have seen, lived and felt what it is like to be a foreigner, a black woman in Japan. In general people are very curious. I never feel that this curiosity is by any chance malicious. But sometimes the stares and the looks are getting tiring. My first year in Japan felt like a bliss. There was so much to discover. The language, the food, the people, the nature, the stores, the housing. I came to Japan to join my boyfriend who was already working here as an English teacher. Being an English Teacher is a good entry into the work life of Japan, because they want to learn English by all means. Of course there is a hierarchy: white American male/ females are the most desired. Then Canadians, British, other Europeans, English speaking Asians such as Filipinos, and at the bottom of the social ladder are the Jamaicans and English speaking Africans. I have the advantage of being a Dutch national. However, I am a black woman. It makes things interesting. At my school I was hired to be an English Teacher, but at the same time a Missionary, given that the school is a Christian school. I am a Christian and I have been baptized in both the Catholic Church as well as the Walloon Reformed church.
I always get an uneasy feeling though when I am being referred to as a Missionary. I don’t see myself as one. From what I have learned in history books and from my grandmother’s tales about missionaries in Africa, they contributed a lot to the African education and the implementation of Christianity in Africa, but they also brought the murder, slavery, colonialism, diseases and corruption. I always liked this quote from Desmond Tutu “When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”
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