News from AFWJ Members

Two AFWJ members' exhibitions

2011-01-16T18:16:00.001+09:00

Member Irena Keckes will hold a solo art exhibition in Nihonbashi, before leaving Japan. Don't miss this last chance to get to meet her once more and take in her beautiful artwork. Irena will be at the art gallery on the opening day.

Gallery Saoh & Tomos
Dates: Jan. 24 (Mon) - 29 (Sat) (open every day)
Hours: 11:00-19:00 (final day until 17:00)
1-3-1 Hon-cho, Nihonbashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo
Tel: 03-3271-6693 http://www.jpin.co.jp/saoh/location2.htm (map)

additional links of interest:
http://www.irena.jp/
http://www.jpin.co.jp/saoh/future2.htm#Irena%20KECKES

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Kanto member Cornelia (Connie Koyama), who was featured earlier on this blog, will also be participating in another exhibition. She describes it as "a rather large group in a rather small art gallery in Kichijoji, so each of the 39 artists gets to show one rather small artwork :-) "
The art gallery is ~5min. walking distance from the Park Exit of Kichijoji Stn. C

Gallery Face to Face
Dates: Jan.19 (Wed) - Feb.13 (Sun), 2011
Hours: 13:00-19:00 (final day until 17:00)
Closed: Mondays and Tuesdays
1-18-8-101 Kichijoji-Minamicho, Musashino-shi, Tokyo
Tel: 0422-70-0885 http://ftf2000.com/gallery (in Japanese only)

Introducing... Makayla S.

2010-12-10T09:27:00.001+09:00

Kanto member Makayla S. is a pottery artist.

Let her introduce herself: "My name is Makayla and I am a Bulgarian who has lived in Japan for 25 years. My greatest passion is pottery and I have been fortunate to live in a country that has such a rich tradition in ceramics. I also love to travel and allow the beauty and culture of each place I visit to touch and inspire me. Then reflect that in the pottery I make."

You can follow her on her Etsy Shop...

Introducing... Amy Nakazawa

2010-12-03T15:06:00.001+09:00

You can follow member Amy Nakazawa, a long term Tokyo resident, online on her blog, twitter, etc.

These days, she blogs about Japanese cooking, life as a mom, etc.

Enjoy !

Introducing Regina Altherr, ceramic artist

2010-06-28T20:33:00.002+09:00

Shiga member Regina Altherr is a Swiss ceramic artist. She has been working in Japan for over 30 years, exploring her creativity in different ways, such as ceramics, vessels, sculptures and glass works.

She will be showing her latest Ceramic and Glass Work in Tokyo for her first exhibition at Glass Gallery KARANIS.
The exhibition will be held from July 2nd to July 10th. Open from 11-7 ( also open on Monday.)
The artist herself will be at the gallery on July 2, 3, 4 and 5 from 12noon to 7pm.

Gallery contact information:
Glass Gallery KARANIS
FROM 1st 2F (name of building)
Minato-ku , Aoyama 5-3-10 tel/fax: 03-3406-1440

You can follow Regina on her homepage:
http://www.smaral.com/

Introducing Cornelia, artist

2010-06-28T10:46:00.002+09:00

Kanto member Cornelia (Connie Koyama) is an international-minded Swiss artist specialized in printmaking, who has lived in Switzerland, US, Germany and Japan.

She is participating currently in an exhibition at The National Art Center in Roppongi, Tokyo.
She received an 'Award for Excellence' for one of the two prints on display there.

Art Mirai International Art Exhibition
The National Art Center, Tokyo
June 23 (Wed) - July 5 (Mon), 2010
10:00-18:00 (final day 10:00-12:30)
closed: June 29 (Tue)

1A Exhibition Hall & Out-door exhibition
Roppongi 7-22-2, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Tel: 03-6812-9921
Web http://www.nact.jp/english/index.html

You can follow Cornelia on her homepage:
http://www.corneliasart.com

Introducing Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto

2010-05-23T20:22:00.000+09:00

Kyushu member Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto is an English teacher, teacher trainer and author.

She is co-author of a children’s English textbook series called Let's Go.

You can follow her on her blog or her wiki, where she shares information about teaching and learning English as a foreign language.

Introducing Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, writer and poet

2010-05-13T09:59:00.000+09:00

Chubu Tokai member Jane Joritz-Nakagawa new book of poems, titled "incidental music", was just published by BlazeVOX.

It is now on sale at Amazon USA.

Congratulations !

Introducing Sheila M. Asato, Coach

2010-03-05T08:48:00.001+09:00

Overseas member Sheila M. Asato is a certified Embodied Imagination coach and a Dream and Art Facilitator. She also teaches at the Monkey Bridge Arts Center in St. Louis Park, MN, USA.

As Sheila writes on her homepage, "the emphasis is on how dreaming connects us more deeply with the creative process for healing and spiritual development."

You can find more information on her homepage and follow her on her blog.

Introducing "Action English Eniwa" School

2010-02-19T11:07:00.000+09:00

Hokkaido member Vicky K. teaches at her own English school and blogs about life in Hokkaido.

You can follow her on her blog and school homepage.

Introducing Gabriele K, flower designer

2010-02-19T09:45:00.000+09:00

Kanto member Gabriele K. is originally from German. She is a very talented flower designer, knitter, crafter, etc. She blends her experiences and inspirations from both her German roots and her life in Japan into beautiful pieces of art.

Follow her on her blog, Etsy shop or homepage.

Introducing "Working Mom in Japan" blog

2010-02-18T08:58:00.000+09:00

Kanto Member Amanda (Mande) Y. reports about her busy life as a working mom in Japan in her blog.

She was recently featured on another blog. You can check the nice interview here.

Introducing "Book Ideas" blog

2010-01-29T12:56:00.003+09:00

Kanto member Birgit Z.S. started in August 2006 with her daughter and is heading the "Book Ideas Community Service" in Fuchu, Western Tokyo, that organizes a free foreign book lending service.

More information here.

Book Ideas at Momijigaoka Bunka Center in Fuchu

Members assisting other foreigners in need

2010-01-29T09:15:00.011+09:00

Kanto Member Emily Homma has been assisting Filipino nurses and caregivers who came to Japan under the Economic Partnership Agreement of Japan (EPA). She helped them with Japanese language support, clothing donations (Japan is much colder than The Philippines) and others.

You may have heard of this program through local news. Having seen with her own eyes the situation from the nurses' side, Emily wishes to let people in Japan and overseas know their truth and their feelings.

You can read here what Emily wrote:

"EPA Foreign Nurses and Caregivers Working in Japan Urgently Need Help

The Economic Partnership Agreement of Japan (EPA) with other countries, especially with the Philippines (JPEPA), has placed many Filipino nurses and caregivers working in Japan in a miserable situation where they are subjected to unfair labor practices, extreme pressure to study kanji, and poor salaries.

When they arrived in Japan in May 2009, the Filipino nurses and caregivers were glad to be finally given the opportunity to serve Japanese society as hospital workers. However, after only six months of Nihongo study and three months of hospital work in hospital, the Filipino nurses along with their Indonesian counterparts have been suffering from various hardships not only from unfair work policies, low salaries, and local workers’ rejection but also from strong pressure to master medical-nursing kanji and the Japan nursing system. It is a system that, unfortunately for the foreign workers, only those with high level-Grade 12 Japanese training or nursing graduates could understand.

Specifically, the Filipino nurses find themselves in the following extremely frustrating situations that leave them no choice but contemplate leaving Japan soon:

1. Japan puts the Filipino nurses and caregivers in a cheap labor trap, requiring them to pass the Licensure examinations within three years although they are given only six months of formal Basic Nihongo study and occasional group reviews. The Japanese government and the Japan Nurses Association (JNA) insist that foreign nurses take the examination in Japanese without furigana phonetic guides for the kanji characters. Yet, the nurses are required to pass the licensure examination to get promoted to fulltime nurse positions and acquire the privilege to bring their dependents to Japan. Considering that medical kanji is extremely difficult even to their Nihongo teachers in Japan, this highly restrictive stance of the government and the JNA not only reflects a serious barrier to foreign nurses from getting integrated into the local workforce but also a clear intent to use or exploit the foreign nurses for three years on a temporary basis just like any expendable commodity.

2. The salary and benefits for these foreign workers—a gross total of only 120,000-200,000 yen—are not enough to sustain a decent and respectable life in Japan. With majority of the health workers receiving only a net pay of about 60,000 yen after deductions, they have to resort to extraordinary remedies just to meet all of their living expenses in Japan: house rent, electricity, gas supply, Internet connection, cellular phone bills, and transport expenses. This puts them on a starvation situation and makes them unable to send a substantial amount of money to their respective dependents in their homelands. Indeed, some hospital administrators in Japan make local Japanese health workers work on a 7.5-hours-per-day basis to make them remain part-timers receiving an hourly rate of only 900 yen, but applying the same policy to foreign workers with no relatives in Japan to help them meet the cost of living utterly abuses the foreign health workers’ rights, disrespects their experience and profession, and degrades their worth as health workers. For this reason, the Japan International Corporation of Welfare Services (JICWELS) must be prevailed upon to choose only hospitals that can afford to offer good wage packages when hiring foreign health workers.

3. Foreign nurses in Japan are subjected to undue comparison and unfair competition with local workers, fostering great insecurity on the former. There are strong indications that the presence of foreign workers in Japan hospitals is perceived as a threat to local workers’ employment status or hopes for salary improvement. This breeds disrespect and scorn towards the foreign workers and fosters an unfriendly atmosphere in many work settings. As a result, the foreign nurses are finding it extremely difficult to cope with their new environment, making it a big question if they could really fit in and be accepted as workers in Japan under an atmosphere of mutual understanding and cooperation.

4. Japan’s nursing system, being far different from those of the homelands of the foreign nurses working in Japan, makes it extremely difficult for the foreign nurses to adjust and cope. The experience and education of foreign nurses working in Japanare comparable and largely attuned to the culture and job expectations of Western countries. They are therefore finding it difficult to adjust to the kind of assistant nurse work and nursing aide tasks expected from them in Japan. Compounding the problem is that it was not made clear to them before hiring what specific job functions they are expected to perform, a situation made worse by the language gap and the inadequacy of the foreign workers in understanding Nihongo. Thus, even if some of the foreign nurses have already attained a certain level of Nihongo, there is a crying need for Japanese-language nursing books, training materials, and exam reviewers to be translated into English and explained in English.

5. There is no existing training program or orientation for foreign nurses on the Japan nursing system before they assume their jobs. Due to the absence of this training or orientation, foreign nurses are frequently reprimanded and ridiculed by their local workmates when they are unable to perform according to the Japanese system. For their part, hospital administrators just rely on the suggestions and complaints aired by the foreign workers, and many of those suggestions and complaints are simply ignored. There is clearly a need for immersion and retraining of foreign nurses so they can meet the work and performance standards of the hospitals of their host country.

6. The Japanese work ethics and work attitudes differ greatly from those of foreign nurses. To foreign workers, rushing and scurrying at work reflects inefficiency and unpreparedness, but to the Japanese, to do this shows one’s dedication and excellent performance. For the leaders of local workers, bullying and humiliating a trainee nurse is part of the training, and the trainee nurse is expected to endure this abuse without complaining. But foreign nurses, having been trained in a work culture where respect and professionalism are a must among workmates especially in the presence of patients, often are constrained to express their concerns and suggestions against such bullying and humiliation. However, their doing so is often perceived as en expression of distrust towards the prerogatives of the hospital management, so even the mild criticisms expressed by foreign workers could easily backfire on them.

7. There is hardly any room for advancement or career development for foreign nurses in Japan. In the absence of any program by the Japanese government and its health services sector, the career and promotion opportunities of foreign nurses and other workers are seriously stifled in Japan. Even if they work in Japan for a long time, there is very little hope for them to rise above the position of nursing aides performing the tasks of caregivers and domestic helpers. Indeed, in a country where even the local workforce is deprived of advancement opportunities, the native Japanese workers often tell the foreign nurses: “You are not needed here. You’d better work in countries where you could communicate in English.” It is clear that when the opportunity arises, these foreign nurses would rather leave Japan and work in countries where they are more likely to realize their dreams of growth and professional advancement.

8. There being no labor attaches to represent them in Japan, the foreign nurses are left to fend off for themselves and to fight for their rights on their own. As a general rule, JICWELS always takes the side of oppressive hospitals when foreign nurses complain against questionable employment terms and practices. Its stock answer is often that “they didn’t have any precedent of previous case experiences” and that “everything the hospital says is final.” Consequently, no transfer ever takes place when a nurse requests for placement to a better and fairer hospital. The foreign workers, already burnt out at work, therefore often drive themselves to exhaustion in fighting for their own rights in hospitals with an uncaring administration or management.

Considering these very serious problems besetting Filipino nurses and other health workers in Japan, it is respectfully proposed that the JICWELS and the Philippines, particularly the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), should immediately and carefully examine the flaws in the hiring and deployment of the first batch of Filipino nurses and other workers to Japan. This needs to be done before the second batch is allowed to come to Japanin May 2010. Both Japan and the Philippines must sit down together in a spirit of amity and cooperation to forcefully and meaningfully address the working conditions of Filipino nurses and other health professionals in Japan, an increasing number of whom have been suffering from extremely low pay and inadequate benefits, work displacement, mental stress, and utter frustration in their jobs.

Action must be taken now before it is too late.

Sincerely yours,

Emily Homma, Saitama, Japan"

Introducing Suzanne Kamata, writer

2010-01-29T08:14:00.006+09:00

Kansai member Suzanne Kamata is a talented writer that is being recognized not only in Japan, but also worldwide. Her books are available on Amazon (some of them also as Kindle books).

Her latest book Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering (Wyatt-MacKenzie Press, 2009) was named to The Japan Times' best books of 2009 list!

Suzanne earlier works include Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008). She was also the Editor of Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs (Beacon Press, May 2008) and The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan (Stone Bridge Press, 1997)

You can follow Suzanne on her blog, where she write about motherhood, writing, and disability issues as a foreign wife in Japan.

Writing for "Being a Broad" Magazine

2010-01-23T07:29:00.005+09:00

Several of our members have been writing for or featured in Being a Broad Magazine, a magazine for and about foreign women living in Japan, created by Caroline Pover. It is a part of the "Being a Broad" network that includes "Being a Broad Book".

AFWJ Kanto member and writer Louise George Kittaka wrote an article in the January 2010 edition of Being a Broad Magazine (p.13). You can read it online here or here (older editions also available).

PS: Caroline Pover has recently written a book, "Guide to International Schools in Japan". More information on its site.

Introducing "Destination OSAKA" blog

2009-11-02T13:49:00.002+09:00

Kansai member Janelle McN. is writing a blog about life in Osaka/Kansai: Destination OSAKA.

Enjoy !

Introducing "Crafty Tokyo Mama" online shop

2009-10-21T14:58:00.003+09:00

From Kansai member Janine Adachi:

When I was required to sew various bags for my daughter's preschool life, I rediscovered my love of bags. Growing up, I collected paper bags and had a nice collection numbering over 300 at one time, so I guess it comes as no surprise that now my hobby is making and selling compact eco bags.

I absolutely love Japanese fabrics and designs and they lend themselves nicely to eco bags. Why carry a plain bag advertising some store or company you don't even know when you can be unique with an eco bag that matches your personality and interests?

Please feel free to drop by and peruse my shop anytime.

CraftyTokyoMama.etsy.com

Introducing "GFF"

2009-10-20T17:15:00.003+09:00

From C.C., a Kanto member:

Green Future Foundation (GFF) is an environmental NGO/PR office.

Locating in Nagareyama City, Chiba Prefecture promotes community volunteerism, individual environmental responsibility, environmental events, safety-conscious products, and humanitarian efforts.

There is no requirement for membership fee, only a donation of 3,000 yen per year for printing materials and stationery supplies. The goal is to use environmental action as the catalyst for foreigners and Japanese to find common bond to work together, while accepting our cultural differences.

G.F.F wants you to take action to promote the idea of being “green” for the future of our children, for your healthy homes and a healthy long life.

Please visit our homepage at:
http://greenff.wordpress.com/

Introducing "Annerose's classroom"

2009-10-20T17:03:00.006+09:00

Tohoku member Annerose Matsushita-Bader (who is also volunteering as AFWJ co-Journal Editor and Webmaster) recently opened a new classroom in her home in Fukushima. She teaches French, German and selected activities in simple English.

The site is mainly in Japanese, with a few basic information in English, French and German.