Ethics

WAS THAT….UM…WRONG?
JET Alums Share Some of Their Ethically Challenged Moments

(Fall 2005 Issue)

In the ruins of Sunpu-jo, in the park within what remains of the city walls of the long-gone castle, not too far from Shizuoka-ken’s Ken-cho prefectural government offices, but inside the park, is the place where at night, so-inclined men can meet for outdoor, consensual sex, and many, many a night by the castle walls, I gave and received nice, dreamy, interracial, sweet oral sex with fine,regular, normal, sometimes even quite attractive Japanese men.

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I used to have my girlfriend buy two nyuujyouken, which are platform tickets, and meet me at my stop. I would buy a nyuujyouken when
I boarded, for about 180 yen. The shinkansen trip was about 45 minutes. I would spend a great deal of time in the bathroom. If a
conductor found me, I would have to pay the full price (5,000 yen), but that would rarely happen. When I met my girlfriend, I could exit
the station for a mere 180 yen with the nyuujyouken she purchased. Nagoya to Kyoto in 45 minutes: 360 yen.

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My cousin was visiting from America and wanted to experience Asian loving at a reasonable price. As appalling as this may sound, my
cousin had made the trip all the way to Japan, and I couldn’t disappoint him. I had never done anything like this. At the door, I told the
bouncer that only my cousin would require services, but he said I couldn’t enter without paying. I also learned that the rates for
Japanese and gaijin were different. The Japanese fee was for a shorter time and less expensive, with the option to extend the time,
whereas the gaijin fee was more expensive for a longer time, with no option to extend the “session.” We paid about 10,000 yen each
and gained entrance. I found myself in a booth with a lovely lady from Kobe in a Budweiser body suit. We just talked. I swear it. My
cousin, on the other hand (and I emphasize the word hand), did more than talk.

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I was on JET during the World Cup 2002 tournament. A friend of mine had just broken up with his girlfriend and therefore had an extra
ticket for the quarterfinal game between Brazil and England. His plan was to scalp the extra ticket at the game but injured his foot the
night before. He decided that he couldn’t effectively run away from security if he was caught scalping the ticket and so decided to sell
it to me for face value. The next morning, I had to tell my school that I only had time to teach the first period class, that I had
unexpectedly gotten a ticket to the Quarter Final game and would have to catch a train to Shizuoka. Needless to say this didn’t go over
very well with my fellow English teachers or the Kocho-sensei, all of whom gave me the silent treatment. Upon my next visit to that
school, one of the classes had prepared a series of essays saying how disappointed and upset they were at my decision. That class’
English teacher was no doubt behind the assignment.

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The worst moral misstep I ever had happened in Japan. I had a bit much to drink at my local watering hole and the bartender who I
knew from my jaunts out offered to drive me home. He drove me home and asked if he could come in for a drink. He came in and we
proceeded to have a drink and smoke some marijuana that a friend had given me. Then much to my surprise (though I suppose I
shouldn’t have been very surprised considering the circumstances) he leaned in for a kiss. I wasn’t really interested and I knew that
he was engaged, but I decided to follow through since my major was Japanese culture and I figured sex was a part of the culture… it
was all in the name of education.

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My father came to visit me and he brought me a JR Pass voucher. Yes, the letter of the law is that you’re supposed to have a tourist visa
to exchange it for the JR Pass, but I discovered back when I was a college student on a student visa that as long as you have people
there visiting you, all you have to do is find a sympathetic person at a JR office who is willing to change them both. So I traveled around
with my dad on my own pass with my name on it. It was a one week pass that expired the day that he left to go back to the US. I was
supposed to fly out of Tokyo the following day to visit a friend in Singapore and I would really rather’ve had the cash to spend in
Singapore than give it to JR.

Backing up a bit… when I first arrived in Japan for JET, I invested in a scanner and a really good (at that time) ink-jet printer. I had
scanned in a lot of photos to bring with me for jikoshokai and such, and I had a digital camera. I wanted to be able to print out my
pictures 8 x 10 size whenever I wanted for a lesson.

A JR unlimited-use pass, for those who have never seen one, is printed on stiff, almost chipboard paper. It’s about the size of a passport
and folds like a passport. The outside has a picture of Mt. Fuji on the front with the JR logo, and the back has a list of rules of use (This
pass can only be used by the person whose name appears on the inside, etc.) The JR employee writes, by hand the name and the
passport number of the person who is using the pass, then stamps the start date and expiration date with a stamp that’s basically like
the ones that the librarian uses to stamp the due date of your book. There are 7-day and 14-day unlimited-travel passes that can be
used on any JR line in the country including JR busses and ferries and the Shinkansen.

I stared at the pass for a long time trying to figure out if I could do it. All I needed to do was change the last two numbers of the
expiration date on the pass and I could use it to go to Narita and to come back again. I scanned in the inside face of the pass and
opened it up with PhotoShop (which I should mention was a pirated version that I got from a college boyfriend who had been a
computer science major). I made a little square on a blank section of the pass that didn’t have anything written on it, just the “JR” logo
background and hit “copy”, then I clicked on the expiration date of the pass and hit “paste”. I repeated a few times until I had it
covered. Then I picked a font, color and size that most closely matched the stamp and typed in a new date. Voila! I printed it out, cut
around it, put a light dose of glue on the edges and pasted it into the original pass. Surely somebody who worked at JR in Tokyo and
exchanged these passes on a regular basis would know that it was fake, but my hunch was that the JR shain with barely a high school
diploma working in my soto inaka machi wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. After all, they just glance at it and your foreign face as
you breeze through the turnstile and then you sit jiyuu seki anyway. I had no backup plan if I got caught. No elaborate excuse. Not a
smart decision in retrospect.

But it worked. The first time I was terrified, but the guy barely glanced at it just as I had expected. My printer and scanner paid for
themselves with that first trip to Tokyo and back. Each time got easier, and I got braver. I changed start dates and expiration dates to fit
my travel dates, and started hooking my friends up. All they had to do was have a pass, it didn’t even have to be theirs. I could copy and
paste over the name and passport number and they could write in their own. When we were sent anywhere at the office’s expense, I
would pocket the travel money and go on my free ticket. I hardly did any travel overseas during JET, but I did see many little nooks and
crannies of Japan that most of my fellow JETs didn’t because it’s cheaper to travel to Thailand than it is to go to Hokkaido.

Word got around about how lax the JR guys were. A friend of mine used a pass of his that had expired months ago and didn’t even try to
change the date. He just walked on and off the train, no questions asked. I was a bit humbled when I heard this, but not so much that I
was willing to try it myself.

Regrets? None. JR is not hurting for cash. I don’t feel bad about taking (er…stealing) a few thousand dollars of travel from them. Their
rates are ridiculous anyway. I guess this means I lack scruples, but mostly I’m just pleased with myself that I was able to pull it off for
so long. If anything, I owe Adobe Photoshop a cut, or at least a free trip on the Shinkansen.

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I was driving back from dropping a friend off when I saw a bright flash. About a week later, I received a post card from the police
department with a picture of me driving my car, information about how fast I was driving (too fast) and instructions to come to the
police station. I had never even heard of photo enforcement. It just so happened my three-year tenure on JET was coming to a close,
and so I skipped out of the country. Another car related incident: My shya-ken ran out in May, but I kept driving my car until late July.

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I was hitchhiking with my friend, we were in Kyushu, right by the bridge to Honshu, in this little park overlooking the water and, more
importantly, the expressway. We could see it, but we had no idea how to get ourselves onto the expressway so we could hitchhike
back home. In the park we saw a young couple. I strategized in my head and then suggested that we innocently ask the young couple
if they know how to get to the expressway. Of course they won’t know, but they won’t want to tell us “no” and they’ll give us a ride to
wherever it is we need to go. Not only did they naively fall into my trap, and not only did it turn out to be a first date for them, and not
only did they drive us a half hour to a tollbooth plaza and give us their whole Mapple book, but they came back ten minutes after
dropping us off because they realized they’d taken us to the wrong tollbooth plaza. So of course they drove us another half hour to a
different tollbooth plaza. I felt bad, but I was still proud that my strategy worked. And in another situation a year later, when I knew I
had a long walk ahead of me back to a friend’s place from a convenience store, I struck again. I just went up to someone coming out of
the store, put on my best troubled face, and asked them if they knew how to get to nani-nani address. They sucked their teeth for a
moment, cocked their head… and then – surprise, surprise – offered to drive me.

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I was driving back from the city to my apato in the suburb, and found myself in the slow lane (the left lane), and, having lost patience,
abruptly changed lanes into the fast lane (the right lane). The driver of a large, white, and relatively old Cadillac (an odd sight in
Japan), who probably had to step on his brake when changed lanes, was furious. He started flashing his lights and coming within
inches of my bumper as we traveled about 60 miles per hour. Eventually, he switched over to the left lane (the slow lane) where there
were no cars now, and came even with me. He swerved and beeped his horn in this manifestation of Japanese road rage. I had a
strange urge to get away, and sped up to about 90 or 100, and even passed someone using the shoulder. The angry man stayed right
on my tail. Finally, we came to my exit, an off ramp. I pretended that I was going to go straight on the main highway, and then at the last
second, just before hitting cones in the middle between the ramp and the road, waved to my nemesis, who was on my left, and tugged
the wheel to the right…. I thought I had lost him, but he shockingly switched into the right lane and then to the ramp, crushing the
cones to get to the exit road. The ramp turned into a road with one lane in each direction, and the man passed me on my right, in the
oncoming lane, and forced me to stop in the middle of the road by cutting me off. He got out of his car and started walking towards me,
shaking his fists. He looked to be about 65. I immediately backed up, turned around, and went the other way, finding my way back to the
main road.