American Lawyer in a Japanese Law Office

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 07:19:02 GMT

February 16.

Ikebukuro. Tokyu Hands. Muji. Energy Drinks. Chinese Restaurant.

I moved from Higashi-Kanda to Kita-Ikebukuro at the same time I quit the law office. Higashi-Kanda has few grocery stores and video stores, since it's really a business center. Ikebukuro, at least where I am, has lots of stores for ordinary consumers. Cheap stuff, like recycle shops (the Japanese term), selling used household appliances and furniture.

I bought some expensive curtains for my apartment at Tokyu Hands, near Ikebukuro station. Tokyu Hands has everything for the do-it-yourselfer, from sheets of steel to tools to adhesive papers that look like marble. I was tempted to turn my whole apartment into some mysterious stone chamber using this stuff. If only I did not have other things to do...

I bought some things at Muji (Mujiryushi Ryouhin, that is) and was watching the young clerks. Is it a dress code, perhaps? They all seemed dressed in these drab khaki and white clothes, cotton, not particularly tight. But they were all college-age, so they would probably look good in practically anything. <sigh>

Taurine addicts! Unite!

Law school (not to mention law office work) gave me an appreciation of energy drinks, especially drinks containing Taurine. I had been drinking "Regain J" for a while, but one day couldn't find any at my local convenience store. I looked at the other energy drinks, including the ones aimed at women, like "Chocola BB". They all seemed to have the same basic ingredients: 1000 mg of Taurine, 50 mg of anyhdrous caffeine, and then 20 mg of nicotine (some sort of nicotine, not quite sure what). These must be government prescribed limits. Of course, Regain J has 1500 mg of Taurine.

There is a cheap Chinese restaurant about five minutes walk from my house. I don't think any Chinese people work there, but they try to overwhelm you with quantity, and the quality is not bad, (not that I know much about flavor; I tend to eat things I can either fix in five minutes or buy at convenience stores). Anyway, this restaurant is apparently a neighborhood fixture, where people are bringing in babies to see their grandparents and aunts and uncles. Cooking and babies. There are lots of sub-communities in the USA where everything seems to revolve around cooking and babies, but these communities probably do not produce a lot of lawyers who then proceed to leave the community for extended periods. Anyway, it's very different from the family/community I am from. Naturally, I find it suspicious--somehow it reminds me of mafia movies.

Wed, 31 Dec 2003 04:21:24 GMT

December 31, 2003. The year has come to an end. I now have slightly more than a year of international law office experience and, I guess, a year of working in a real Japanese environment. It's enough, at least for now. I need a break, and my replacement--or, I guess, one of my replacements (since the firm may be hiring both a lawyer and a translator to replace me) is already in place and doing very well. For the time being, I will be teaching a comparative law class at Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin (http://www.iec-nichibei.or.jp/). I am going to try using a different website, so you may find more information at (http://www.go2lawschool.com) in the future. I'm still working on this page, so as of today there may not be much. By the way, I want to thank all the people who left me notes and messages in the comments. I have met some extraordinary people through this blog. I expect to come back a bit more often than I have in the last six months, but we'll just have to see how it goes. It's been a tough year. Happy 2004!

Matthew Grieder

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 14:45:09 GMT

June 11. Life is better with an accent

One of my friends in college said that he could imagine a scene that goes like this: an attractive woman sits down beside him and hands him a pistol. She says, in a thick French accent, "I want you to keel zee barteendaire." My friend is so hypnotized by her beauty, and, even more, by her accent, that he robotically kills the bartender and of course ruins his life for nothing.

Silly story, but my point is that Americans are used to accents and fascinated by them. And I suspect that all people find accents interesting.

The nice thing about living in a foreign country, of course, is that you become exotic. That is, you experience the ordinary life in the foreign country as exotic, and the people in the country experience you as exotic. It's a big exotic festival!

The great thing is that, for those who find the exotic interesting, you can say really ordinary things and get an extraordinary reaction. Some people would argue that this is the experience of a "white guy in Japan", but I've been treated as exotic even in my own country...it's all circumstances, and individual tastes...but....it's nice to be able to walk into a bar and tell someone to kill the bartender, if you get my meaning.

Sat, 24 May 2003 01:14:55 GMT

May 24. Learning Japanese (2). What is "Advanced" Japanese Proficiency?

I'll be the first to admit that there is a huge gap between the language ability of a native Japanese speaker and the "advanced" Japanese ability I am so proud of. Because of my work, I know a lot of words that the ordinary Japanese man-in-the-street doesn't know, but at the same time, I didn't learn Japanese babytalk or all the jokes and code words that you learn as you go through elementary school, junior high school, high school ... and lacking that context, I both miss a lot and am unable to convey certain nuances, and I feel that weakness in my expressive powers quite keenly. There are good things about the limitations, though, and I'll put those in another post.

Anyway, I consider someone a beginner in Japanese if they have a vocabulary of less than a thousand words, know a hundred or so kanji, and are still wrestling with verb tenses and positive and negative forms.

Intermediate goes from Japanese Proficiency Test Level 2 to Level 1. At this point, the student knows more than 2,000 words, has no trouble with verb tenses or negative forms, and has a reading knowledge of more than 1,000 kanji. They can read the TV program listings and all their utility bills, buy things in stores, order pizza, and generally get around in Japan.

Advanced Japanese. The ultimate test is simply reading and understanding newspapers, magazines, and TV news programs meant for adult native speakers. This is SERIOUSLY hard. Think about how old you were before you could watch the news on TV in your own language, or make heads or tails of a Wall Street Journal article. I feel like I have climbed up this mountain to the point where I can see the distant peak, but as I climb I step on a patch of ice and slide back down. I fight my way through contracts and patent documents daily, but the sheer speed of TV news reporting makes it difficult.

Upper Advanced....I think being able to follow and truly appreciate Japanese comedians will probably be about as far as I can go ... Maybe I'll try memorizing some of the routines. I could probably become famous if I pulled this off. I mean, how many native Japanese speakers can do a convincing version of an old Woody Allen or Richard Pryor routine?

Thu, 22 May 2003 09:50:10 GMT

April 21. Learning Japanese.

It occurs to me that lawyers are forced to write fiction because there are so many things they can't talk about at all--absolute confidentiality is part of the job (just as it is part of many jobs). But at some point you are just bursting with the urge to talk, and at that point you you start with "In a place far away, in an imaginary town..."

Oh, wait... anyway, since my ability to talk about specifics begins outside the office door, let's cover something I haven't covered yet, which is learning Japanese.

First, how hard is it? I would say, primarily because of the trainwreck disaster of the written language (which I find fascinating and love to study), Japanese is a hard language. Pronunciation is easy, and day-to-day conversation is probably no harder than English. Throw kanji into the mix and it gets seriously hard--a lot of people give up just because of the kanji.

I tried to learn like a child. That is, from TV, and from people who loved me. Japanese Parents not being available, girlfriends and buddies filled that role. TV is truly an amazing learning tool. I watched a lot of cartoons and kids programs, working my way from Sazae-san to Chibimarukochan, and then to Crayon Shinchan, and Conan Boy Detective. I also have a strange love for Obotchamakun, but he's off the air and probably not likely to be back for a while.

Learning Japanese on dates is a weird approach to life. I remember having some girl just furious at me and I was just sitting there listening to her word choices, thinking "Wow, I would never get this stuff in a textbook! This is so great!"

It took me about six months after first arriving in Japan (back in 1990) to get together enough money that I could pay for lessons. I got a workbook and studied all the time (on top of all the tv viewing). I'm real big on flashcards, so I made hundreds of them. In my second year in Japan I found Heisig's book on Remembering the Kanji and jumped a level in my grasp of kanji. I passed the Japanese Proficiency Test Level 2 (2-Kyuu) around that time.

And I'll tell more in my next post.

Sun, 18 May 2003 11:02:10 GMT

May 18. Studying in Japan. A continuation of the previous post.

I was asked about an internship in a law office in Japan arranged through the University of Hawaii. Alas, as far as I know, no such thing exists. However, I did have an internship with the advertising agency, Dentsu, when I participated in the Santa Clara University's summer program in Tokyo. My other work in a Japanese law office was simply work--not an internship--found through an alumni connection when I was studying in Kyoto (on a Japanese Ministry of Education Scholarship.). Also, during the 18 months I was studying in Kyoto I tagged along with Professor Dan Rosen when he was taking students from the Loyala University summer law program in Kyoto to tour the Japanese Supreme Court building and meet law students at Waseda University. Temple University has a pretty well-known semester in Japan program, too, but I have never even been on their Tokyo campus. At least, not yet.

What I'm trying to say, I guess rather indirectly, is that if you want to STUDY law in Japan, there are at least two summer programs (Loyala and Santa Clara) and one full semester program (Temple) that you can participate in and get US law school credit. Of course, you can also do various programs in other countries, too.

I've known a couple of people who worked in Japanese law offices in various capacities. I even suspect a couple of these lawyers-to-be were working legally illegally. How often do the immigration authorities raid law offices, after all? There are endless variations on this subject...and I look forward to covering them all this year. Let me hear from you!

Sun, 18 May 2003 09:34:15 GMT

I've gotten three questions about finding legal work in Japan. There are two ways to do it. The best overall way is to pass the bar and work in your own country for a couple years (as much as this might seem like torture for people who are missing Japan while in law school). Working in your own country (for me, the USA) gives you credibility with Japanese law firms and with potential future employers when you eventually have had enough of Japan. Of course, I did not do it this way. As soon as the bar was over, I came to Tokyo and started answering ads and faxing and emailing and phoning potential employers. Since I did not know if I had passed the bar at that time, I was not able to say I was a licensed lawyer. I was actually pretty sure I had not passed the bar, so I was looking at legal assistant and legal secretary positions for a while, too. I just wanted to get my foot in the door in Tokyo. I had two Japanese law firms, one in Osaka and one in Tokyo seriously interested in me after two months of really scary searching. As soon as I heard that I passed the bar, the Tokyo firm made me an offer and the Osaka firm asked me to come in for another interview. I was tired of the job hunt, so I just took the offer in Tokyo.

My feeling is that there really is a lot of work here for people willing to do translation, editing, and rewriting, maybe in addition to more standard legal work (and maybe not). It's just very hard to find someone who wants you enough to go through the hassle of hiring a foreigner, sponsoring the visa, and so on. Human beings, in general, distrust strangers, and the more alien (foreign) you are, the more extreme this problem is. On top of this, you have to be not just patient, but relentless, when you go searching for a job in a bad economy. It's tough to get the job, tough to do the job, tough to keep the job. Just accept that, and be flexible, and everything will be fine.

Sun, 18 May 2003 01:40:28 GMT

I joined the legally-inclined weblogs webring. Here is the link:

< ? law blogs # >

Sat, 17 May 2003 13:36:03 GMT

I was looking back at my earlier posts. Man, the phone installation is such a huge hassle. The phone guy came and couldn't get the phone installed. Two weeks later, they are trying again. In the meantime, I'm stuck in my earlier apartment--where the phone for some unearthly reason won't let me use Yahoo Broadband (BB) service. Sure, it hooks up. It pings fine. It just won't give me a webpage in less than five minutes. What is wrong with NTT?

This is very unusual. Usually Japanese phone service is fine--it's just ridiculously expensive.