flâneur

A Glance at Hyperculture - by Peter Hourdequin

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When I first came to Japan more than twenty years ago, I worked at a small English conversation school run by a fervently Christian Japanese couple. The husband had retired early from work at a large global corporation and his wife had become his new boss. As far as I could tell, his role in the family business was mostly to take orders from her, run errands, and teach newbie teachers to drive in Japan (on international licenses)1. As the couple’s faith clearly played a strong role in their lives, I think they liked to hire teachers who were also overtly and passionately Christian. I, however, was not. Though I grew up Catholic and then ended up at a Lutheran-affiliated school for college, I was not religious at the time. But one day, the aforementioned husband in the family business I worked for started a conversation with me while we were driving somewhere together: “What is most important to you in life?” he asked, apropos of absolutely nothing. For a few moments I had no idea how t

When I first came to Japan more than twenty years ago, I worked at a small English conversation school run by a fervently Christian Japanese couple. The husband had retired early from work at a large global corporation and his wife had become his new boss. As far as I could tell, his role in the family business was mostly to take orders from her, run errands, and teach newbie teachers to drive in Japan (on international licenses)1. As the couple’s faith clearly played a strong role in their lives, I think they liked to hire teachers who were also overtly and passionately Christian. I,…

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