This is completely unrelated to this week’s article, but I just wanted to say that on my way to work today a tumbleweed rolled across the street no more than 10 inches from my bike…a fucking tumbleweed.

And now on to the entry as planned:

There are many valuable lessons to be learned in Japan. In fact, that is the primary focus of this website…to put on display the difficult lessons that I have learned so that you may be spared when you come to live in the Japanese countryside as a 22 year old, luck–impaired, half–Japanese English teacher from Vermont…whenever that may be. This week’s lesson has to do with the dichotomy of privacy vs. community and the Western vs. Japanese view on these concepts.

In America, it is absolutely essential to lock your doors. Why? Because your own neighbor would probably break in, kill your dog, and rummage around your sock drawer if he knew there was something worth stealing in your house. This is the beauty of America, a community based on spoken and unspoken social contracts and the security of locked doors. Now that I have stopped singing the national anthem while cutting myself, I will tell you that it is also absolutely essential to lock your doors in Japan. Why? Because no one else does.