Arbitrary Decisions and an August 5, 1987 letter

Much of what Tito encountered while working in Japan pointed to irrational and arbitrary decision-making and it was often annoying. One of the earliest frustrations was his superiors refusal to disclose the address at which he'd be staying once he completed his training. This not only left me with no place to send my correspondence to him, but also meant his parents couldn't mail his trailing possessions for about two weeks. Since they were sending them seamail and he was only going to stay for a year, that meant he would be receiving them after an even more significant chunk of his time there had passed than necessary.

Over time, it became clear that what seemed arbitrary was less that and more about holding on to flexibility until the very last second. It was possible that they had had experiences with teachers who flaked out during or after training and they didn't want to give out the address until they were sure Tito was actually going to be at the school. If he flew the coop and his mail started arriving there, it could have represented a complication.

It was also possible that they wanted to keep the possibility open for reassigning Tito to a different school or putting a different teacher in that apartment if they didn't like his performance during training or simply changed their minds. Tito was the first teacher at a new branch of the school and for most of his year in Japan, he was the only native English speaking teacher there. After Tito completed his contract with AMVIC, the next person who moved into that apartment worked at a branch far away from Kita-Senju so they clearly weren't concerned with placing teachers near the branches they were working at.

In this letter, Tito updated me on how things were going, and how hard it was to extract even the simplest information from the Japanese people representing his school.