W hat is "The Panic"?
It's that knee-knocking fear some Japanese people get in the presence of a foreigner. Estimates from the 2005 Census show that there are at about 2.5 million of us gaijin running around the place, so chances are your average Japanese person has run into at least a couple in their lifetime.
Symptoms of "The Panic" include:
• eyes opening very wide
• not being able to focus on the person causing "The Panic"
• "flight" response
• stuttering
• shaky hands
• calling for back-up
• selective hearing loss
Having lived here for quite some time now, I am very attuned to "The Panic". I used to be quite patient about it - until I reached a certain level of fluency in the Japanese language. Now it just irritates me to hell, because it is not a communication issue it's just stupid irrational fear. Plus I know that any situation involving someone struck with "The Panic", will be drawn out to at least 3 times longer than necessary, and rarely be resolved.
Now if it is somewhere like shop or restaurant you can usually just brush it off and perhaps decide never to go in there again. But when it's something important — say immigration or taxation — it's really important that you get the right answers so you don't bugger things up.
I don't expect preferential treatment by the way. It's not like I roll up wrapped in my country of origin and wearing an akubra hat adorned with discarded wine corks, speaking loudly in a twanging Australian accent. I just expect the person in question to listen to me, just like they did the person in front of me, and how they will to the person behind.
So if you are wondering what set off this spiel, today I went to submit my taxes. I've been doing this yearly chore by myself for quite a few years, but every year there are some subtle changes, so I like to have the forms and my calculations double-checked by one of the experts. In previous years in Hiratsuka — to my surprise and delight — when I went to the tax office a nice little man would cheerily grab me and take me to a quiet room, in which there were a few chairs to sit and wait, and a row of tables where 3 or 4 people would calmly sit down with you and check through your forms.
They only spoke Japanese, but it didn't matter as they were patient with almost everyone regardless of language. All the forms would be filled in correctly and we would happily exit the room and submit them. There was no panic, and usually no mistakes. For the native Japanese speakers there was a similar set up, although the room was much larger. It was busy, but not manic.
However, they changed venues this year. The Hiratsuka place was a circus.
I waltz in armed with 26 million pieces of paper all categorized just in case, and a myriad of calculations. As I'm self-employed, my taxes are a little more complicated than most, but not dramatically so. The English instructions the tax office sent out with my forms were written by someone who majored in Swahili and doesn't own any spellchecking software, so I had a couple of questions regarding things I wasn't too clear about.
The first counter you go to is a buffer to be directed from. With a big smile on my face I go up to the man there and explain in polite Japanese that I have a couple of questions about one of the forms, so where shall I go?
Crap. He is struck by "The Panic". The first thing he asks (to the woman behind me) is "Is this foreign woman with you?" She looks at me and at him and says "Um.. nope". Counter man goes to Level 2 Panic. He is dealing with a free-ranging gaijin now. He mumbles at me "What country are you from?" Which throws me into confusion - what the hell does it matter? We all gotta fill in the same forms. To humour him I say "Australia", which prompts him to gesticulate and shout wildly for a stack of forms and English instructions to a little man zipping behind towers of paper.
"No, no, no" I exclaim reaching into my bag and waving around the forms I already have. "I have the forms, I just need to ask some questions!" He insists I take the extra forms (which are the wrong bloody ones ANYWAY) and then another man with a big pink foam hand on a stick (yes it has all gotten surreal at this point) waves at me from across the other side of the hall. I go over to him and he tells me to sit down at this desk. The desk is in a sea of other desks, in which frustrated people are sitting and sweating over numbers and columns.
I start having flashbacks to my final exams at high school.
I ditch the extra useless papers and get my own correct ones out. After I've been sitting there for 5 minutes counting the number of hairs the man at the desk in front of me has managed to include in a comb-over, someone comes along to ask me what I need and then runs off to find someone else to answer my question.
He has decided I don't need an English speaking assistant so he just grabs the nearest "helper". New helper gets "The Panic". I ask one of my questions which concerns an English form which has been sent to me - but is not a form I am allowed to submit officially. It says on the form that I need an OCR form (which means nothing to me — or it appears to the person who write the instructions).
Panic Helper Man grabs the other dude I originally spoke to and they hold a small conference about it. Panic Helper Man escapes and the other dude goes through all my papers. Then he runs away and comes back with a new type of form. Ah OK, no wonder I was confused. This form was missing from my orginal package which was sent out (as for the Optical Card Reading function I still have no clue as to how this is supposed to work).
So now I have this extra form and some vague instructions in both English and Japanese. I signal for assistance and the only person available is Panic Helper Man. He knows he can't avoid me, so he comes over.
"You write this number here!" he says. I reply "That I understand that, my question is what does this category mean - could you please give me some examples." He points to the instruction paper in English. "Here", he says. To which I reply "Yes I know which it is but this does not make sense. Could you please give me some examples to explain what it means." He grabs the papers and circles the corresponding numbers "You write this category here!" he shouts.
Admittedly I'm pretty cranky at this point myself. I've been shuffled around, messed with, ignored, and panicked at. Filing tax forms is stressful under the best circumstances, let alone with this kinda crap going on. Panic Helper Man runs off again, and I sit there waiting for someone else to come over and answer my question. No one does. So feeling myself about to do something that really would give them justification for "The Panic", I bolt.
And just hope that it will be better when I go back in there with the same question tomorrow.
