Memo: English Teachers in Japan

Here is my cultural memo to those folks teaching English in Japan...I know, I know, you are really hip to the history and culture of Japan, and you don't need some guy named Mr. Kato to tell you what to do, but just please listen up for a second.

Until you've read the novel "Silence" by the Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo, then you don't know much about Japan. To understand Japan, you should understand what happened when Christianity began to get a foot hold in feudal Japan.

Now I know, you're a free-spirited, Zen-loving, (maybe even an athiest too) who doesn't judge the world or do an imposing - and becasue of your progressive outlook, you might even think that anything Christian or Catholic is simply some theological manifestation of "The Man" that always cut into your fun....but you'd be wrong to think so.