My week: excluded, angry and sad

I am definitely not a part of our research group. I am an outsider, because I am not Japanese, and I am uh,oh, a woman. Foreigner and female, it is double bad.

I mean, I am not considered to be one of them. For example I am not notified of the ceremonies or conferences that they all attend. Let me walk you through my week.

Monday was very quiet and I was the only person in our lab to be there, no one else appeared at work. On Tuesday it was the graduation ceremony for the graduate students. Even the Engineering Postdoc was wearing the suit - it must have been a big occasion, as he was wearing a white shirt and a vest and looked like a member of Sicilian Mafia.

They all descended upon the office in suits at one moment, and disappeared in another. The Engineering Postdoc later came alone to the office and told me that the ceremony is now over. I asked what ceremony and he explained to me about the graduation. After it was over.

I asked if it is why he is wearing a suit today. He told me that yes, he had to attend because he is the university employee. I guess this is a cultural expectation, and I was supposed to be there as well, as the employee of our institution? So I was either supposed to read the Japanese writing on our wall calendar or read people’s minds about this.

No one bothered to tell me that Tuesday is a big day, that we are all supposed to wear smart clothes and that everyone is supposed to attend the ceremony. I was in the dark about it and did not go, neither was I wearing smart clothes and felt quite out of place.

I told the postdoc that I did not know about the ceremony, as there was no one in the lab on Monday. "Oh," he said, "we were all at the conference." And he gave me the book of abstracts. In English. It was an international symposium on the topic we are all researching here, so of course it was relevant to me too. They had gone with the professor to the conference and I was not even notified that there was a conference, neither was I asked whether I am interested to go with them. Neither was I invited nor given a choice of whether to go or not.

From the book of abstract I can see that the postdoc was not presenting anything, so he went there to listen to lectures and to network, but I was not given such an opportunity. I was raging. Why was I excluded? Because I should sit in the lab and produce results first? (This is what Big Old Boss told me previously, "you can go to conferences to present results"). The Engineering Postdoc was not presenting anything. How I cannot go and he can? What sort of favouritism is that? When I first read a story of discriminations of female researchers in Japanese academia I thought it must be a rare case and surely it would not happen to me with the Westernised Boss that I would work with.

It does not feel just, but I should not expect justice. In the book about Kata I am now reading I found out that fairness, which is a value that is believed in by Western managers, is not something of a value to Japanese bosses.

On Wednesday I skipped the occasion to eat lunch with the Big Old Boss and the Postdoc, as it was the only day this week that I could meet the English Teacher for a friendly chat. It must have been a mistake, since BOB has not spoken to me since.

So the week went on in its regular style, I had no conversations with anyone apart from Good Mornings and Good Byes, and on Thursday I was on my own in the lab (most of the time), when the Big Old Boss came to show our lab/building to a Japanese female (dressed in a dark suit, maybe she was a scientist?). He did not come to the office, I have seen them in one of the rooms when I was walking from the office to the lab for a few moments. He did not care to introduce her to me. I have only got a chance to slightly bow/nod to her when they were leaving the building. Very weird.

On Friday it was an Official Holiday, yet I went to work. I wanted to work on my own things, a side project (I am "not allowed" to work on side projects without explicit permission from the Big Old Boss). I ended up just tidying my computer files, reading some papers and enjoying the peace and quiet.

Suddenly, one moment in the afternoon the whole group descended on the building. The Big Old Boss came too and they were moving some equipment in, which they brought from another lab 40km away, where the previous students from our group worked before our building was built last year.

After the graduations of the six graduate students our group now comprises of two Postdocs (Engineering and Talented) and two Master students (Happy Puppy is now one, and the second one is a slacker I never talked about, as he was in the lab maybe for 3-5 days in the last five months).

None of them came to the office where I worked to say hallo. Not even the Happy Puppy who works with me. As if they all considered me a leper. And I know that they do this for each other, they are very sociable animals and always hang out together. BOB came for one second, but only to wash his hands.

It is a strange feeling to be so completely ignored and I do not know what to make of it. It is considered abroad that Japanese people are so polite, and their kata also obliges them to be polite (unless they have no respect for the other person) so why are they so blatantly ignoring me?

I feel very lonely at work and I do not think I can go on like this for much longer. I feel lonely in life in general, as I do not have many friends here, or any extracurricular activities. That’s why I dream of meeting people whose blogs I read, this must be my brain’s replacement to that real relationships that do not exist in my real life.

I also feel like my brain is slowly dying. I have very little intellectual stimulation here and no scientific discussion on the topics I am working on. I was used to regular seminar series in the previous departments I worked at, as there were always opportunities to listen to talks and lectures about something new. Here we do not have group meetings, we do not have journal clubs and my labmates do not talk about science with me, actually they do not talk to me at all.

I so want to get out of here. It is prison. They only keep me for my expertise, because they have attempted to do the thing they brought me here to do for the last three years (and with three students working on it) with limited success. After I am done and I establish the system that they need, after I build that rocket to fly to the Moon that they need, they will no longer need me and my contract will be finished.

How stupid was I to come here.