Note from Editor: Students are reading Anne Allison’s book Precarious Japan, and sharing their thoughts on how their own future plans are impacted by the instability and insecurity that Allison describes.

Anonymous student post

My future plan is influenced by my parents. My mother likes to work harder than other people and really loves her job. Her job is to sell some cosmetics. It looks very difficult because she come back home late at night every day. However, she looks very happy. She really loves her job and has many great coworkers. She is always supported by them, so she can enjoy it. I think she has an ibasho at her place of work, and I respect her. It is very important to have such good coworkers at one`s job.

On the other hand, my father is bad. I think he does not have such an ibasho because he does not like to connect with old friends. Nobody surrounds him. Nobody can succeed in this precarious society of Japan without friends or coworkers who support other people. I do not respect him.

In my future, I want to connect with many people like my mother because it will be useful for my job. For example, if I had many friends who have other sorts of jobs, I can learn numerous good things from them of which I can make use in my job. It means that I can spread my outlook on job. It may help me and connect to an ibasho.

Then, concretely, I will describe my future. I am really interested in some developing countries in the Middle East. Many countries in the area are not able to maintain peace and order, for example, there are a large number of child soldiers in the area who usually kill people. It is unbelievable for Japanese. I want to go to such dangerous area and do research. Moreover, I want Japanese to know the bad situation of this area. In short, I want to become an international journalist. To achieve this goal, of course I need to study hard, but the research will not be enough if I did it alone. In other words, I will not be able to succeed without someone’s help, so I must have great coworkers who can help me. My ibasho will be formed by my coworkers.

In conclusion, I can say that an ibasho will not be formed by just myself. I need a lot of support from other people, so I will not forget my friends who I made since I was a child. It will help me at many difficult situations in the future.