Foreword

My name is Alyssa Ryan I was born in the town of Toms River in New Jersey. Part of the United States of America. My mother died in childbirth and my father took up the responsibility of raising me alone. I wasn't a miscreant. When I was a teenager I challenged the system a little but who didn't. I mean if you think about it children have next to no rights. Everything about their life is decided by others. Whether it be their parents or the establishment. When you are little you really don't think or care too much about it but when you become a teenager. When you become a teenager you start to think you know it all. You think that nobody knows what's in your best interests better then you so you begin to challenge the status quo and buck the system. In my eyes that's normal. Most kids do it then as they get older they gain more and more control over their own lives and eventually see that their parents were truly only looking out for their best interests. Then they have children themselves and find themselves on the other side of the fence. It's the ones that don't buck the system that you should worry about, it's those that usually wind up having some kind of chronic problem when they are adults.

I digress though. Like I said I did buck the system. I did challenge the status quo. You see I grew up in the early twenty first century. Before the great war and in the dawn of global technology. The internet was popular and more and more of the world was being linked electronically. I tended to take advantage of that. I became a hacker and a damn good one. But it wasn't just that. I had....a gift, a curse one could call it many things. I knew technology. All I would have to do is open something up and I just seemed to know how it works, not only that but how to put it back together better then how it started out. Of course this gave me endless possibilities to cause trouble.

I was never violent I never wanted to hurt anyone but there were other things I did do. There was no harm in hacking into the schools database and shifting grades around or reprogramming the schools security system right? At least that's what I thought. I mean nobody got hurt afterall. Unfortuantly the school board didn't quite see it my way. They wanted to expel me ..... Can you believe that? My father managed to talk them down to a months was fine for me. A months vacation from school, an opportunity to just lay in bed and relax. Of course dad took away internet and phone privaledges. That was the toughest part of it, But I got by.

Soon everything would change. The technology company my father worked for had branches in many different countries. Of course Japan the nation of technological revolution would be one of them. It turns out that the man that was in charge of the Japanese branch retired and so they needed a replacement. They decided to offer the position to my father. It would come with a huge pay raise and a lot more responsibility and power. The downside is that we would have to leave everything we knew behind and move to Japan if he chose to accept.

I doubt he made the decision lightly. My father was not known to do such things but in the end he decided to accept. I don't know for sure but I suspect one of the reasons he chose to do so is because he thought Japan would be a good influence on me. Japanese society was more structured and rigid then American society. He probably felt that that would have a calming directing influence on me not to mention that I would have less opportunities to cause trouble. The youth of Japan were very regulated, very controlled. Even more so then in America. Sadly most adults think that the answer to their childrens acting up is to exert more control and pressure on them. I can't speak for everyone but the more control exerted on me the more it caused me to rebel and want freedom. It wasn't to be though. We came to Japan at a very bad time. I'll get into that later though. First I think I need to mention a few crucial things about japanese culture and living among them.

The first thing I'm going to mention is the "Us or them" complex that the Japanese seem to have. The best way I can explain Japanese culture is one big clique and then many small cliques within the one. I think in most cases if one paticular clique had an argument with a foreigner the other cliques would support them simply because they are japanese and the other was an outsider. Now that dosen't mean you'll never be accepted at all and that everyone was going to be mean to you. Most are kind and accepting as long as you know your place, that you will never truly become one of them. Of course the attitude between adults and children in that matter are different. Take my father for instance. We were in Japan now and he did his best to fit in, to do things in the Japanese way so that they would approve of him. In truth I don't know the specifics about the work situation. I don't know if the native workers there resented him for being in charge but I think that he was certainly afraid that they might. So he tried to be like them at least at work.

Me on the other hand I reacted quite differently. Oh that didn't mean that I was closed minded to other cultures. I certainly wasn't and viewed living in Japan as a way to broaden my horizons... even if I did have to leave all my friends behind to do it.. But I find myself digressing again. Think of it this way. If Japanese culture was telling me. You aren't one of us. We might grow to like you, accept you and welcome you but you'll always be a outsider, you'll never truly be like us then my response was something along the lines of. "Good I'm not trying to be like you. I'm my own unique person and like me or hate me I want it to be on the merits of who I really am, not something I try to be to gain the acceptance of others. It was a bit tough at first but then again it should be. Culture shock and all but I grew to be accepted and liked within certain cliques, especially when they found out what I could do. In the end I think part of it was because I was part of an even bigger clique. Like them I was a teenager and one that resented the authority the adults had over us.

Now the second thing actually has it's own name in Japanese. SHIKATA GA NAI. It's a belief that's hammered into every Japanese citizen from the moment they were born almost to the level of brainwashing. You see in America free speech was a big part of how things worked. The Government was "by the people for the people" and the way the founding fathers set it up was that if the people didn't like how things were then it was not just their right but their responsibility to rise up, take control and change things. In that kind of system if people don't like something they complain, they speak out about it and I think that it tended to act as a vent to the collective anger of the populace.

In Japan however things were drastically different. Shikata Ga Nai was basically the belief that. The establishment, the status quo is what it is and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change it so there is no point in complaining. Just grin and bare it. I think this attitude was a big contributor of what happened next. For many generations the people of Japan did simply "grin and bare it" Yet by the time my father and I moved there things were reaching a boiling point. There was no vent to the anger like in America. School Children were growing bolder and angrier about the unfairness of their system and so they finally began to strike out against it in the only way they knew how.

Riots, Chaos, Violence. The students struck out against those that they felt oppressed them. I mean I was no teachers pet anywhere I went to school but many of the things they did I even considered extreme. Entire schools would break out into riots, teachers that were considered oppressive would be attacked right there in school. I remember seeing a rather nasty teacher get stabbed by a student in the hall right in front of me. It started out small, but by two years it was out of control. The establishment had to do something to regain control and they knew it. Unfortuantly clear heads didn't prevail. They weren't interested in changing things. In eliminating the cause of all of this violence. They didn't want things to change only for things to return as they were before. If I thought the actions of the students was extreme.....I was horrified by the establishments response. The law they passed. The SPA or Student Pacification Act. This is my story , what my part in all of this was and how I managed to survive.....