Wanted: Japanese Only

Excuse me, if you've noticed I'm not Japanese.
if it's not too much to ask, can i be measured against some form of internationally-accepted standards instead of those horridly unforgiving japanese yardsticks that you insist on using?

listen to this.

remember the recruitment examination on the names of forests and mountains that I flunked? turns out very few of my 469 other competitors made it to the final round so guess what? according to some reliable sources, the company is facing a critical dearth of non-japanese staff so they are still hiring and the invitation for resumes is still very much open.

there are a million and one ways of getting around the issue but they will never choose to bend their silly rules. lower your passing mark for that stupid test and you'd instantly have more applicants to choose from. or why dont you just make passing the forest-naming exam a non-complusory requirement? wouldnt you want to actually MEET the people keen on joining your firm to find out how interesting they are in person instead of basing your decision on how well they can regurgitate the names and locations of all the natural heritage sites in japan?

someone suggested i send in my resume again.

honey, you gotta be kidding me. i'd be stupid to join a company as inflexible as this one.

listen to this one too.

i went for yet another recruitment exam two saturdays ago, this time for an up-and-coming institute of science and technology looking for applicants proficient in english to serve in positions that cater to the needs of their mostly-foreign research team. we were required to fill out our applications in english and everything about the place suggested that they were open to foreigners.

48 people were shortlisted for the exam, a fact i regarded as proof of their stringent hiring requirements. the moment i opened the test booklet though, my hopes crashed. not only were the questions wored in japanese, there was a mammoth section on what the japanese call non-verbal SPI, a collection of mathematically-inclined tasks aimed at testing your analytical and logical abilities.

there were a number of foreign applicants at the exam, and most of them walked out upon seeing the contents of the test because they could not read japanese. i was one of the three non-japanese who decided on attempting the exam. throughout the paper i thought i would gain a foothold over the other applicants as long as i tried to complete the section worded in japanese and scored higher marks in the english proficiency test that was to follow.

i was so wrong.

the english test was primary school level at best, with sentences like "mr. stein spotted an emu in his backyard and fed it dog food". i didnt know whether to feel insulted or disappointed.

everyone knows i CANNOT do mathematics for nuts. but i know for sure that i am good at my job, and that im good enough for the institute. but at the very end of the day, it seems that as long as you have practised every ten-year series there is on that darn SPI crap and you can understand phrases like "emu" and "backyard", you're considered good enough.

i have actual, related experience from my previous job but no one's going to take that into consideration because i couldnt pass their stupid SPI rubbish.

again someone suggested i brush up my SPI skills.

if i am to be judged on how well i can count, then i suggest you go fly kite because this foreigner is not going to contort herself to conform to that narrow set of requirements deemed valuable to a japanese employer.

it's time they did it our way anyway.