Move to Japan and you'll probably be an English teacher. Which means "ijime," pronounced much like you would naturally read "E.G. May," is a Japanese vocabulary word you'll soon learn. Loosely translated, it means "bully."

You have to understand that bullying takes a slightly different form here in Japan. My picture of a bully is a big kid, a strong kid. The kind of kid who would ambush you after school... or preferably before school to take your lunch money. We're talking physical intimidation.

Here, bullying is much more tame. Here I'm almost tempted to translate ijime as "making fun of." Except that losing face, to the Japanese, still means quite a lot. The reason why ijime is so important is because the Japanese children have a nasty habit of killing themselves over it. And every time an ijime related suicide comes up, all I can think is "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Try translating that into Japanese.

We've all heard about some poor girl in America who killed herself after being "ijime'd" on myspace. So the phenomenon does happen back at home. But here in Japan, its such an issue that my school has distributed these cards. Notice the title is written in katakana, not kanji, so I can read it.

Internet Ijime - Shut Out

Why they would choose a picture of a baseball pitcher for this, I have no idea. Did you know that the Japanese facebook.com is http://mixi.jp/? Anyway, since I can't read the contents of this anti-internet bullying pamphlet, my commentary ends here.