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Steven McIntire Allen's Page
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Profile
- What are your likes and dislikes about Japan?
- likes: culture, religion, civilization
dislikes: difficulty and expense of domestic travel
- About Me:
- S. (Steven) McIntire Allen, or Mak, short for McIntire, was born in Yangon, Myanmar (then Rangoon, Burma) in 1963. He graduated from school in Western New York. After college, he bought a motorcycle, and drove across country to work at the Alta ski resort in Utah. He toured around the Western United States on his motorcycle, and eventually went to Europe in 1987. He worked as a ski guide at the St. Anton ski resort in Austria, and taught water skiing on the island of Skiathos in Greece. He also worked as a motorcycle courier in London, a factory worker in Sweden, and a migrant laborer in Spain.
After returning to the United States, he worked on an historical vessel, a 1920s Grand Banks Schooner, sailing around the Caribbean. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that he had to get a real job. He began studying Japanese, and entered the University of Connecticut School of Law.
After his first year of law school, he took a leave of absence to spend a year in Ishinomaki, Miyagi on the JET Program in 1993-1994. Spring vacation of that year was spent hitchhiking around Southeast Asia, and visiting family friends in Yangon. Unfortunately, if he had spent more than one year away from law school, he would have had to repeat his first year, so he returned for a semester of law school in Connecticut, and then returned to Japan for a semester at Temple University School of Law in Tokyo in 1995. That summer, he worked at a think tank in Akasaka Mituske.
After graduating from law school in 1996, he moved to New York City, and sat for the New York bar exam. He worked as a contract attorney for White & Case, and then moved to Los Angeles in 1998 to work for Square USA (now Square-Enix, creators of Final Fantasy). He sat for the California bar exam, and in 2001 he moved to Tokyo to work for Asahi Law Offices (now Nishimura & Asahi). In 2005, he moved to Osaka to work for Osaka International Law Offices.
- What is a question you would like to ask other members about their opinions and favorites about Japan?
- Are you a former JET with a connection to Western Japan? If so, sign up for the JET Alumni Association Western Japan Chapter at https://www.jetaa.com/westjapan/eng/register.php Thanks.
Steven McIntire Allen's Blog
family name versus personal name
One thing I wish I had done when I first came to Japan on the JET program in Ishinomaki, Miyagi in 1993, was have people address me by my family name if I address them by their family name. In the vast majority of situations, this is not a problem, but on occasion I have noticed that some Japanese address foreigners by their personal names either because the Japanese individual does not accord foreigners the same respect as Japanese, or because they are trying to belittle the foreigner. Living i… Continue
Posted on June 29th, 2008 at 1:04am —
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Legal registered alias
A little known privilege of foreigners in Japan, at least little known among Westerners, is the right we have to register a legal alias (通称名/tsushomei). Many Japanese use an alias, for instance women use their former names in the workplace, and Japanese refer to this as a 通称名, but ONLY foreigners can actually LEGALLY register an alias.
Koreans and Chinese frequently do this to accommodate their native language characters which are not included in the Japanese ideograph list approved by the Japa… Continue
Posted on May 13th, 2008 at 5:00am —
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