Another hardluck tale in ye olde Miyako: Eric Bray

The latest suspected CIA officer to approach me is named Eric Bray.

Apparently, he lives in the neighborhood, and seemed to be trying to convince me to leave. According to his resume, which is posted online, he has a BA in psychology, and a PhD in education.

He commutes to a college in Mie prefecture where he teaches English, and is divorced from his wife, who is Japanese. They have a son, who went to the same schools in the neighborhood that my son will attend, but is going to go to college in the USA.

Mr. Bray seemed to be trying to convey that the path he had chosen was a dead end, but he wasn’t totally defeated, and that there was still hope for me, if I should follow his lead.

What was incongruous in the way he presented his story to me is that he was trying to convince me that, for example, the schools in the neighborhood were overrated, as his son was only working at a restaurant and embarrassed when his dad came to the restaurant, and that his son was, after all, planning to go to college in the USA.

I talked a fair amount about my experience with the city in having to sue the city to get my son into the nursery school, and he suggested that I didn’t really want to go there and should drop the suit. There were a lot of “rich people” in the neighborhood, and he had sort of complained that after NHK did a documentary on the outstanding school system there, that a lot of apartment buildings were built and people started moving in for the schools.

There goes the neighborhood!

Mr. Bray seemed to think that it hadn’t dawned on me that he was, to some extent, talking about me. Although I hadn’t known that there was a documentary made about the schools there, etc., I was one of the people living in an apartment building built in the not-too-distant past. I certainly couldn’t be bracketed into the economic class of “rich people”, but that wasn’t something with which I was preoccupied.

On the other hand, since I moved into that neighborhood several restaurants have opened, and there is a lot of hype about the area. One of the restaurants is part of a chain of eateries with an American themed atmosphere and menu, called Cafe Sarasa:
http://www.cafe-sarasa.com/
...the recently opened branch nearby.
http://sarasao.exblog.jp/

This one specifically markets its pancakes, and I have seen several unlikely Caucasian clients in the store, people who seemed to fit the bill of aging or retired CIA officers. Usually, however, the place is empty, and there are sometimes a few wannabe hipster young Japanese males with straggly facial hair and stupid looking hats and fashion playing American card games at the table near the front window, trying to attract customers, apparently. It is a ludicrous scene. Apparently they have enough time on their hands to do nothing but try to act like members of a pseudo-cultured leisure class, and are under the impression that such a ploy is going to bring them fame and fortune. And basically what they are trying to do is dumb this area down.

Apparently, Mr. Bray is connected to a network of CIA officers trying to exploit the neighborhood in which we reside. It just so happens that the guy named Craig Corm, mentioned in the first email I submitted to the Consulate to complain about these people in 2009, had introduced me to the Spanish restaurant/bar at which Mr. Bray’s son works. In addition, I met a mixed couple with a young child of which the Japanese husband also works that the restaurant, and his wife is the daughter of an American that married a Japanese woman. Mr. Corm had also tried to convince me to go to another bar in the neighborhood that has since closed, which was also trying to be something of a scene.

The pretentiousness exhibited by some of these people and establishments in a rather venerable old neighborhood certainly strikes me as distasteful. I don’t have anything against successful eateries and the like, and welcome variety in the neighborhood, which has a fairly diverse selection of eateries, already. 

What is disturbing is that cretins like these incompetent and basically predatory CIA/MI6, etc. people are trying to subvert the normal balance of the market forces in the neighborhood, perhaps collaborating with organized crime groups in Japan to that end. 

At the very least, some of these places provide employment for the children of people like Eric Bray, and some of them feature youth with nothing but time on their hands, apparently. 

At least Mr. Corm was quick enough on the uptake to decide that maybe Kyoto wasn’t a place in which he should invest much of his time and effort. Mr. Bray, on the other hand, would seem to be a rather conflicted individual, hoping to capitalize on some sociopathic network pyramid scheme than making an effort to produce some tangible results toward some more aptly determined goal.

It is apparent from the youtube postings of Mr. Bray that he also frequents the grubby pub scene…

Incidentally, I don’t think that the people of long standing in the neighborhood would be as concerned about someone like myself, who is simply a resident bringing up a family, as opposed to the American and their sociopathic network of disaffected Japanese (including those of Korean and burakumin descent), that are trying to capitalize on the neighborhood and turn it into some kind of entertainment district. 

Maybe all of these coincidences are not connected, and I’m mistaken about Mr. Bray, but I am rather skeptical about the probability of that.