My job is hard to explain and has no real terminology for it (which is natural, it is conceptual), which is why you’ll see me label it differently depending on when I refer to it, but it’s basically the hometown equivalent of how a school might highlight student achievements (and yes, it’s highly quasi-official). People come to us often to put it on record that they did something good, an uphill request I might add if society is based on shame. From this position, I’ve had encounters with a few people who, to put it lightly, if they lived in Japan, they’d be asked to commit a hundred seppukus from the literal atmosphere, often locally ordained, swirling around them. And at least once I was like “this is what I live for”, which is also at the same time tragic because what they go through is also the kind of life I live; ironically, for the deed of pointing out the good in these pariahs, on top of that even more shame is accumulated onto me.