“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
― L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
I guess to be an “outsider” and a “customer” is always easier than to be “one of them”, wrote Nell Zhang. That’s how she described her life in Japan.
I stumbled upon a question posted on Quora which reads “What is it like living in Japan as a foreigner?”. And Zhang answered the question with her struggling experiences.
What her experience stands in the crowd of other foreigners’ is her deep understanding of the Japanese society and most importantly her fluency in Japanese. In most cases, foreigners, especially those from the West, gave up learning the language due to its complexity so that they end up only interacting with those who have the same nationality or other foreigners. Not to mention, they eventually leave the country without fully understanding how the Japanese society organizes itself.
Getting back to Zhang’s story, she’s got an opportunity to start her career in Japan after college. She wrote “I felt like I won a lottery.” But it didn’t take long before she experienced her first disappointment.
Her first three-day newbie training was a mess – and personally, this is something I too agree with her, and this tradition is the most what I hate about our working culture. We call it “Aiduchi”. When someone, especially a senior in the company, is talking to you, no matter what he/she says, no matter you agree with him/her or not, you have to keep nodding with a perfect smile and show your respect. Only words she was allowed to say was “yes, sir (of course in Japanese)” with perfect fake voice and I-admire-you-sir eyes. Ridiculous, right? Well, that’s how it goes here. Not to mention, you’re never allowed to challenge him/her. Although it was a part of her fancy elegant Japan image, it did drive her crazy after her being forced to do it nonstop for eight hours.
Her second disappointment was when she was invited to join a “welcome party”. At the welcome party, newbies are main characters and are expected to entertain their seniors and bosses. Since she was both a foreigner and female, no one asked her to do anything but to introduce herself. But her douki (a coworker who attended the company at the same year as well as was also a newbie) was a Japanese guy. Their seniors forced him to drink a whole bottle of Tabasco in front of everyone. The situation and the toxic atmosphere didn’t allow him to turn it down. He did and vomited terribly afterwords… She helped him cleaning. Later they became friends, and she realized why in this country many douki coworkers have stronger relationship than with other coworkers. They need a union to protect themselves from the strict and toxic upper-and-lower society. And this is something relevant to what wrote earlier. When seniors told you to do something, no matter you agree with him/her or not, you have to follow his/her order.
Because she was female, she wasn’t much bullied like her newbie coworker who was forced to drink a whole bottle of Tabasco. Later she learnt that being a woman in Japan has also its disadvantages.
In a standard Japanese company, there are two kinds of positions. Sougoushoku (general position) which allows you to get promoted step by step as you age, requiring higher education. And Ippanshoku (common position) which never allows you to get promoted. This position exist only for women who are expected to leave the company by getting married or giving her baby a birth. All men were in general position, and all women in common position except herself probably because of her educational background. But later she found that her being in the position put her in a complicated situation. Every morning, her female coworkers were inevitable asked to make tea/coffee for male coworkers. For her, it was hard to believe it was part of their work or just a random act of kindness. Despite her hesitation, she eventually decided to assimilate her into the inevitable environment. She wrote ” felt it’s something I HAD TO do otherwise I would look not nice and would be DIFFERENT with other girls which would make me a difficult situation in the office.”
Couple of years later when she made some Japanese friends, she asked them why Japanese women are treated poorly when compared to the global standard. But none of them gave her any clear answer but told her that they got used to it. Seemingly, they never asked themselves why women got so mistreated. This is partially why #MeToo movement never took off in Japan. One of the reasons is because of the fact that the movement mainly stemmed from English-speaking country so that those who live in non-English speaking country barely know the movement or don’t even know such thing existed. Additionally, Japan ranked as low as 110th in WEF’s global gender equality rankings.
Her other disappointment was overtime work as you may expect. During her first year living in Japan, she never finished work before 9 pm. Even though she sometimes finished work earlier, she felt she dare not to go home. The toxic atmosphere in the office didn’t let her leave there because leaving earlier may give her boss an unintended impression that she was “free”. And her boss and seniors felt the same way against their staffs.
Once my Filipino friend told me the Japanese are the kindest people on the planet. 70% of them and nice and only 30% are not. Guess what, he doesn’t speak Japanese. He only interacted with us by English, meaning he hasn’t had any deep interaction with the Japanese. This is just my theory, but if you don’t speak our language, you’ll never understand who we are. It could be relevant to his case, isn’t it? And after having read Zhang’s experiences, can you really agree with the Filipino guy? Perhaps, not. If you only trust the treat-others-with-respect image of Japan that may surface after a random Google search, you’ll probably end up being disappointed terribly.
In her description of her life in Japan, she omitted amazing aspects of the country; because it’s too obvious – great service, qualified products and clean and safe environment. She closed her answer by saying “Japan is like a fantastic lover who makes me love and hate”.
Lastly, if you really want to live in Japan and start your career in the country, go for it. You should follow your dreams. But what I wrote is just a reminder: unrealistic expectations could lead you to a disappointment. The same goes for any country.
Here are some shots I photographed in Sumida ward last month…
