Random Memories #50

This is part of an ongoing series that I've been doing about my memories of working at the same place for 12 years. This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Reading through the stories of two of my former colleagues during my early years at my office job in Japan, it may seem that everyone I encountered was a problem. Fortunately, my other two coworkers were more amiable folk. Today, there will be no grim stories of bitchy jealousy or betrayal. I hope that doesn't disappoint anybody. Don't worry though, I still have a parade of temporary workers to talk about and some of them were just as bad, if not worse, than Jolene and John.

The third of the trio of "permanent" workers that I worked with was Doug. Doug was and is Canadian. That means he's a nice guy. Well, it doesn't have to mean he was a nice guy. I worked with an incredible jerk named Steve who was from Canada when I was at Nova conversation school. Steve was one of those Canadians with a chip on his shoulder about Americans. He walked around with a Canadian flag pin on his backpack as well as on his tie or shirt to make sure that no one mistook him for an American. He became hostile and angry if anyone implied his nationality was that of his neighbor to the South.

Doug, or Dougie, as both the manager D. and I came to call him, was a far cry from the "angry Canadian". He was amiable, funny, and creative and laughed off any attempts to label him as American. Of course, since he was of Chinese descent, he didn't have too much difficulty with this.

Doug spent his down time on the job drawing diagrams and pictures of his future dream dojo. When he returned to Canada, he wanted to open up his own aikido establishment and he spent time puzzling out how he'd like it to be. He'd ask me questions that I could not answer about what would be a better choice in terms of placing something or other here or there. If he were building a sumo training space, I might have been able to help him out with some informed advice, but, no, Doug wanted to remain a healthy weight and play with big sticks. Who wouldn't?

Doug and I also had some Star Trek geekery in common and I shared our library of VHS tapes (yes, folks, it was that long ago) with him. He told me that he loved the original series, but there were certain things he just didn't like. When I asked what he wanted to see, he said, "no mirror universe and no Mudd". I'm not sure what he had against "evil Spock" and Harry Mudd, but I edited appropriately. Later, we would critique and converse about Deep Space Nine as the episodes aired and I got them on video.

Doug was also the first person who I started to teach about using personal computers. At that time, I was a Macintosh zealot and tried to sell anyone who would listen on using a Mac. This was before everyone and his granny had a PC and they were very expensive. We had been using a Mac Classic for several years, and had upgraded to an LC III (I believe). Doug bought my Mac Classic and I helped him figure out how to use it. I recall that his main use was game playing. To his credit, he did buy some Japanese adventure game with the intention of learning a second language while trying to kick some digital ass. When we had he and his wife over for dinner, she complained about that fact and said that he was like "a little boy."

In terms of his work ethic, Doug put in the time and had a professional, but not uptight attitude. He got his work done and put in the hours. He was also far better at advocating for himself than I was. At the end of his first contract, he wrung a hefty raise out of our tight-fisted president. Of course, it helped that the sexist attitude in Japan that saw a married man as the bread-winner and a working married woman as a "helper" on the income front helped him and harmed me.

Doug was rare among my coworkers at every job I had in Japan in that he was married to a Japanese person, had specific plans to go home and do something else, and that he actually followed up on them. Many foreigners find Japan to be a gilded cage in which they willingly close the door on and trap themselves. They find that being treated like pampered pets by the Japanese along with making a decent income is hard to walk away from, especially when they face uncertainty back home. Most foreigners feel like mini celebrities in Japan. Of course, it may have been different for Doug. He didn't walk around Tokyo getting stared at because of his appearance. Chances are that no one realized he wasn't Japanese until he opened his mouth. Perhaps it's a little easier to leave when staying doesn't give you the sense of being a puffed up big fish in a little pond. Or, maybe, Dougie just had what it took to walk away when a lot of others did not.

I can't remember many direct quotes of my conversations with Doug - just that he laughed genuinely and was jovial when we talked. He did complain from time to time, as we all did, when he had an annoying student or a bad day. I recall more the drawing that was a part of interacting with him. It wasn't just the dojo plans.

Each teacher had a profile sheet that was sent to his or her collection of students. The sheet included birthplace, age, education, hobbies, and a photo booth head shot of the smiling teacher. When Doug announced that he was leaving, there was a plethora of profile sheets around that were never going to be used. They were being distributed as scrap paper so I turned one around and used liquid paper and a black pen to "edit" Doug's photo. I gave him an eye patch, cheek scar and a pirate hat and then showed my handiwork to him.

The concept lit a fire under him and he took his photo and made an entire sheet full of Dougie faces. He then proceeded to edit his own face in a wide variety of ways. For years, I had a copy of that sheet because what he'd done was both humorous and self-effacing. I could look at it and still smile or laugh at what he'd done, but I, unfortunately lost it. I do recall that he drew himself with dreadlocks and as a Klingon, among other "looks". I don't know many people who would copy their own face and do what he did, but I felt it said some positive things about his self-perception.

Though I'm thin on specifics, I do recall his last day very well. The company I worked at liked the teachers to complete all six of their telephone lessons with the same instructor and Doug had no small number of deadbeat students who had failed to make their calls. In order to cram as many in as possible, they did something they generally do not do. Instead of the usual three and a half hours of telephone calls, they crammed his day full of nearly six hours on the line.

As I mentioned before, the calls were scheduled in 15-minute blocks, alternating between a set of two calls and three calls of five minutes duration such that there was 25 minutes of call time every half hour. It was hard, but not impossible to dash away for a bathroom break, but it had to be a quick one. With Doug's schedule so full, he wasn't really in a position to get away much. I recall him standing there (he not infrequently stood instead of sitting during the calls), swaying a bit from side to side and, as he waited for his very last call ever on the job, he said, "I have to take a massive poop."

It may seem peculiar, but that stuck with me because the moment summed Doug's personality up. He was earthy and real, amusing and genuine, but he was also gentle. He didn't use an ugly word to talk about a bodily excretion, but the same one that children do. He didn't keep it to himself like some prim and proper adult. He shared it.

I'm happy to say that, at least in Doug's case, he was a nice guy who seemed to finish first. He went home to Canada, got a job at Taco Bell while going through graduate school, his wife had a baby son, he got a Master's degree in English, and then he went on to teach as well as work as an aikido instructor. I don't know if he ever got his own dojo, but, last I heard, he seemed to be about as close to his dreams as one could reasonably get. (to be continued)

Random Memories #47

This is a continuing series talking about the time I spent working in a Japanese office. The other parts are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The image most foreign folks have of Japanese workers is one of people who are hard-working, respectful, and loyal. It wouldn't be too far fetched to say that many employees start out that way, but you can say that of a lot of new employees. No one is happier and more diligent than when he or she gets a job and wants to make a good impression. It's only as time goes by and the indignities and disrespect pile up that the bloom goes off the rosy outlook on employment.

As I mentioned in my last post, as the years went by, the company I worked out started to list like a ship in a choppy ocean. It was also taking on water at a scary pace. As this happened, the president, who like many Japanese employers talked about how the company was like a "family" started to give some of his lesser children up for adoption. We had around 8 salesmen during our peak, but when sales started to drop, he would call one into his office and "persuade" them to quit.

I can't say for certain how this process works as I was never in the room when it occurred, but the scuttlebutt that I heard lead me to believe that it essentially was the president saying that he'd have to cut the salary down to an intolerable level if that person remained based on their performance. I think that, in some cases, it also may have been a case of him saying the equivalent of, "This really isn't a good place for you anymore, is it? Perhaps it would be better for you to find a place that was more suitable for you." No Japanese staff person was ever actually fired. They always "decided" to quit.

As sales grew worse, more sales people were put on the chopping block and the full-time foreign staff was reduced through attrition. Besides my Aussie boss and I, most people didn't remain long. When I started, there were 3 full-time foreign teachers and the manager (the aforementioned boss). When I left, it was just the two of us. During my last 7 years or so with the company, we were the core of the operation from the viewpoint of teaching and text-making.

There was the revolving door of temporary teachers that included my husband for some of my years there, but not all. It was a colorful parade which I want to talk about, but that will be for a later post. For now, I want to talk about how the atmosphere and staff changed as our sales dwindled.

The respect that the Japanese staff showed the president was somewhat proportional to how generous he was with them. They tended to be more deferential and put on a happy face more often for him before he started pruning the underperforming staff and getting crabbier with them because they didn't keep up the previous bubble-economy-level of sales figures. They also spend more time sniping about him behind his back and spilling his secrets.

The office manager, who was a quiet, relatively gentle and even-tempered person, became surprisingly confrontational with the president over time. One day, the president's meddling with the Japanese office lady (O.L.)  in charge of the layout of the texts at the time caused her to become so upset that she cried. The gossip machine whispered that the office manager was diddling this particular O.L. on the side (he was married and had a daughter) and he took particular umbrage to what had happened. He charged into the president's office and yelled at him, saying that the big cheese didn't know how to handle people and didn't know what he was doing.

You'd think that would have ended with a sacking of the office manager, but it did not. Part of the reason for that may have been that that particular man was working on a Chinese language program for the company and, with China looking like a big up and comer economically at the time, it was promising to be a new cash cow for the company. It could also be that the president knew that the entire company was starting to slip through his fingers and he didn't want to start shaking the trees at that point in time.

To "manage" the situation at the company, the president started to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic in the hopes that it wouldn't sink. I don't know if this is well-known, but it's common for salespeople to be in charge of a large company or a number of companies as their steady clients. The idea is to make sure that such big cash cows get steady and reliable attention from someone who knows their needs well. The salesperson builds a relationship with the company by regularly visiting, sometimes just to say "hi" and bring gifts, as a means of keeping the wheels well-lubricated and the company's business with ones own company.

Our salespeople had certain companies that they'd had for years. Most of them hadn't even made the original sale to them, but inherited them from someone who'd already left the company. A senior salesman would often get a bunch of big clients handed to him on a silver platter and he'd just kick back and effortlessly milk the cow someone else had worked very hard to lure into his pasture. In fact, the senior salesman who I spent the longest time there during my tenure spent most of his days wandering around the office, reading the paper, making tea, hitting on the office ladies, or chatting with people while incessantly patting their shoulders for the duration. Sometimes, he'd even nap in his chair. He rarely worked late. Actually, he rarely "worked" at all.

At any rate, when times got bad, the president started to madly shuffle the client lists around to different salesmen. A junior employee would bust his buns to get a client only to have it handed over to someone else. This behavior only hastened the economic downfall of the company as salespeople started to leave. The domino effect of this was that companies didn't have relationships with the same person and therefore found it easier to shop on price rather than show loyalty to a company they had a long-standing situation with.

Every year, my boss and I would be told how poorly the company was doing and every year, it kept on going. One day, the president was showing some men around the office and my boss said that he thought the president might be trying to sell the company. It had been his baby for more than 25 years. In fact, it seemed to be his whole reason to live. I could not fathom that he would sell it off to another company, but, one day, we were told that was exactly what he had done. From there, things changed dramatically for us, particularly since the company that had bought us was a subsidiary of my first employer in Japan, the dreaded conversation school, Nova.

(to be continued)

Won't Miss #523 - plodding meticulousness

One day, while I was in the post office in Japan to mail a few letters. There were three postal workers and three customers. It took more than 7 minutes per customer because the postal workers moved at glacial speed and paused to check every little detail as they went. One of the customers was filling out a single simple customs form and another was simply buying some stamps. This sort of meticulousness is common in Japan because perfection is valued over efficiency. In fact, it is frequently an issue when U.S. companies set up branches here as the time it takes to complete basic office tasks is unacceptably long and wastes money.

I won't miss wasting time waiting while people slowly go through every niggling detail as if the fate of the world depended on getting it perfect every time.

Won't Miss #513 - crowded graphic design

After 3 years in Japan, 2 of which I spent teaching English at Nova conversation school and the 3rd of which I spent recovering from surgery, I started to work for a company that sold and produced correspondence lessons. During the busy times, about half the year, I corrected student homework essays and talked to them on the phone for 5-minute "lessons". During the other half of the year, I helped to create the materials that were sold.

Early on, I ran into a culture clash between the aesthetic of the West and that of Japan. The president and others wanted everything to be crammed as full of content as possible and felt that white space made it look sparse and like we were lacking in content. One of my former students is a freelance graphic designer and she told me she has similar problems dealing with clients who want everything to be crammed and cluttered in layout and design.

This visual clutter is ugly and more stressful to look at. I don't miss this crowded graphic design aesthetic which I encountered not infrequently in Japan.

Won't Miss #497 - open office plans

One of the cool things about teaching in Japan? No open office plan (usually)... though my husband's second job did have such a style. The noise was awful. This was one of the cubicles I taught in at my last job in Tokyo. Ah, luxury!

I can't speak for offices around the world because I only have experience with two countries - America and Japan. In the U.S., most people work in a private office or a cubicle with partitions on 3 sides. I can't say why this is done, but I've always believed it was to avoid distraction, control noise, and offer privacy. It's a lot harder for your coworkers to interrupt you if they have to get up from their desk and walk around your walls or through your office door than if they can just speak to you across a desk or two. You also get muted sound from their phones and work habits.

In Japan, it is most common to use what is called an "open office plan". That is when there is one big room and the whole staff for a section (or even a company) has desks next to and/or facing one another. This style is cheaper and allows companies to move employees around and cram others in at a whim. It is also a style which has a negative impact on productivity and creates more stress for employees. Most people hate this, but the overwhelming majority of Japanese companies use this style. They say it builds their team spirit, but the truth is that it's about keeping an eye on people and saving money. What was worst about my personal experiences with such plans was that they were horribly cramped. You weren't only operating in a barrage of stimuli and experiencing a plethora of interruptions, but you were crammed in like sardines.

I hated the open office plans in Japan and I absolutely will not miss them. 

Will Miss #489 - ETC

During a large part of my time in Japan, I worked both as a freelance private tutor and in a Japanese office. To get private students, I worked with a referral company called ETC (English Telephone Club). There are many untrustworthy employers who cheat or change conditions on foreign employees or referral agencies that you sign up with that end up being a complete waste of time, but ETC is neither of these. They always dealt with me honestly, paid me in a timely fashion, and communicated with me as well as possible. They connect people who want to teach in their homes with students who would like this sort of instruction and ETC provided me with relatively abundant numbers of students. I can say they also never asked me to give freebies as some companies do.

Before I left Japan, I was getting 15 students a week from them and it was harder than anything saying goodbye to those people who came to my home every week, sat down for a cup of coffee or tea, shared my private space for talk of their lives and worked toward their language learning goals. It was the most enriching teaching that I did in Japan. When I told the people at ETC's office that I was having a tumor removed, they offered to drive me to and from the hospital for my surgery. When I left Japan, they sent me a huge bouquet of flowers, and the people at the office had never even met me face to face! They were completely delightful and kind and dealing with them exemplified the best of the best in Japan. They were an example of the positive face of Japan that foreigners imagine.

I absolutely miss the lovely relationship I had with ETC and their patient, polite, courteous, gentle, and professional assistance in referring students to me.

Won't Miss #460 - contracts not being followed

In America, where people do what is required by law rather than what is reasonable or best, we have a culture in which contracts are specific and followed to the letter. This provides a sense of comfort since it stops people from being taken advantage of, especially in the workplace and in business transactions. In Japan, contracts are not seen as concrete. They are seen as the beginning of a process and often the terms that are spelled out in them are disregarded when they become inconvenient for the more powerful entity signing the document. Many English teachers who are hired abroad sign contracts stating working hours, duties, and conditions and upon arriving in Japan discover that they are expected to work overtime, perform mundane cleaning duties, or work on days not specified in the contract they signed. The Japanese themselves take it for granted that employees will do whatever is asked no matter how outside of the original terms of employment such requests are. Unfortunately, the contract flakiness doesn't only apply to employees. It can also apply to purchases, services, or renting an apartment. Though it happens less often when one is a customer, it did happen to me in regards to cable services.

I realize that this is a cultural difference and my objection to this is completely ethnocentric, but I will not miss being taken advantage of or being treated like a huge problem if I refuse to let it be done to me because employee contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on in many cases.

Won't Miss #442 - vacationing is difficult

I'm mentioned about a million times before that I can't speak to any other person's experiences in Japan. It's not only about the subjective nature of experience and how feelings and perceptions vary from person to person, but also how we all have different experiences. No one can live the life you live no matter how hard they try. So, when I say that "vacationing is difficult" in Japan, I'm speaking for me, though there were absolutely cultural factors that played into developing that sense and I didn't feel that way when I lived and worked in America and I don't feel that way now that I am back in the U.S.. 

I should note that Japanese people often take very short vacations because of pressure from peers and employers not to burden others with their work while they are gone. I have never known one Japanese person from among the hundreds I've talked to about this to take all of their vacation days in a given year (or any year ever). The foreigners usually have no compunctions about taking the time off that they are legally entitled to and granted by their companies, but the former president of my former company (not an eikaiwa/language school) fixed this by illegally setting limits on vacation time (7 days maximum, forever) instead of giving the legal mandate (10 days the first year, 1 added day for each additional year). 

Besides this job, my only "regular company job" in Japan, I worked at schools and in situations in which "no work" meant "no pay".  I never felt like I could comfortably take a vacation when I lived in Japan. The atmosphere was not conducive to it, my employers did their best to stop it, or I felt I'd be losing (a lot of) money if I did take time off. I don't miss feeling like I can never take time off and truly relax. 

Won't Miss #420 - talking to people in masks

I think it's quaint and somewhat endearing that you see Japanese people running around wearing surgical masks. It speaks to a certain meticulousness, paranoia, and, yes, even consideration for others. It's also the only way people ever seem capable of covering their mouths when they cough and sneeze. On the flip side though, there is an issue when they keep wearing them even when they are indoors and in a conversation with other people. In my work, it is not uncommon for people who are wearing masks to protect themselves from the swarming bacteria of crowded public spaces to keep them on while they share my tiny cubicle with me. I'm not the least bit offended that they want to protect themselves against "my germs" or those left behind by other students, but I really dislike the fact that I can't see more than half of their faces when talking. It's harder to read expressions and feels like I'm having a convivial conversation with a bank robber.

I won't miss talking to people who are wearing surgical masks. 

Won't Miss #369 - facial hair prejudice

Okay, this guy definitely isn't helping the image of facial hair, but give him a break. This picture was taken at a summer festival, not at the office. You'd all look less than ready for Wall Street in 93 degree heat and high humidity at a crowded public gathering.

When my husband came to Japan in 1989 seeking a job, his brother, who also lives in Japan, recommended that he shave off his beard. In fact, my brother-in-law for many years would remove his facial hair when applying for jobs because many Japanese companies view it as dirty, untidy, or lazy to sport facial growth. They tolerate beards and mustaches more from foreigners, but there is always a risk that you will lose a small edge in a competition for a job unless you are clean shaven. Personally, I find beards very becoming and they are, after all, the default state of a male face.

I won't miss the prejudice against male facial hair and the way in which it means you see very few men with beards in Japan.

Won't Miss #351 - paltry (or no) raises

The economic situation in Japan has been going downhill for quite some time. That doesn't mean companies don't make money, but rather that Japan hasn't been growing economically on the whole. However, even before the downturn became so dire, raises were very pathetic at most companies. It's not unusual for people to get raises of as little as a few thousand yen (about $24) or no raise at all, even when a company is profitable. Whether or not you're getting a raise has nothing to do with job performance or evaluation. It has to do with perceptions of whether or not you require one based on your age, gender, position, and marital status as well as how well the company has been doing economically. As a married women in a subordinate position at my former office, the president simply decided I didn't need much in the way of raises whereas a married male coworker doing the same job got a substantial raise. We both had exactly the same responsibilities, and I did more work than him and had significantly more useful and refined skills (computer-based) and could do more varied work. The male coworker got a 10,000 yen raise and I got 1,000 yen, because the president concluded he needed it to support his wife (but no kids). Never mind that his wife worked full-time and my husband didn't. It was all about what the president imagined the situation to be, not our value as workers or actual circumstances.

I won't miss the way in which raises are determined nor how tiny they tend to be.

Won't Miss #347 - monthly pay

This is a MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) building, which is very tentatively linked to this post. I'm using this picture because of the man and poster person staring in awe at the silver scrotum sculpture in front of the building, which is more interesting than a generic bank picture. 

In the U.S., I was paid every two weeks and some people are paid every week. I think the system is set up in that fashion in order to compensate for the fact that most Americans are poor at budgeting and tend to spend all of the money they have on hand a bit too rapidly. Yeah, I know how that sounds like I'm bashing my home country, but it does reflect a culture in which many people often talk about "being broke until payday". Personally, I haven't had problems budgeting myself and I don't mind the fact that Japanese companies pay you once a month from that viewpoint. The problem for me isn't about being a spendthrift. It's about seeing the banks swamped on the 25th of the month (and the next few days for those who lag) and not being able to do any sort of simple transactions there if I happen to forget that it's close to payday or must do something necessary. Note that because I'm a foreigner and my money gets held onto longer by two of the three agencies that pay me for various jobs, I don't get paid on the 25th anyway, so it's not like I'm waiting for a deposit to withdraw money. Sometimes, things just come up and I need to go to the bank when everyone else gets paid.

I won't miss having to fight massive lines at the bank once a month because everyone else is getting paid at the same time once a month.

Will Miss #346 - teaching English (the good)

I've already written that I love my students, but that is because I currently mostly work freelance in a situation which allows me to work with people who are rather different from the general population of language learners in "eikaiwa" (English conversation schools). Because of my specialized circumstances, I have fewer of the passive people I mentioned in the previous post, and more active talkers. The truth is that I "moved on up" to an office job after being a teacher for a few years, but am happier having moved "back down" to teaching. From a personal growth and experience viewpoint, it is much more fulfilling. It's not only that I learn about people, but that a lesson that carries out beautifully from the viewpoint of material selection, pacing, energy levels, and tone is a thing of beauty, and I make it that way. I'm not a monkey teacher jumping around and acting foolish to entertain. I come across as "a real person" with my students, and they love that. And though it may appear effortless, it most certainly is not. Knowing when to listen, when to speak, when to wait, how to phrase a question, how to react, what topics to discuss with a particular student, etc.  takes a lot of skill. What is more, I often provide an emotionally therapeutic environment for students. Often speaking in English is more liberating for Japanese folks and they'll confess frustrations, opinions, and other feelings that they can't or won't share in Japanese. I'm sometimes told at the end of such lessons that the student came into the lesson stressed, and is leaving feeling lighter.

When a lesson comes off smoothly, elegantly, and at the end feels like I just spent a pleasant hour with another human being or when I know the interaction I've had with a student is cathartic and makes them feel better, I know I've accomplished something and done my job well. I'll miss that.

Won't Miss #328 - English practice moochers

One evening, my husband and I met up around 9:00 p in Nakano after long tiring days at our respective jobs. Our plan was to have a nice dinner and unwind after talking to people all day. As we were walking along, a stranger in a business suit rushes up alongside my husband and asks if we'll speak English with him at a bar. This was neither our first or last experience with random strangers just walking up to us and asking if we'd devote our free time to giving them what they want at no profit to us and without the context of an existing relationship. It is also not a rare experience among obviously foreign-looking folks. The odd thing is that people seem surprised when we don't jump at the chance to spend our evening in conversation with strangers so they don't have to pay for their English practice.

I won't miss people believing that it's okay for them to invade upon my private time to get free work out of me.

Won't Miss #290 -ignoring the inevitable

When I was working in a Japanese office, my (Australian) boss and I often cautioned the president or our coworkers about certain problems that were inevitably going to come up if we pursued a certain path. We weren't being unnecessarily pessimistic. We were pointing out what would definitely happen. Our concerns were always brushed aside or shrugged off. More often than not, we were told that they'd deal with that problem when it happened. This type of short-sightedness is pervasive in Japanese business culture (and politics). Rather than make a long-term plan to deal with predictable negative outcomes, it is often the case that those outcomes are ignored until they are right on top of you. Usually, this makes the situation much worse than it needs to be and people have to scramble to deal with far greater damage than if the problem had been dealt with during the inception of an idea. I realize this can happen in any culture or company, but it is something which is endemic in Japan.

I won't miss this type of thinking which is tantamount to worrying about crossing a bridge only after it has already collapsed.

Won't Miss #269 - nomikai

"Nomikai" means "drinking party" in Japanese. If you work, you will often be invited to such parties, and declining those invitations can have negative consequences on your relationship with your coworkers as well as your future promotion potential. The thinking behind nomikai is that Japanese people have to keep their true feelings under such tight wraps that they can only let some of them out when liberally lubricated with alcohol. It's meant to allow for a sort of communication that cannot be had in the office, but is integral to working relationships. In reality, it's often about the bosses dragging subordinates out for drunken revelry and holding their attention hostage. It also forces the subordinates to waste their money on food and drink when they would rather go home, be with their families, and take a bath.

I won't miss this tradition of expecting workers to go out to drink or suffer unfortunate career or professional relationship consequences.

Will Miss #258 - language schools (the good)

A Geos poster, implying that you'll be in one big happy family with foreigners and Japanese alike if you attend their school. Of course, it's too late now since Geos folded.

While there are problems with working at language schools (related mainly to cultural differences and working expectations), the experience carries some unique benefits. The main one is that it is often an ideal environment for newcomers to Japan. You work with a variety of other foreigners with varying levels of experience in Japan. They not only share their knowledge and strategies for getting things done here in a way that fast forwards you through the process of settling in to life in Japan (with all of the complex rules and logistical differences), but they form an instant support network and social group for weathering culture shock. My early days in Japan were spent working at the now defunct Nova conversation school. I made some friends, some very good ones, who helped me cope with the plethora of things I needed to learn. I remember those people well despite the relatively brief time I spent at Nova.

I'll miss the social atmosphere and learning experience of working at language schools.

Won't Miss #258 - language schools (the bad)

An ad for "Geos" language school (eikaiwa) using Disney's "Shrek". Even though the school went out of business, these posters are still up all over Tokyo. Given the cash they must have invested to use these images, it's no wonder the company went down the drain.

One of the things that foreigners learn rather quickly after being engaged at a language school is that the experience is not what they might expect. More often than not, the teaching materials are lacking, training is inadequate to prepare you for the job ahead, and you are lied to about the conditions of your employment. The bulk of the lies relate to working hours. You're often expected to prep on your own time, for example, or teach on your day off without extra pay. If you insist on following the terms of your contract by, oh, say, leaving on time at the end of the day, you are looked at askance by the Japanese employees and seen as a lazy worker. If you continue to insist on keeping the hours as they were outlined to you, you may find yourself treated coldly.

I won't miss the way in which language schools bait and switch the working conditions on employees and therefore can never be trusted.

Won't Miss #224 - (s)Mothers and kyoiku mamas

Disclaimer (aka, please do not sue me): I'm not saying this lovely woman with her daughter is a kyoiku mama or overprotective because she's holding her little girl close. This is just a picture taken at a shrine on New Year's of a parent and seemed to fit the very general theme and is not meant to imply anything about this fine woman's character.

Though I have never been held hostage as part of a captive audience by an overenthusiastic parent, there are some problems with mothers in Japan, particularly if you are a teacher. Some mothers are over-involved with their children's lives to an unhealthy extent, particularly their education and any aspect related to their academic careers (like club activities). There's a term for women who relentlessly push their children to study, kyoiku mamas, and there are also women who simply insert themselves where they don't belong as part of their kid's education. Some mothers insist on standing at the back of the classroom during every lesson and interfere with lessons. Some of them dictate every little action to the teachers or bully or intimidate them. I once taught a mother who clearly dragged her son along to her English lessons and then dominated the lesson by translating for him and even incorrectly "correcting" his English instead of allowing me to do my job.

I won't miss these women who are so controlling with their children that they push them and me around.

Will Miss #219 - stockholders last

 There are a plethora of ways in which the Japanese do business differently than the rest of the world. This often causes problems for foreign partners, and for the Japanese branches of Western businesses in Japan, but certain choices are better for Japanese people. One of these differences is the order of priority when making decisions. The Japanese place customers first, employees second, and stockholders last whereas Americans tend to place stockholders first, customers second, and employees last. In the U.S., stockholders profit at the expense of workers, even if it means cutting health insurance, poor working conditions, and low wages. The Japanese have more of a sense of a social contract between companies and citizens. That's not to say that Japanese employees live in some sort of dream land when it comes to working conditions (nor that great sacrifices are made for them), but just that their interests are a higher priority than in Western companies.

I'll miss this way of doing business, and the effect it tends to have on the quality of life for employees in Japan.