The Bipolarity and General Weirdness of Working in Japan
Sure, Japan is weird. Really weird. From whale-hunting to television to education policy, this country plays by its own rules, or at the least it has thrown the rulebook out the door. To characterise this weirdness, I present two obvious examples of my typical work-week:
First and foremost is the work environment. It seems that Japanese have two personalities, the dry, humourless, ascetic and utterly monotonous work mode, in which the average office peon will slave away from 7am until 9pm every day, Monday to Sunday, often running out of real work to do, relegating them to simply pretending. What productivity is achieved isn’t really important, but rather just that you appear to be working hard. During work time, colleagues prefer not to talk about anything outside of work. Conversation is normally limited to lessons, students, curriculum, meetings or somesuch related topic. Workers will hustle and bustle about, shuffling papers, photocopying nothing in particular, drafting 4 page agenda for the 30 minute PTA meeting… you get the idea.
But the moment, nay the second work time is ‘over’ colleagues will revert back to their normal selves. Dreary office underlings will suddenly have a personality and jibber jabber incessantly about their hobbies, family or anything really. It’s very much like a switch is turned on and off inside the brain that activates and deactivates work mode, appropriating the correct level of personality to the desired task. Myself? I load winamp, listen to music and write blog entries. It makes me look like I’m working ever so hard and have headphones on to avoid distractions, when in reality I’m just goofing off. Even with elementary school lessons to plan for and conversation classes to think of, I can finish my work comfortably, leaving me with plenty of time to… well… look busy.
The next weird thing is sport. Soccer practice, for example, sees the kids following a prescribed schedule of drills which never change and are done every day. Nobody improves, everybody just follows the rails, and then at the end is a collective huddle to discuss how hard everyone practiced and congratulate the team on a job well done. The last soccer tournament saw the team losing 0-11 to a local side, so I’m somewhat sceptical of the tactics employed.
Baseball is just pure insanity. It’s the equivalent of high school rugby, or the ‘jock’ sport in other words. The team bow and scream formalities at each other for 3 hours every day, following a baseball-adequate practice routine, with players removing their caps and bowing at each other after each drill is completed. It’s quaint, but hopelessly inefficient.
But then again, I doubt efficiency was ever the objective. Much like in the office, it’s more an exercise in appearances, making sure one looks good while doing nothing in particular. You have to remember that this is a school of 70 odd students, staffed by 14 teachers, excluding the ALT (me) and groundskeeper. There really shouldn’t be that much to do!
I have never gotten used to this phenomenon, and to be honest working in SA might do me some good; a kind of reassurance that bob is still at the coffee machine, talking about the rugby game on Saturday instead of filing his reports, and to be able to drive past the office on a Sunday night and NOT see over half my colleagues’ cars parked outside. When I see all the grey hairs sprouting from my coworkers in their twenties, and even some of the students(!), because feigned diligence isn’t limited to adults, I have take it all with a grain of salt!
That being said, I often find myself getting back home at 7pm or later, but it’s completely voluntary and largely due to soccer practices, school lesson planning meetings or somesuch. Basically if I’m still on the clock that late, I’m either driving around the countryside to an elementary school or at the soccer field. I sure as hell wouldn’t be at my desk, writing blog entries…
Pics of the week:
 |
| From Sakura and Deer |
Asajino Elementary School. Pretty Cherry Blossoms!
 |
| From Sakura and Deer |
Oh deer…
 |
| From Sakura and Deer |
Fog bank that hung over Sarufutsu all weekend
