WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 34

Why

This is a blog about me, a British man, working as a train station cleaner in Japan.

A few days ago, someone, in response to the existence of this blog series, asked the question of why a white guy would be doing unskilled labour in Japan. I will take this as a good faith question and attempt to answer.

First of all… Why not?

Is there any sort of socio-economic or cultural reason why a Caucasian Westerner cannot, should not or would not perform manual labour in Japan? I can’t see any. Japan is short-handed across a broad range of professions and industries and any person willing to perform the work for the wages offered ought to be able to make the choice to do so.

But I suppose this person was questioning my psychological reasons for doing ‘nikutai roudou’ (the Japanese phrase for manual labour), having assumed I have other options. The long and the short of it is that, while I have indeed worked in other roles, these other roles involved heavy supervision or sustained and close contact with coworkers. When it comes to the workplace, I prefer to be alone, and cleaning allows me to earn money unwatched and without being submitted to close and continuous assessment.

Since coming here, I have been an English teacher, a salesman of market research, and an administrator for a recruitment company serving care home facilities. Each of these jobs has involved relatively constant interaction with colleagues, bosses, and/or paying customers. Whilst I have good private social relationships and am not a loner generally, I struggle deeply with the culture and expectations that flow from workplace hierarchies.

There is a level of formality and detail-orientation in office work, especially, that I find extremely wearing. Add to this the fact that, as mentioned in other instalments of this series, offices here tend to be open plan and offer little privacy. I’m not a person who steals, picks his arse or secretly shoots heroin at work, but I do find a sea of unobscured faces, each able to watch the others, disturbing.

In Japan, where offices usually lack cubicles, departments are arranged in ‘islands’ of desks. This is normally two rows of desks pushed together so that their long sides touch along a centre line. Typically, this would seat four to eight employees. At the end of these islands is a ‘kachou’ (section chief) or maybe a ‘buchou’ (director of a department), seated at ninety degrees to the people he or she is managing. At the company I worked at for ten years, I was at the end of the island nearest the chief, meaning that he was often in my peripheral vision. He could look into the side of my face, but I had to turn to look at him.

I don’t believe this is healthy. Another animal in one’s peripheral vision surely must trigger a primal, atavistic predator alert or danger warning of some kind. If you’re like me, you end up with carpal tunnel syndrome of the perceptual apparatus, twinging from the relentless strain of wanting this presence to vacate the corner of your view.

The money was decent in the office but it wasn’t worth the low-level anxiety, exposure to strip lights and ambient judgmental pressure. Teaching English was fun but, let’s be honest, there are only so many days you can dance and sing songs with children before you start fantastising about living as a hermit in a mountain bunker.

So, I made a choice: receive less money per hour in exchange for being left alone, and for not being tasked to do calculations or make dozens of completely accurate invoices and estimates. The reasons I, the white guy, am doing ‘unskilled’ labour in Japan are indeed psychological, and have to do with my emotional state.

I don’t know how long I can carry on with my present job, or whether there could be any sort of career in it, but it’s enjoyable not to be thinking about work during my evenings at home and days off. There aren’t any emails to be sent first thing the next day, project materials to finish up, or any of that hassle. You clock out and go home with a clear head.

As also mentioned in a previous entry, I want to buy an ‘akiya’, meaning ‘empty house’. These are the abandoned and usually dilapidated properties dotting the Japanese countryside, which can be had for about three million yen (give or take). The reason is that it would allow me to stop paying rent, save more money, and do the place up in all sorts of crazy styles without eating a damage deposit. Given that my current employer is affiliated with a major transport network, I am hoping transfer to other parts of the country might be easy, a big help if the property I choose is in another prefecture.

Anyway, I have addressed my visceral loathing of offices enough. It’s time to move on to other topics: house-hunting, mental illness, summer heat, homelessness, and changing trends in the Japanese job market.

Additionally, I think I’ll start folding some basic Japanese lessons into my writing, just in case someone reading is trying to pick up the language.

Part 33 of this blog is here.

And the next part is here.

If you want a quick, fun, wild read, you could try my novel Disease, which is here on Kindle.