These Japanese/English translated pieces are interesting: Japan: Call us social beings now!

Excerpt:

Also kurumazuke shares his account of what starting to work means for many in Japan who move to the company’s dormitory and receive a one month training period before being assigned to their department.

少しずつ慣れてはきたけど、寮で生活したり電車で通勤したりとガラッと環境が変わって何かと大変です。
研修も思ったよりキツいです。朝早起きして通勤するだけでもそこそこ疲れちゃうからどうしても眠くなっちゃうし、毎日日報書かなきゃいけないのが辛い。どこの会社でも最初の研修はしんどいのかなぁ。
その代わり、土日がものすごくうれしいです。学生の頃は土曜日は毎週バイトしてたし日曜日もちょくちょく大学行ってたとはいえ、週末まともに休めるのがこんなにも幸せだとは・・・

I' m getting used to this new life little by little but still, it's hard living in the dormitory plus commuting and a completely changed environment.
The training is harder than expected. and waking up early in the morning and going to work make me tired and inevitably sleepy. Moreover, I have to write a daily report which is a pain. I wonder if in any other company the initial training is so tough?
On the other hand however, when the weekend comes I am the happiest. When I was a student I used to work on Saturday and it often had to go to university on Sunday. I would never have thought that being able to rest properly on the weekend was such a wonderful thing…

Followed by: Eight Tips for New Shakaijin

Excerpt:

6. Forget about what the client wants. It's about what your BOSS wants.

Occasionally you will see superiors doing things that appear not to be in the client's best interest, or that seem technically flawed in some way. Ignore it. The people doing these things have far more experience than you. It is one hundred times better to learn to change your own way of thinking than it is to work on trying to change others.


Word of the Thread:

社会人
しゃかいじん
(n) working adult; full-fledged member of society; (P)
Audio

nest0r Wrote:6. Forget about what the client wants. It's about what your BOSS wants.

I read that previously. My first thought was 'That's a great way to kill the company.'

I've never subscribed to that crap and never will. The customer always comes before the company in my book. It made me very, very popular with the customers when I worked sales, even though it never meant costing the company any money. (I admit that it could have, but it didn't.)

Nice vocabulary note. ^__^

I'm not sure wether this discussion is about the process of becoming a 社会人 or should you become one. If you think you have better opportunities in Japan, then great but I don't see the attraction of taking a job in Japan just so you can use Japanese. (just my honest opinion though)

@gyuu - I'm not sure if your comment is on this post or if you're asking whether you should join the military. If you want to join, that's great, but I don't think you should join the military just because you want to learn to take a gun apart very quickly. ^_-

Translation: Huh? What're you on about? Become a shakaijin? Asking whether... ? Doing so to learn Japanese... ? What the... ? Anyway, hope you enjoyed those articles about the nature of entering the workforce in Japan, and the Japanese/English translations. Fascinating stuff.

wccrawford Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:6. Forget about what the client wants. It's about what your BOSS wants.

I read that previously. My first thought was 'That's a great way to kill the company.'

I've never subscribed to that crap and never will. The customer always comes before the company in my book. It made me very, very popular with the customers when I worked sales, even though it never meant costing the company any money. (I admit that it could have, but it didn't.)

Meh.

more old cliches ... negative cultural stereotyping ... reductive ... essentialist..."Japan Hat" ish... and incorrect (J7 already informed us that only gaijin get the office greeting orientation.)

wouldn't you say?

Thora Wrote:more old cliches ... negative cultural stereotyping ... reductive ... essentialist..."Japan Hat" ish... and incorrect (J7 already informed us that only gaijin get the office greeting orientation.)

wouldn't you say?

I don't know what kind of joke you're making. Are you saying via parody that other people would take legitimate cultural artefacts/processes and declare that any admission of their existence, even by Japanese, is Japan Hand stereotyping? I don't think even J7 would do that!

Besides, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a Japan Hand. Only certain types as described in my previous comment via Momus. ;p

By the way, did you catch this? BREAKING NEWS: Debito to quit activism

Or wait, perhaps you were referring to comments in the links by would-be Japan Hands. ^_^

"@gyuu - I'm not sure if your comment is on this post or if you're asking whether you should join the military. If you want to join, that's great, but I don't think you should join the military just because you want to learn to take a gun apart very quickly. ^_-

Translation: Huh? What're you on about? Become a shakaijin? Asking whether... ? Doing so to learn Japanese... ? What the... ? Anyway, hope you enjoyed those articles about the nature of entering the workforce in Japan, and the Japanese/English translations. Fascinating stuff."

--wow my post was stupid...
すみません

It wasn't stupid, gyuujuice. I understood your comment to be that while the article's description of the process of joining a company is interesting, it also highlights some aspects that might be hard for some people to accept. So a foreigner considering working for Japanese company primarily to master the language, ought to consider whether they are well suited to what might be a different corporate culture.

You extended the topic of Japanese transitioning from student role to traditional employee role to how foreigners might fit into that role. Perhaps Nest0r didn't have foreigners in mind originally, so s/he wasn't exactly sure where you coming from.

Thora Wrote:more old cliches ... negative cultural stereotyping ... reductive ... essentialist..."Japan Hat" ish... and incorrect (J7 already informed us that only gaijin get the office greeting orientation.)

Japanese 新米 get orientation training too, but it's different. Theirs focuses on 敬語, phone manners, and business manners (where you should sit at a table/car, where you should stand in the elevator, how to exchange business cards, etc.) Saying おはようございます/お疲れ様です and the 先輩・後輩 relationship is something that everyone already knows by the time they're in elementary school. The few years of being the lowest rung on the ladder is to train them how to do the job, since universities aren't really adequate to throw them right into it (internships and the like aren't nearly as common as in the west).

Foreigners will almost never interact with Japanese clients (and never by themselves), so their training focuses on how not to make a nuisance of themselves around the office. Foreigners are almost always 転職, so they are expected to already know what they're doing, but are also expected to be bumbling fools when it comes to manners and 常識.

Both types of employees have their own needs (as perceived by management), so their training is quite different.

@Thora - "Perhaps"? Uhh... more like "definitely not, that's just so random". But your gist is right, it's not 'stupid', just weirdly random, like throw in some kind of segue or pretext or something, and shift from talking about 社会人 to like whatever Jarvik's talking about. ;p

nest0r Wrote:I don't know what kind of joke you're making. Are you saying via parody that other people would take legitimate cultural artefacts/processes and declare that any admission of their existence, even by Japanese, is Japan Hand stereotyping?

We're more likely to accuse foreigners of stereotyping and accept Japanese observations as legitimate. In other words, in trying to rectify the perspective/bias problem, the pendulum might have swung a bit too far the other way.

I just think it's become tricky to discuss culture and society. Folks don't agree on who is entitled to describe it (only Japanese? Japanese-speaking foreigners even if they aren't experts? expert foreigners even if they don't speak Japanese? anyone?) They also disagree about the Why, the How and the What (whether culture even exists.) I'm not sure this is a good thing - a potential chilling effect.

It was interesting to read some Japanese blogs on this topic. Thanks.
btw, I did mean to type "old Japan Hand" not "Japan Hat." I wonder if my brain somehow merged it with "old hat" (as in trite) haha

Quote:By the way, did you catch this? BREAKING NEWS: Debito to quit activism

I'm afraid I don't get it. An unfunny April fool's by Debito ... or mocking him?

If only it was true. He is the very definition of bitter old hand.

I've met the guy. He came into class, gave a very generic presentation, and then went out drinking with a few of us a week later and hung out just like normal people.

He enjoys attention, and letting you know at any and all opportunity why you should visit his website and buy his book.

He's an alright guy to sit down and have a chat with, but at certain points in time, he reminded me of a college frat boy telling stories of how cool something he did was.

Note re: my post

I am not against activism, in fact I think a lot needs to change in regards to foreigner's rights (and enforcement thereof). The problem is that Debito is too confrontational and ends up accomplishing nothing but the creation of antagonism. He has accomplished nothing except to get "Japanese only" signs taken down from a few isolated stores. It would be like if the civil rights movement in the US only succeeded in letting black people sit in the front of only the #2 bus that runs from 2pm on Sundays.

Change needs to be done by working inside the system with lawyers and labour unions, not by paying your residential tax in 1Y coins to protest fingerprinting at immigration.

@J7 The tip for new recruits was about 挨拶と笑顔. Does this mean that Japanese don't learn to smile back in elementary school? I'm not sure why you're giving me a comparative overview of corporate training in Japan.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Foreigners will almost never interact with Japanese clients (and never by themselves), so their training focuses on how not to make a nuisance of themselves around the office. Foreigners are almost always 転職, so they are expected to already know what they're doing, but are also expected to be bumbling fools when it comes to manners and 常識.

I think your broad cartoon description of foreign employees in Japan is very misleading. Many foreign employees in Japan wouldn't be able to do their jobs if they didn't understand the language and business customs and couldn't meet with clients and customers. I and most of my foreign colleagues at different employers met with clients, customers and government on our own. We weren't expected to be a nuisance, bumbling fools or ignorant.

Some foreign employees obviously need to rely on their Japanese staff for some things: expats who are dropped into their Tokyo offices and people hired for their English or other skills, for eg. There are still folks in this group who conduct business in Japan skillfully without speaking the language.

A few foreigners are regular hires and go through regular training. Several of my friends spent a few years in dorms starting out at various companies. (I wouldn't recommend it.) Even lateral hires get some training. I joined the Japanese new recruits at a major trading company for portions of their training relating to the company even though I already had work skills.

As usual - it depends. Things are rarely 'always' or 'never'.

@Thora - I have to disagree, I don't think there's a chilling effect, and really haven't seen anything like what you describe, simply because there's been nothing to compare the Japan Hands against, or rather, very little, because the few 'native Japanese' English-language bloggers tend to just join the fray of 'those wacky Japanese'... or focus on pop culture/otaku stuff. That's another reason I was excited by having translated blog entries to present that wasn't 'filtered' very much by the translator/host. Global Voices is cool like that.

There's a valuable element to the perspective of the expatriate, but I haven't seen it used well by many people, it seems most are content to interject themselves as interpreters, of, as Momus put it, 'the tricky situation on the ground'. I think that's a terrible mindset to have for writers/readers/whoever. I appreciate and echo your concerns about what is cultural, what is 'native'/entitled to opinion, etc., but at this point I think it's better to look at it in terms of primary/secondary sources and not letting limited, secondary editorials be a virtual tourist's guide to How Japan Works. In other words, I want to still that pendulum!