Working in Japan

Many of you know I am being “loaned” out to a firm client for 2 years in Japan. This particular firm client is a fairly typical Japanese company in most respects. I started work on Monday December 15th and I’m sure the next 2 years are just going to fly by. Luckily for me, there is currently another secondee nearing the end of his assignment with this Japanese company who has been kind enough to clue me in to some of the more interesting Japanese work-culture phenomenon. Because this is a typical Japanese company I get all sorts of extra days off in addition to the usual Japanese National holidays. In fact, December 26th is the last day of work for this year as most Japanese companies take the rest of the year off and New Year’s Day and in the case of this year, January 2nd since it’s a Friday. I also get the Obon Period off which occurs in the middle of August – a time traditionally meant for workers to go back to their home towns to pay respects to the souls of their ancestors.

The office is bull pen style with the boss or “boucho” with a desk at one end of the room and the employees at divided desks in the rest of the room. We have small partition screens but not really cubicles. There is basically only 1 number for the legal department although the boss does have his own line. When people call the legal department, all the phones ring and someone (either the admin assistant or anyone else who is free) answers, puts the call on hold and lets the person know they have a call. Strangely enough, for a highly technologically savvy society, most of their computers are old and no one uses Outlook for anything besides e-mail. People usually call to schedule meetings and meeting rooms are booked by simply writing down your name and time in pencil on a calendar hung on the door. There are about a dozen people in the legal department and yet it is eerily quiet most of the time.

Here are a couple more interesting Japanese work-culture tid bits. It seems there is a pretty set lunch time (I didn’t say “lunch hour” on purpose as lunch is officially 45 minutes) between noon and 12:45pm. How do I know this? At noon and 12:45 a musical jingle is played throughout the building to let everyone know to head to lunch and to let everyone know lunch is over. I had been warned before starting work but it was still rather odd to actually hear it for the first time. I should record the jingle for fun.

I’m sure everyone has heard of or seen the advanced toilets in Japan . Well, at work, the ladies’ room includes toilets that have a “ Flushing sound” button to mask those un-ladylike noises. Apparently this button was in response to water conservation requests since Japanese ladies use the courtesy flush concept often.

Finally, there was an announcement this morning by the HR department and this was not a receptionist paging someone by phone. The gist of the announcement was that it was Friday and people should not work overtime in an effort to cut costs, etc. The funny part of the announcement was that the lady making the announcement used an old school type Public Address system. It reminded me of back in the day at school when you had morning announcements or in theShawshank Redemption when Tim Robbins takes over the warden’s office and plays an aria from the Marriage of Figaro.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have many more interesting things to write about on the subject of working in Japan so stay tuned…