There is a stereotype that Japan is a good place to work. This stereotype comes from our compatriots who work by invitation in foreign companies, where the Japanese try to adapt to the level and style of foreigners. Meanwhile, traditional working system Japan is structured in a unique way, and it is quite difficult to exist in it. That is why there are not many foreigners building a career in classic Japanese companies. About how the average exists office worker in Japan, says Epson employee Marina Matsumoto.
Tokyo. View from the 45th floor observation deck. Photo by Swe.Var (http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/swe-var/)
Of course, the conditions depend on the specific company, but in principle the dress code in Japan is much stricter than in Russia. Failure to comply with its rules has serious consequences for the employee, including immediate dismissal.
In a traditional Japanese company, they always wear a black suit, regardless of the weather, even if it’s +40 outside. The Japanese tolerate both heat and cold calmly, as they go through a very harsh school of hardening the body in childhood. Recently released new law allowing you to wear short-sleeved shirts to work. This is due to the forced saving of electricity, in which even in extreme heat air conditioners are no longer always used in offices.
In some companies, women are not allowed to wear fitted suits - they must be completely straight. The skirt must cover the knees.
Women's accessories are also prohibited. I have a large, serious company, it is known internationally. But I work where mostly Japanese work. At my workplace I was only allowed to wear a cross - under my clothes so that it would not be visible - and a wedding ring.
Makeup should be invisible. Japanese women love to wear bright makeup, their cheeks are very rosy, and almost all of them have false eyelashes. But at work, a woman should be as unattractive as possible to men.
In some places women are only required to wear short hair, not covering the ears. Hair color must be black. If you are naturally blonde, for example, you will have to dye your hair.
Except for men long hair You cannot wear a beard or mustache. This is an unspoken rule that everyone knows. The persistent image of the Yakuza (the traditional form of organized crime in Japan) gets in the way.
When I got a job, I signed a bunch of documents, where I assured that I would not discuss anything with clients and colleagues except work: neither the weather, nor nature. I don’t have the right to share my “personal data” at work - who is my husband, how are I doing... At home I don’t have the right to talk about my work. My work is not secret, but it is customary and stipulated in my contract.
On workplace They take only what they need for work: for me it’s documents and a pen. I can’t take my bag, wallet or phone; it remains at the checkpoint.
In Russia there is a favorite saying: “If you’ve done the job, walk boldly.” In the Russian workplace, the main thing is that you complete the plan for today. In Japan, no one is interested in “plans for today.” You came to work and you have to work at it.
In Russia we all know that wage depends on the results of your work. If you work poorly, you get nothing. If you work well, you receive bonuses and promotions. You’ve done everything, you can leave early or ask for an additional task to earn more.
In Japan you pay by the hour. Almost all Japanese people take overtime. But often this results in them stretching out one task that can be completed in two hours for a week. The deadlines set by the company also do not always correspond to the level of complexity of the work. The Japanese will poke around for hours, it seems to us that they work like sleepy flies, but they think that they do the job “thoroughly”. They incredibly slow down the workflow, so it’s difficult for us to work with them.
And this, by the way, is one of the main reasons why their economy was not in the best condition. They have trapped themselves with this hourly payment system. After all, in essence, work is designed not for quality, but for the number of hours spent in the office.
We all know that “brevity is the sister of talent,” but in Japan, brevity is narrow-mindedness. The Japanese cannot speak briefly and to the point. They launch into long and extensive explanations, which are aimed at ensuring that even a narrow-minded person understands what they are talking about. Meetings can last an incredible number of hours. The Japanese believe that if they talk for a long time and in excessive detail about the same thing, then they respect the interlocutor.
Growing rice requires a lot of work and organization. Therefore, historically, Japan has developed a system with very narrow specialization labor and strict stratification of society. Everyone has their own responsibility and their place in the life and production process.
Japanese communities have always been clearly organized. For example, a samurai never prepared food for himself; he could easily have died of hunger if the peasantry had not helped him out.
As a consequence of this mentality, it is very difficult for any Japanese to accept independent decision, which is not inherent in its status. They cannot take upon themselves basic responsibility that somehow goes beyond the scope of their everyday routine. To put a comma or not to put it is a problem for half a day. Preparing basic documents is a series of endless, very slow consultations. Moreover, the mandatory nature of such consultations is amazing. If an employee nevertheless takes it upon himself to make a decision that is not based on his status, then everyone in the hierarchical chain associated with him will receive a reprimand. This is eastern despotism in action: “I am a small man, I am a simple peasant, and I should only do the work assigned to me.”
Again, everything is understandable: Japan is a small country with a large overpopulation and needs strict frameworks and rules. To survive in Japan, you need to clearly know: my border is here, and this is the border of another person, I must respect it. No one goes beyond their limits. If a Japanese man marries them, he will literally be lost.
Russia has a huge territory, vastness, and open spaces. We are not constrained. We are free. A Russian person can do whatever he wants. And the Swede, and the reaper, and the player on the pipe... - this is primarily about us, Russians!
Interestingly, in Japan you are not supposed to demonstrate your difference or superiority in mind. You can’t show your uniqueness, your specialness. This is not welcome. Everyone should be the same. Since childhood, uniqueness is burned out there with a red-hot iron, so Japan will not give the world either Einstein or Mendeleev.
Famous Japanese technologies are a myth. As a rule, these are ideas that were not created by the Japanese. What they are good at is deftly picking up and improving on time. But we, on the contrary, can brilliantly create and forget...
To survive in Japanese society you have to be like everyone else. In Russia, on the contrary, if you are the same as everyone else, you will get lost. New ideas are constantly needed to master and fill a large space.
In a classic Japanese campaign, it takes a long time to build a career. Career advancement depends on age, not merit. A young specialist, even a very talented one, will occupy an insignificant position, work a lot and for a low salary, because he has just arrived. Due to this organization of the work process, it is increasingly difficult for Japanese companies to compete in the international market. Yes, there is a concept Japanese quality, but this no longer saves them, because business is conducted too much in the Japanese way.
Officially, salaries in Japan are high. But with the deduction of all taxes, which amount to almost 60%, they receive an average of a thousand dollars. Young people receive even less. At 60 years old, your salary is already a very decent amount.
There are no holidays in Japan. Weekends are Saturday or Sunday. And depending on the company, you are entitled to a few extra days off per year. Let’s say you’re allotted 10 days, but you can’t take them all at once. They need to be broken. It happens that you need to take one day off during the week and go somewhere on business. In my campaign, I have to give a month's notice so that everyone can cooperate and replace me. In some companies these terms are even longer. Taking time away from work due to an unexpected incident is problematic.
If you are sick on Monday and are thinking of not going to work, then they will not understand you. Everyone goes to work with a fever.
Weekends may be holidays: Day of Remembrance of the Dead - Obon, in mid-August. But a young specialist does not have such an opportunity; he will work for the first two years without extra days off.
On New Year 1-3 days are given. If they fall on Saturday-Sunday, then no one, like in Russia, will move them to Monday-Tuesday.
There is also a “golden week” in May, when several public and religious holidays occur in a row. My husband worked all days, I had 3 days off.
Standard working hours are from 9 am to 7 pm. But the main thing you should keep in mind is that if it is stated that the working day is from nine, then you cannot come directly to this time. Even if you arrived at 8.45, you are considered late. You have to arrive to work at least half an hour before, some people come an hour before. It is believed that a person needs time to get into a working mood and prepare for work.
The end of the official workday does not mean you can go home. It is not customary to leave before your boss. If he is late in the office for two hours, then you are late too, and this will not be considered overtime. Your personal circumstances are your personal problems, which, as I already mentioned, according to the agreement I signed with my colleagues, are not discussed.
In Japan there is such a concept - “nomikai” - “drinking together”, reminiscent of a Russian corporate party. Somewhere “nomikai” takes place every day, in my campaign - twice a week. Of course, you can refuse, but they will look at you askance. Why drink? – because in Japan there is a positive attitude towards alcohol. Shintoism involves making offerings to certain gods in the form of alcohol. Japanese doctors believe that drinking alcohol every day is beneficial. Nobody talks about doses.
The Japanese don't know how to drink, and, as a rule, they get very drunk. The drink itself will not cost you anything; either your boss or the company always pays for it.
Now, in order to further encourage visiting bars with colleagues, workers are even paid for “nomikai”. It's part of Japanese culture to work together and drink together. It turns out that you spend almost 24 hours a day, 365 days a year only with your work colleagues.
In addition to "nomikai", you need to drink with clients, with partners, with officials with whom the company is associated.
Yes, there is something similar in Russia, but it is completely incomparable to the Japanese alcoholic scale. And then in Russia the attitude towards alcohol is much more negative.
Now you can imagine the whole picture. A Japanese man leaves his house at 7 am. At work, he exists within the strict confines of his status. After the end of the official working day, he takes extra hours because he has to feed his family. He then goes out drinking with colleagues and returns home from there at 2 a.m., most likely drunk. He works on Saturdays. Sees his family only on Sundays. Moreover, until the evening, he can either sleep or drink all day off, because he is under terrible stress from such a cruel regime.
In Japan there is a separate concept - “death from overwork.” This is a very common case when people die at their desks or, unable to withstand the workload, commit suicide. For Japan, this is par for the course, an event to which there is practically no reaction. People will even be outraged if someone's suicide interferes with their work. Everyone thinks: “Why didn’t you do this somewhere in a quiet, inconspicuous place, because of you I won’t come to work on time!!”
We must understand that Japanese society did not sit and invent these rules for itself. Everything has evolved over the centuries due to the geographical and historical uniqueness of Japan. Probably everyone will agree that they had good reasons for such a mobilization of society, constant readiness for something. A small territory, many people, wars, earthquakes, tsunamis - everything can collapse at any moment. Therefore, from childhood, the Japanese learn to work in a group, learn to survive on their piece of land. In essence, all Japanese education is not built on teaching a person something, developing him, it teaches him to be a real Japanese, to be competitive in Japanese society... Not everyone can endure such a life, because it is really hard.
How do the Japanese relax?
Since club holidays passed by, and I was not invited to Japanese families, my vision of this area is very limited. I will only present my observations. Let me remind you once again that everything that has been said is purely my point of view, so to speak, an attempt to preserve and comprehend personal impressions.
Some of my compatriots are very mistaken, imagining the Japanese as such “unfeeling robots.” The Japanese love and know how to relax. True, the time frame for vacation is limited by law - “golden week” in May, “silver week” in September, a week-long commemoration of ancestors O-bon,
a couple of days New Year's holidays and several public holidays, which are not transferred if they fall on a weekend - in total, only 2-3 weeks of vacation per year.
Modern Japanese love to travel very much, they go abroad, but I can’t say much about this. Everyone has probably seen tourists here armed to the teeth with photo and video equipment. I was pleasantly surprised by the Japanese tourism infrastructure. This is not only a perfectly functioning transport and service sector, the best I have seen - the whole country is covered by the network tourist routes, as it is now fashionable for us to say “tourist clusters”.
Detailed maps, diagrams, transport schedules, and information booklets can be obtained from special information centers for tourists, and these centers are located at all important stations. It’s especially gratifying that ALL this was created for the Japanese themselves, and not, as in Egypt and Turkey, primarily for rich foreigners. Although, in last years They also rely on foreign tourists here: all information is duplicated in English, sometimes Chinese and Korean.
Let's return to the vacation of the Japanese themselves. The most popular format of recreation is family, in the most different types, depending on income, preferences, amount of free time and other factors. Hiking, cycling and auto tourism are developed. A typical picture of tent “mattress” tourism on weekends or holidays:
I repeat, nowhere and never have I seen so many people doing physical culture. There are a lot of nature reserves and environmental protection zones in Japan; this is almost the entire mountainous area where it is prohibited or limited economic activity. Here, for example, is rafting in Japanese:
For the Japanese, domestic tourism is also a pilgrimage to sacred places for them.
Those who were unable to get out into nature enjoy the types of recreation typical of city dwellers: cinema, theater, concerts, walks in numerous parks and gardens, shopping, visiting museums, cafe restaurants, taverns, and the like. What are the glaring differences from us? Firstly, the Japanese do not believe that eating in public and on the street is indecent; for them this is the norm. Any grocery store or catering establishment sells and warms up conveniently packaged lunch sets for any budget - O-bento. Most often, the set includes rice, pickled vegetables, meat or fish. Such a lunch will cost significantly less than what we call a business lunch in a cafe. The second thing that “delivered” to me was the custom of wearing traditional clothes and shoes ( kimono And geta) during the holidays.
Traditional costume is worn naturally and proudly by men and women, old and young. The third is the spirit of collectivism, which has been preserved and is opposed to such Western values as individualism, when everyone is for themselves. I met this outside the city, in nature, where almost everyone greets you. This can be seen during mass celebrations even in the city.
Mentality Japanese for dummies. I didn’t want to write on such a slippery topic as “rich inner world Japanese,” I wanted to avoid far-fetchedness and unfoundedness, but I had already started writing about it in the previous sections. Japan has strong traditions of hierarchy and corporatism. Japanese society is very closed and contains a lot of restrictions that are not obvious to us. A foreigner will not be able to become one of them, even if he is wealthy, professional, has learned the language, got married and had children. We will forever remain strangers to them - gaijins. The Japanese have a number of funny misconceptions associated with the image of “our beloved” Caucasians: we all look the same, we all speak and understand English, we are rich and we are very narrow-minded and impractical people. The Japanese do not distinguish between European languages if they do not know them. For example, they mistake Russian for French. The only way to establish friendships or friendships is to engage in some common activity or hobby.
The division into classes disappeared during the Meiji reforms, but the concept of "social status" is very significant in Japan. And when communicating with the Japanese, this must be taken into account. It’s clear that you shouldn’t humiliate a person and give him a tip, and you shouldn’t refuse change when buying something. Japanese service presupposes some servility and even fawning over the client; if we also respond extremely politely, then we put the service person in an uncomfortable position: he is forced to humiliate himself even more than he intended, and a misunderstanding of yours may also arise. social status, so you need to behave correctly, respectably and with dignity. The Japanese respect their superiors, assent, laugh, act where necessary - this is also the norm, not humiliating. They are very actively friendly towards their acquaintances. They talk to each other most often about the weather or food.
Are the Japanese religious?
I cannot answer this question unambiguously. Many Japanese visit temples, monasteries and cemeteries; I myself have seen this mass phenomenon.
They wash their hands and mouth. Burn incense. They donate small money, usually in denominations of 1 or 5 yen, less often -
10, throwing with a crash into wooden box for donations, they ring a special bell and clap their hands a couple of times, and this is how they behave in Shinto and Buddhist temples. It is unknown what the prayer is about. Probably about health, happiness and world peace. Old-timers claim that these are only rituals, and the Japanese themselves are not religious at all. Doubtful, since our informant’s social circle is limited to educated representatives of the middle class, who do not even perceive the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu. They do not believe in the spirits of ancestors who became gods. They do not believe in patron spirits of the area. And mass festivities- it’s just a fun get-together for neighbors near and far, different ages. Here is a photo from a festival in honor of local spirits (temporary storage of altars of local spirits with offerings; a procession with portable altars, which only the lazy do not pour water on; a cart with drums and drummers):
I can’t judge whether this is true or not, it’s too difficult for me. After all, our participation in Maslenitsa festivities and Navruz does not make us pagans, and visiting a church or mosque only big holidays, does not make us deeply religious.
Instead of an epilogue.
Dear readers, I am sincerely grateful to you for reading to the end! I tried to write what I was really curious and interested in. I hope you weren't bored either. I wish you to discover your Japan, full of secrets and mysteries. And already in this life.
