Narrative Disorder… in Japan!!

In Japan it is still the case that most workers are "company men." Leaving a company before you retire to simply start working somewhere else is something which is only just becoming more popular but still by no means common. These days, a person gets his status from which company he works for more so than from his family name or even his actual profession (unless he’s a doctor with his own surgery/hospital) and he owes his company his loyalty similarly as a medieval man owed to his liege lord. For example, suiciding over shaming a company by being a manager who oversaw some major fraud or ethical issue is often in the news and though it is considered tragic and no-one says outright that it is the right thing to do, it also seems not to be frowned upon particularly. And, like liege lords, there are good companies and bad - some will simply work their people into the ground (until they are caught out) and some will treat them well.

The Japanese government watches over the companies and fines and (more importantly) shames them if their worker welfare slips so far as to be headline news but the government also seems to depend upon companies as a kind of social safety net, regulating company behavior to an extent that would have Australian companies up in arms. Companies here pay our equivalent of the medicare levy, for example, and recently it has been proposed (I’m not sure if it has passed yet) that companies be made responsible for the increasing obesity of their workers - for each worker over 45 who is over a certain waist measurement after a certain date, the company will have to pay more of that levy to handle the assumed extra cost in medical care that person may cost the state (though since arriving here I’ve been told that there is no public health system except for keeping prices at the many private hospitals/clinics down by decree - not subsidization, so I’m not sure where said money is actually going… so I am obviously missing a piece of the puzzle here.)  This example may not be as severe as it may seem to many Australians since obesity in Japan is very much a ’salary man’s’ disease caused by too much time in the desk chair and too little time to eat healthily. Grabbing some curry and rice from the station curry stand when heading home on the very last train (if you haven’t missed it) is the best many can do. And this is the thing - the Japanese spend so much of their lives working and so much is expected of them by their companies that it does actually make sense that companies should be held at least partly responsible for their employees welfare beyond what is strictly the work environment. Of course that could equally apply to many Australian companies - particularly when it comes to excessive drinking of their employees at official and unofficial after work gatherings - but then we all know I’m a raging socialist so we can ignore that

But what about the welfare of temp agency staff?

Temp agencies apparently took a while to catch on in Japan because employers weren’t sure they wanted someone who was not indoctrinated in the company ‘way’ to invade the compound, as it were. It has taken off now, though, and people are not happy with the way the temporary workers are being treated - the companies they temp for do not consider them their own but the temp agencies do not offer the kind of protection that permanent staff get at a regular company. Rather than asking the temp agencies to, say, only take on the number of employees they can regularly offer work and so can afford to take care of as other companies take care of their workers (something which was the norm in Australia within my own memory but is now long gone) some have wanted to ban temp agencies altogether and the following appeared in Japan Today, today.

Ruling bloc eyes banning daily-basis dispatch of temp workers

Thursday 03rd July, 04:52 AM JST

TOKYO —

A task force of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner New Komeito Party agreed Wednesday to seek basically banning temp staff agencies from dispatching temp workers on a daily basis, a practice criticized for spawning young working poor and widening Japan’s social disparities, lawmakers said.

As the task force put out its basic stance Wednesday in seeking amendments to the worker dispatch law, the two parties plan to formulate their recommendations on the matter, and based on them the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is expected to submit a bill to revise the law to the Diet in an extra session convening around late August

Interesting solution. On the surface it looks like those who wanted to ban the agencies altogether have come to a compromise, maybe that’s the case or maybe they are cleverer than their opponents think. It is inevitable that workers will need individual days off at least for the odd flu or funeral. If companies cannot hire temps for the day, what will they do? Two solutions come immediately to mind - the second of which might just see less demand for temp agencies altogether and more permanent (even if part-time) work for people. 

The first solution is the one which, frankly, many companies (at least in the West to my knowledge) already resort to instead of hiring temps: foist the work onto some other poor soul or souls who already have enough to do and then blame the poor sick or bereaved worker for not being there . The second solution is for the company to ‘take the high road", if you will, and actually take responsibility for managing this inevitable, unavoidable situation by actually preparing for it. Afterall that’s what today’s leadership is supposed to be all about isn’t it? Human Resource Management? The skeletal staffing arrangements of western companies where they might hire one person to be admin assistant for 5 or 6 mid level executives seems to me a false economy especially when you take into account that over-work and over-stress actually causes the kind of illness which will have people needing days off or working at half-strength if they come in. If you do not order enough copy paper in advance for your requirements then you have managed your needs badly - similarly if you find yourself without enough staff then you have also managed your needs badly, no matter what the reason, because people are wet machines that need rest and become ill if they don’t get enough.

In the ‘olden days’ before employees became "human resources" and, admittedly, before word processors and photocopiers there were ’secretarial pools’ from which people, ok lets face it women, could be transferred for the day or the week that someone was away. If there was notice, as in the case of planned leave, then there could even be a hand-over. Of course it meant that people in the typing pool had to handle the extra work and I wasn’t around then so I’m not sure how that was handled but I’m sure it was handled well in at least some companies.  Obviously there isn’t the amount of work that justifies a typing pool as such these days, but, it seems to me, with the huge cost of temp staff it wouldn’t hurt a company to have one or a few (depending on the size of company) extra ‘floating’ admin staff who are on permanent salary (even if it’s part time) to help out and be available to fill in where necessary. In fact I remember seeing adverts when I was first starting work for ‘admin floaters’ (and giggling stupidly because I was 14.)  Of course, this solution would lead to less demand for temp workers altogether and a decrease in temp agency revenue but it would mean more real jobs and maybe that’s what the anti-temp employment politicians have in mind - but it’s probably just a political compromise. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Have I said how magnificent the early evening winds are here? Seriously worth the heat of the day (esp if you can hide from it inside with air-con but even then…)

/happy sigh

As you will have gathered from the change in blog title and in the weather widget in the sidebar…we’ve arrived!
Superman and myself were installed in our new little villa unit in Nagoya on Monday 23rd and Brigie joined us (somewhat sorry for herself but extra cuddly) on Wednesday 25th. The new house is pretty bare except for a temporary bed until our sea shipment arrives and appliances as we were unable to organize leased furniture from Australia. We organized that the day after we arrived and we should have somewhere comfortable to sit in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, we are making do with two floor chairs we picked up for about Y3000 each ($30AUD) which are made for tatami rooms. The fluffy blue pod which Brigid is stubbornly looking at rather than sitting in cost twice the price of the floorchairs but of course Brigie won’t use it - we never learn lol. The floorchairs are actually quite comfortable but not having a table and so, for example, resting my laptop on the box the transformer came in as I write this makes for back-breaking work. Our desktop computers are arriving by air next week (we had an allowance of 4 teachests by air and we filled most of them with our computers - priorities, priorities…) but we will likely not use them till the desks arrive even though all my current email and skype addresses are on the desktop and I am hanging out to contact everyone!

I’ll make this a quick post and get working on a couple of longer ones I’ve been planning. Standby - pictures incoming…

As we take a break from packing to enjoy the bounty that is the-last-stuff-in-the-fridge, I thought I’d take the opportunity to make what will no doubt be the last post from Australia for quite some time.

I say "packing" but we are, of course, not actually packing but rather preparing for the packers of OSS (Overseas Shipping Services I believe) to arrive at 7:30 tomorrow morning. As lovely as it sounds to have someone else pack for you I would actually venture that it is far more stressful because of the sheer level of organization required. When you pack for yourself you can organize as you pack: "Hmm, forgot we had that, guess I’ll put this in this box here" "Ah we’ll need that before the Sea shipment comes guess I’ll put that in this box here." Instead,one must provide a detailed inventory to the company some weeks in advance for both insurance purposes and as a guide for the packers THEN, as the day approaches, you have to find ways to ensure that it is communicated to the guys on the day. Having experienced this process to a smaller degree when we were transferred to Sydney, I can attest that packers (as in the guys who come and pack your stuff, not a certain wealthy Australian family with a penchant for gambling from both sides of the table) give a good impression of locusts. They arrive, they buzz about determinedly for what is probably a few hours but feels like a few minutes and when they are gone everything, and I mean everything is gone. I was recently told about a diplomat whose shipment arrived after two months on the sea and eagerly opened it up to find her partially full rubbish bin in a box. Seriously. Think about it. Two months in the sun on a container ship…

So, we are grouping everything in stacks or on shelves with big yellow, blue or pink stickers with Air, Sea or Store on them and hoping we’ve got it all right! Our consultants in the office have asked us to be around to direct everything which is a good sign since the lat guys asked us not to be present - so we should be okay. When it all comes down to it though, by midday Friday everything will be packed and "uplifted" and there will be nothing we can do anymore - which is exactly why I always preferred exams over assignments lol.

Sydney has been … well it’s been. We really, really, should not have lived in The Shire. We chose it because it was 3 minutes from Superman’s work and, frankly, we just didn’t know.  We had some glimpses when we told people where he was working and they said "You’re white, you could live down there." We wondered at the seeming racism but ignored it. No one suggested we NOT live here though. No-one told us that we would never hear a language other than English spoken nor see a complexion darker than ours that wasn’t due to an insane amount of time spent on a tanning bed. No-one told us that in the very few, just-barely-above-supermarket-quality greengrocers here garlic would be found "down there with the other exotic things" or that "brown" is still a descriptive used to describe bread - though "whitebread" is a perfect descriptive for the whole area so that’s probably ok. Having our cars vandalized when they couldn’t break into them three times hasn’t really helped our impressions either…

We were told that, because of the traffic (made worse, especially for new people by the higgledy piggledy civic "planning"), you’d have to "live" where you live  and that was, essentially, true - going into the city from here is a nightmare by car or public transport. Nevertheless I found solace slowly driving the 25 minutes to Hurstville to do my grocery shopping. The Westfield mall there is quite small and has become like a small town market. Every time I went around 11 in the morning I would see a group of ten or so 65+ yr old husbands of various European origin who seem to have made a club house of some sofas near the exit to the car park and chat for seemingly hours while they waited for their wives to finish shopping. I could shop for terribly exotic things like mirin or Chinese cooking wine or - shock horror - homemade kibbe and hummous.  Best of all, I could stand in the medicare line and eavesdrop on little old french ladies lamenting their daughters’ not yet being married or listen in blissful ignorance to the gentle rhythms of Mandarin or the bright clang of Cantonese. When we return we will live in Hurstville I think

Anyway enough procrastinating, my feet are almost not sore!! Must get back to it. No doubt my next post will be from our new home in Nagoya!!

Annabel Crabb is one of my favourite journalists. I always hope to see her on the Insiders couch each Sunday for her deep political insights and ability to cut through the dross to the heart of the matter at hand in such a way that even Piers Akerman knows the argument is done (not that it stops him muttering one last remark under his breath like a child pouting in the backseat).

She’s also quite a lot of fun. 

In this important article, Annabel asks:
"Why do our police have to sound like they learnt English from a mobile phone instruction pamphlet?"

If you’re cerebrally inclined (and you’re unlikely to be a friend of mine if you’re not - lets face it I’m either excruciatingly boring or completely baffling to anyone who isn’t) click the link and enjoy!

Guilty of grievous oratory harm - Annabel Crabb - Opinion - smh.com.au

Since the Japanese drive on the left as we do here in Australia, the main concern Superman and I have about driving in Japan is not being able read the street signs. I’ve been hunting for something which would allow us to learn them before we move but have had little luck till today (when I used the term "road sign" instead of "Street sign" D’oh!)

So for anyone interested here’s the link!

New International and Japanese Road Signs

Small quibble - on the first page two of the signs look remarkably similar and yet have, admittedly slightly, different translations… I think if I see this one I’ll just stop anyway hehe

We have a home in Nagoya! At least the paperwork is going through for us to move in on the 19th of June!! It is in a hilly and quite green (for nagoya) suburb called Kakouzan which is about 15 minutes by train to Superman’s station in the centre of Nagoya - we are really happy with it and pictures will follow when we get back to Sydney.  We spent yesterday being given a tour of the area from restaurants to pharmacies and supermarkets.We are getting quite confident about using what little Nihongo we know because if you try even slightly people will happily take your stilted grade 1 vocab and your insane gestures and work out what you are saying. When we were in the pharmacy I took some items to the counter and made my first purchase in Japan (Superman has been holding the money and doing it mostly lol) and the phrases we had been taught really worked hehe! The lady at the counter responded in Japanese (instead of breaking into English as most people do) and asked me if I had a loyalty card and if I would like some coupons for next time - I choose to believe she thought I lived here teehee. BTW getting the yen thing down is quite easy if you think of the yen as cents - it so happens that one yen = about one australian cent atm (and milk and groceries are about the same as in Sydney - 269 yen for 2 litres of milk for example or 315 yen for half a dozen free range eggs) but even if it did not it helps to think of them that way to get your head around the huge numbers you are working with. There is no such thing as the japanese “dollar” they simply speak in cents.

Last night we found the most AMAZING restaurant in the Fushimi district called “Show Ryu”. We were walking down a road closed to traffic, which is kind of like China Town in Melbourne with lots of restaurants, and I heard some saxophone coming from somewhere - we followed it up some stairs found a restaurant with a menu out front with NO ENGLISH or even romaji except for “Charcoal Grill and Sushi” and “modern japanese cuisine” so, of course,  we ventured in. It turned out the sax was not live but the food was AMAZING - particularly a mackerel sushi which was very very lightly seared on their charcoal grill so there was a slight smokey/char flavour to it. The lady who greeted us at first did not speak English to us but was patient and sweet as we did our best to order. “what is the fish of the day” became “today, what is fish?” hehe and then when she said it we realised we didn’t know what the Japanese names of fish were so we got it down to a white fish and a blue fish (which turned out to be red bream which IS kind of blue!) Each time she returned to the table she ventured a little more English  - she didn’t have much but by the end of the night we had communication going well! It turned out that her name was Yoko and she and her husband were the owners and her husband the sushi chef whose food we were complimenting. I asked her if she could slowly tell me the japanese name of the fish we were enjoying so much and she did and then returned a little while later with the names written down in kanji, hiragana and English so I could find them at a “sakana ya.” (fishmonger) We will be going back on Friday night to try some more of his delicious dishes!

At the moment Superman is off buying a nintendo DS because you can get Japanese dictionary programs in which you can use the stylus to draw in kanji and it will translate it for you! Of course he won’t be buying any games to play at all hehe!

Tonight we are going to a restaurant recommended by some other Toyota guys called “Szechuan Restaurant Chen” - the Nagoya restaurant of “Iron Chef Szechuan” Chen! It will be a big change from the subtle delicacy of Ryuji’s food but I’m sure it will be wonderful!
Superman’s colleague will be waiting at the lift soon so I’d better get ready - ja’a mata!

There is something very strange about suddenly standing in places you have been looking at in pictures for months and months. Well, not exactly suddenly, it is a looong flight (9 hrs to Hong Kong and then another 3.5 hours in a small rattly domestic sized plane hehe) but still, compared to the time I’ve spent longing to come to this country, it was a blink of the eye.

The overwhelming impression of Japan is genuinely of order and cleanliness and friendliness. That observation has, of course, been made but many but I always assumed that it was a kind of stereotype akin to “all Aussies are surfers who eat meat pies and love cricket” but it is not. Things just flow here. We got off the plane at the new Nagoya airport (which is absolutely spotless) and found the Meitetsu line station right there in the airport complex as we exited customs. There were HUGE signs saying Nagoya Eki Y850 and we were tired but decided to brave the train instead of a taxi. Superman easily used one of the many little machines to get us tickets and we wandered on to the waiting train. I was very pleased with myself as the train driver announced the stops we would be making and then that we would reach Nagoya at 10pm - and I understood it hehe!. The limited express was fairly full but not full enough to be able to say we have really experienced a packed nihon no densha (Japanese train) It stopped 8 times at stations I had gotten to know while surfing for housing in the last few months and we were at Nagoya Eki in around twenty minutes. THEN our Toyota planning kicked in as we took the lift from the platform to find ourselves facing a sign with our hotel’s name on it and found that it was in the skyscraper right above the station! We easily found our way to the 15th floor reception where we were greeted with a friendly “Good evening Mrs Ruschena, Mr Ruschena” by the first we saw as we exited the lift. It was a little confusing though very impressive  - we had come up the back way so there had been noone to call ahead and tell them we were coming up, they must just all know who is expected at what time (btw this was not the over exaggerated enthusiasm from TV thank goodness since that would have been a bit much in that state, it was just polite and seemingly genuine friendliness.) Dazed and tired had negotiated the transfer to the hotel - on public transport - something I wouldn’t want to try in Sydney!!

So after a night’s sleep (in a very hard bed) we woke to our day to ourselves. We met Superman’s colleague Duc, who is also transferring on the project, for breakfast (the mackerel is to DIE for - I’ll get shots at some stage) and then spent the day being tourists - and I mean tourists lol. I’m afraid I embarrassed Superman a little taking photos like… well,  a Japanese tourist! I will post them with a bit of a commentary when we return to Sydney as, unfortunately, we left the usb cord that connects the camera to the computer at home :(  Essentially though, we wandered away from the hotel to see what was around and found our way to a big permanent market - mostly of fish it seemed. It was closed at the time but we think must have been open earlier because there was cleaning going on.
We then found an enormous electronics store - in which we spent a good couple of hours exploring all 6 floors. It was really lovely to see so many computer and related products all together in a large, spacious area rather than having to slink your way through the packed and invariably dusty shelves of tiny PC stores and have to settle for what they happen to have because you just don’t want to have to go to anymore stores!!  “Geeks unite and be proud!” the store seemed to shout - hehe. And SUCH variety too - never in Japan is there only one version or colour of anything, it seems.

In the afternoon we decided to go to Nagoya Castle (which we can see from our hotel window - again pictures later.) We struggled successfully to work out which bus routes would take us there and then experimented with a little Japanese asking one of the many uniformed men who are scattered around the city and catch your eye and give you a quizzical “do you need help?” kind of look but do not speak much English. We are pretty sure these guys are not police but the same uniforms direct the odd bit of traffic and we were told not to hesitate to ask a policeman for directions so we are not sure. Anyway, we managed to communicate that we were looking for a bus stop “sumimasen, basu (big pause) juu-yon (big pause) wa doko ni arimasu ka” which I think actually means “excuse me, where are fourteen buses” but when we added “nagoya castle” and then remembered that “Nagoya-jo” is how to distinguish it from Nagoya Castle Hotel - we got some directions to go “that way, one (big gesture indicating across which we read as street) , two, three and left” and we actually found the bus station!!

Then we couldn’t find where to buy a ticket.

So we chickened out and caught a taxi lol! The taxi driver was lovely and laughed kindly at our attempt at Japanese - I had written in my phrase book how to ask “do you speak English?” but not how to say I don’t speak Japanese! So I said I was a student of japanese and then managed all but the negative verb conjugation for I don’t speak japanese and he very gently, and slowly, reminded me of “masen” and then whooped happily for me when I tried the sentence again as a whole hehe! It was really lovely. Of course Superman had said “nagoya castle onegaishimasu” when we got in the taxi so we pulled up in front of the hotel that shares its name but it was just across the river (which we realised was actually the castle’s moat) so we were able to point and try “Nagoya-jo” again and he confirmed that was the right name and we drove around to the right place, getting a wonderful view of the moat as we did.

It was SUCH a delight, almost relief really, to get in amongst the greenery of the Castle gardens - huge old trees (one actually from before the original castle was destroyed in the WWII air raids) and prunus trees I can’t WAIT to see in bloom and positively hordes of giant azalea bushes which must also be astonishing in bloom. I took plenty of photos outside but there was no photography allowed inside so I will hunt down what I can on the net when I post about it when I get back.

As I write this we are having a few hours break before dinner - being a tourist is tiring! Superman is busily drilling kanji graphemes (he has just burst into laughter having discovered that the kanji for “china” is made up of “water” and “difficult” - the difficulty over the water lol!) and we have the Sumo on the TV -it’s quite exciting, we will have to go some time. Tomorrow we are off to househunt with Abigail our relocation consultant, who is British and has lived here for 9 years and so is a font of information.

Jaa mata! (till next time!)

Well, poor Brigie went off to the cattery this afternoon, the suitcase is as packed as it can be before the pre-departure showers, any liquids or gels required on board have been replaced by solid versions or decanted down to under 100ml and I very cleverly didn’t get much sleep last night so I might just be able to sleep tonight - at least until 4:30 am when we have to get up. Not that I’m complaining about the hour - if we were going economy we’d have to BE at the airport then! Cheers once again to anonymous-auto-manufacturing-concern for looking after us so well.

My self-made phrase book is fat with counters and particles and I think we are ready to face the Japanese speaking world - for a week anyway. Our relocation consultant Abigail has sent us our schedule - we land Sunday night and then have Monday to ourselves to explore a little, Tuesday we will view some properties and apparently choose one because on Wednesday we will return to the chosen property and work out our furniture rental needs. On Thursday we will be test driving cars (btw we have been driving the Prius for the last few weeks and I will be posting a review soon - it took some getting used to but if the Harrier proves too large on Thursday I’ll be pushing for a Prius instead.) Friday Superman will be in meeting the new coworkers so I will be out on my own - I’m thinking Shinkansen to Kyoto for the day - unoriginal I know but there’s a reason it’s first stop on the cultural map (also it’s nice and close.)

Watch this space for pics and vids of the new digs though I can’t promise it will be during this week as we aren’t sure whether the connections at the hotel will be upload-friendly. We’re on the overnight flight Saturday 24th and back early Sunday.

Ittekimasu!!!!

but ain’t they cute!!

I spend a fair bit of my days listening to Radio National podcasts while pottering around cooking or doing housework so the speakers on my PC are often quite high so I can hear it over both the distance and the noise of cooking or chopping or the dishwasher chugging away. I often worry that I drive my neighbours mad (though I’m sure they’d have said something by now, and I never hear a peep from their side) so clearly I NEED to spend $1000 US on this baby… hehe

The MIURO (Music Innovation Utility Robot) connects wirelessly to your PC, or you can plug an ipod into the top of it, and FOLLOWS YOU AROUND (avoiding obstacles itself)  adjusting its position to give you optimal listening pleasure!! You can pause it by qiving it a quick pat on the head, or FF or REW by patting it either on the left or the right respectively and you make it follow you by letting your hand linger lovingly on its head till it smiles! hehe

Here’s a demo video - it’s in Japanese but it’s fairly clear ^_^