Work and Play in Japan

Stephen Horowitz
January 12, 2001

I work in the town community center which is a fairly new building (1990)equipped with, amongst other things, a very nice (though, not surprisingly, small) concert hall and, thank God, air conditioning. My desk is in a small room (about 20' X 16') which also contains the desks of seven other people. There are actually two separate divisions in the same room: mine is called the "shakai kyoikuka" or division for continuing education and the other is the division in charge of making sure things run smoothly in the community center. As has so far been the standard, everyone is incredibly nice and they have gone out of their way to help me and to make me feel at home. I'm very grateful for that.

My apartment is a 25 minute walk or a ten minute bike ride from work, but since I have yet to get my bike, I'm reduced to my legs or the charity of my co-workers who own cars. Under normal circumstances, I would walk all the time but it is so hot and humid that I would arrive at work ready for a shower and a change of clothes.

My usual workday is actually pretty boring right now as I have yet to really get anything started in terms of programs, classes, etc. Basically, I'm at work from 8:30am until 5:00pm and most of the time is spent with me trying to look busy (and probably failing). However, I am going to try to get Yayoi involved in a sister city relationship with a city in the US and rumor has it that once that gets started up I'm going to have more to do than I can imagine.

Yesterday, I gave a self-introduction (again!) in front of all of the town employees. They asked me to mention anything that I hope to do this year, so I brought the sister city idea. It was received with surprise. I get the impression that my predecessor did not do very much, so they were taken aback that I would actually want to do something. In the meantime, I have opened a bank account, gotten my apartment in order, joined a kendo class, joined the town Taiko group, and gotten my own inkan made.

For those of you who do not know, Japanese offices are dependent on those red personal seals (called inkan) which are their version of signatures and which they use to stamp virtually every form and message in the office. Most of the time the stamp merely signifies that the person has read the document or indicates whom the document was written by. It says my last name in katakana (one of the Japanese character systems) and is rather fun to use, though I am still getting the hang of stamping it without smudging the mark.

As some of you may already know, there are a few things which the Japanese take very seriously. The first is work and the second is drinking. I found out that the second is especially true out in the country where there is not much else to do. I had a welcoming party which was held in the #3 head honcho of the town's (gorgeous, brand-new) house and was attended by many of my co-workers as well as people whom I had never met before. In all there were about 13 guests, including myself. The main activities of the night were drinking and conversing, and many of the attendants had a little too much to drink and a little too much to say: this one guy sitting next to me talked the entire party. Although drinking just as much (or more) than everyone else at the party, I was probably the least drunk (though still fairly drunk) person in the room. In other words, I remember everything that happened, which is more than I can say for one of my co-workers. He and I have rapidly become friends, and he has been taking me around and showing me the ropes. Anyway, he doesn't remember leaving the party, and he had forgotten that his girlfriend also gave me a ride home until I reminded him the next day.

The next night, in the next town over, there was an incredible fireworks display which three of my co-workers took me to see. We watched them from a rooftop beer garden (all you can drink) and then went to a really cool cocktail bar afterwards. We were out drinking until about 12:30am. I once read an essay written by a former JET in which he was describing what Japan was by listing all of the funny quirks that it has. One of the examples on his list was (paraphrasing): Japan is all of your co-workers taking you out to a weekend of partying and getting drunk and nobody touching any alcohol on Sunday since Monday is a work day. In any event, I think we proved that theory incorrect. In fact, it's pretty ridiculous how much they drink here. Anytime there is an occasion of any kind, there will always be alcohol, and LOTS of it. It is a miracle that the Japanese have one of the longest (the longest?) life spans of any nationality in the world. Sure, their traditional food is one of the healthiest diets in the world, but almost everybody smokes like a chimney and they drink alcohol like it is water. I'm surprised they all don't die of lung cancer and/or liver problems by the age of 40. Maybe it's something in their genes.

In my last column, I discussed the advantages and disadvantages of living in a small town. Well, there are also some scary, in fact, almost communistic things about my small town. Every day at 6am (wake-up; yeah, right!!!), noon (lunch break), and 5pm (time to go home) they play too-cheerful, "greensleeves"-like music over loudspeakers spread throughout the town. The town literally runs based on these jingles and if they ever got rid of them I think that everyone would wander around aimlessly. Also, part of my address is Plot #1548. Although this isn't the case since I live in an apartment building, it almost sounds as if each good citizen of the town receives their own individual plot of land in order to farm and raise a family for the greater good of the people.

Well, that's about it for now. One neat thing about this process is that I can track the decline of my English-language ability as the year progresses. By the time I write entry #15, I will probably be reduced to one word. Sentences.