Every day during lunchtime my office is infiltrated by the dreaded life insurance saleswomen. Their job is to hang around the entrance saying “Konnichiwa” as the hordes scuttle out to pick over their slimy katsudons and fetid bentos. These saleswomen also leave flyers on all the desks, together with a little packet of tissues (you can never have enough tissues). The flyers are usually of the innocuous “Oi! You got life insurance, punk?” variety, but today’s was something special.
This life insurer was new to the game. For some reason she was compelled to fill her flyers with information about herself, including her date of birth, hometown, hobbies (snowboarding!) and – I shit you not – blood type.
Bizarrely, most Japanese people know what their blood type is: they employ it in a creepy Nazi eugenics kind of way to determine a person’s personality. It’s a bit like star signs, only more ‘scientific’, you see? In other words, it’s total and utter bollocks. But just you try telling someone that. Go on, try it.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is why on earth would I want to know her personal details? Is she looking for a husband as well as a big commission? I was both disturbed and confused in equal measure.
I’ve spent three years working in the same office, sat at the same desk, seeing the same salarymen day-in, day-out. I still don’t know who everyone is (four hundred people = a lot of names), but I have managed to come up with plenty of nicknames for the most peculiar individuals:
Man Child
This fellow has the head and voice of a man, but the body of a child. His head is absolutely massive: the fact that his neck can support it defies all the laws of physics. He also spends far too long in the toilet, rustling the tissue paper a little bit too vigorously.
The Womble
A sixty-something mumbler with all the speed and grace of a sloth. He has no internal monologue and spends considerable time saying ‘unnnn, sou ka’ (‘ahh, I see’) to inanimate objects. His job is to… well, to be quite honest, I have no idea what his job is. He spends much of the day wandering between floors with a small bag, occasionally picking bits of dust of the floor.
Stewie
Named after Family Guy’s evil toddler, pint-sized Stewie seems far too small to be at work; he should still be at infant school! He sits at his big boys’ desk all day, his little legs dangling off the chair, issuing commands down the phone like Napoleon’s younger brother.
Bill Gates
Nothing much to say about this chap, apart from that he is the spitting image of Bill Gates (if Bill Gates was Japanese).
The Fifth Beatle
Long straggly hair, enormous Bose headphones and a ‘God you’re so unfair, I hate you!’ teenage pout. He also seems to be something of a hypochondriac, and spends a good portion of his day gargling antiseptic mouthwash in front of the bathroom mirror.
The Weasel
A fifty-year-old silver-haired weasel who is terrified of his computer. Every time he sits in front of it his face contorts into a picture of abject horror, as if he’s watching a streaming video of an Al-Qaida hostage being beheaded. Perhaps someone told him that if you click the mouse buttons too hard the whole internet breaks, so he’s being extra careful.
Penfold
Do you remember Danger Mouse? (If you don’t, go here.) This guy is the spitting image of Penfold, right down to the glasses and hair (or lack of). The only thing missing is the occasional ‘Cripes, DM!’.
Japanese organisations, especially big ones, seem to relish the task of preparing for emergencies. The recent swine flu outbreak is being used by the media here as a way of boring people to death by repeating the same information over and over (and over) again. Wednesday’s nine o’clock news on NHK devoted more than thirty minutes to the subject, leaving only a few seconds for the baseball results and something about a “global recession”, whatever that is.
To combat the evil menace that is H1N1 flu my company has decided that we need to be told how to wash our hands:
We’ve also been told to wear surgical masks in the office and on the trains. God only knows what kind of instructional material they’ll provide if there’s a severe outbreak of dysentery.
On Thursday morning we had to take part in an earthquake drill. With Japan being one of the most, if not the most, earthquake-prone country in the world, drills like this are routine. I had expected there to be a grand system set in place in order to swiftly whisk people out of their office and onto the (relative) safety of the street – yellow inflatable slides that pop out from under the windows, for example. The reality was, unfortunately, far plainer: at 12.00 the loudspeaker announced that there had been an earthquake. Five minutes later we were informed that the lifts were out of order and that everyone was to congregate in the basement car park. With all the speed and alertness of sloths everyone left what they were doing and proceeded downstairs.
In the basement a large blue sheet had been strung between the walls; a cardboard sign with the kanji “fire” was stuck in its centre. In front of the sheet stood twenty small fire extinguishers and ten triangular buckets of water; in front of them stood two middle-aged, beige-overalled men with megaphones. They were… The Instructors.
The instruction was far from rigorous. One of the men asked for volunteers to spray the “fire”. People were hastily pushed out from among the crowd by their friends or superiors. Some of the older salarymen, relishing the opportunity to muck about like ten-year-olds, had already scrambled for the fire extinguishers.
The instructors gave one blow of their whistles: the volunteers sprang to life!
The older salarymen took to it with gusto, waddling towards the sheet, shouting “Kaji desu!”, deftly removing the safety clip then, bracing themselves for the expected recoil, aimed the nozzle at the (imaginary) inferno before them and squeezed the trigger. The result? One wet sheet, and several very smug-looking salarymen. Annual earthquake drills appear to be one of the high points of their otherwise routine working life.
Next up for demonstration: the buckets. They were strange, triangular-shaped things with one circular hole in the corner. Was this to help direct the water? Was it stronger? Was somebody having a laugh? Nobody seemed to know, but I’m sure thousands – if not millions – of test buckets had been created, debated, blown up and prodded with weasels in order to reach this final design
At any rate, more volunteers came forward and the buckets were duly put through their paces. Despite the strangeness of their shape they performed admirably, dispensing their moist goodness in a consistent manner, which was the best you can expect from any bucket, really.
With the demonstrations over, one of the instructors concluded by muttering something incomprehensible through his megaphone. Knowing my luck, it was probably the most important part of the training, something along the lines of: “If there’s an earthquake don’t forget to leave through Door X because all the other doors will be closed and you will die a horrible painful death and nobody will come and help you at all, so there.” Nobody else seemed to be listening, but of course they’d heard it a thousand times before and probably knew it by heart.
While the whole experience is difficult to sum up in words, this scene from Big Train sums it up very well indeed:
Posted 21 Jul 2007 — by Andy in Tokyo Category Travel, Work
8:00 a.m. – Leave home
8:10 a.m. – Take train to Tokyo
9:00 a.m. – Take shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto
11:30 a.m. – Arrive at Kyoto
11:35 a.m. – Take subway to conference centre
12:05 p.m. – Arrive at conference centre
12:30 p.m. – Conference begins
4:30 p.m. – Conference ends
4:40 p.m. – Take subway to Kyoto
5:00 p.m. – Arrive at Kyoto
5:20 p.m. – Take shinkansen from Kyoto to Tokyo
8:00 p.m. – Arrive at Tokyo
8:10 p.m. – Take train to home station
8:50 p.m. – Arrive at home station
9:00 p.m. – Home
Time spent travelling: 8 hours, 25 minutes
Time spent enduring pointless speeches: 4 hours
Time spent admiring Kyoto: 10 minutes
Posted 17 May 2007 — by Andy in Tokyo Category Personal, Work
No, I don’t really. Sorry.
Since last month’s post life has – with the exception of Golden Week (which I’m sure you won’t need to hear about, as certain parties will no doubt have spread news of helicopter rides over Tokyo, knife sharpeners and little gallowas) – been very, very quiet. At work, we’re currently drafting and proofing material for publication later this year. It’s is a mind-numbingly tedious task with no immediate end in sight, and has left me with little time to do anything else save on weekends. And, to be quite honest, the extent of my weekend activities usually stretches as far as wandering around Inokashira Park, or watching a random movie I had recorded several months earlier.
After silent but ceaseless nagging from one of my co-workers I’ve decided to get back into learning Japanese. It’s been five months since I last picked up a textbook, and realised yesterday something needed to be done to stop the rot: As I stared filling out my details on an application form for a store loyalty card, it dawned on me that I could no longer write my address from memory, which was somewhat embarrassing. Anyway, I’m doing the same worksheets as native Japanese speakers, which means my current level of study is equivalent that of an elementary school student – smooth!
Posted 16 May 2007 — by Andy in Tokyo Category Personal, Work
Been grafting canny down’t pit of late, and the gadgies at work are nebby, so I cannat write owt there. Will write more the morra if I have time. Tara for now.
If there’s one thing the Japanese love, it’s ceremonies, and as Japan’s new financial and school year begins on the 1st of April, entrance ceremonies for new recruits were held in companies all across the country this morning. For me (and the three hundred other people in our office), this meant getting to work an hour earlier than usual, and watching the whole thing live via video-link from our company’s headquarters in Osaka.
Now, I’m sure for all those fresh-out-of-uni types this must have been a heart warming day to remember. But… I really cannot fathom why we had to watch it. I mean, they wouldn’t know whether we were watching it or not… but weird things like this happen all the time and you get used to it after a while. Radio taiso – that’s the morning exercise routines – freaked me out for the first few days of work. I thought that had all gone out of fashion years ago, but no, a fair percentage of our staff still go through the whole routine of bouncing around to bizarre nursery-rhyme music for five minutes. I tried it once, and felt like a complete tool. Needless to say I didn’t try it again.
In other news, the cherry blossom has already… well… blossomed here in Tokyo. We went to the park yesterday to check it out, and it appeared the entire population of west Tokyo had decided to exactly the same thing. It was ridiculous, you literally couldn’t move for groups of shit-faced students singing and old fogies taking photographs with enormous cameras. The weather was fantastic also (above 20 degrees Celsius), which only helped increase the crowds by a further twenty percent. We sacked the whole thing off and went shopping after about fifteen minutes.
My word… I really shouldn’t write on here after working eleven hour days ever again, it’s far too depressing…
2007 already? I’m scared at how quickly time is disappearing before my very eyes. I can still distinctly remember New Year’s Eve 1999 as if it were yesterday: I was working in a horror-show bar in Newcastle city centre (Dobson’s. The name sends a shiver down my spine to this day), and slipped down a flight of stairs while carrying a crate of Smirnoff Mule at around 10.30pm, smashing bottles everywhere and smacking my head off a step. This gave me a fine excuse to leave work early and bomb down to Saltburn in my trusty Vauxhall Nova for the celebrations. I arrived down my local about 10 minutes after midnight with a slight concussion, to discover my mates either dancing on tables or passed out in a corner. Treasured memories indeed, and there are many…
NYE 2006 was a far more sedate affair spent in Aichi-ken with the in-laws. We went out for sushi, watched TV, ate some more food and talked about, well… stuff. I rarely drink these days as my hangovers – which were always bad – are now so utterly terrible that I really can’t stand experiencing the pain and torment more than a few times each year. Many Japanese visit their local temple at midnight to say their prayers in the hope of having a successful new year, but it was really cold, so we did it the following afternoon instead.
Going back a bit further, my Christmas was about as Christmassy as you could expect considering only 1% of the population are Christians, meaning it was a normal working day for me and everyone else here. My new job – so far at least – is going well. After being a teacher for so long it’s really nice to not have to be “switched on” all the time. I can come into the office, sit down at my desk and quietly get on with my work without having to pretend to be interested/jolly for hours on end. Incidentally I’m not entirely sure what I’m supposed to be doing at work most of the time, so I’ve been attempting to try a few things and pretend to look busy, which, in Japanese offices, has been perfected to a fine art form. Nobody has sussed me out yet, so I think my technique must be pretty good.
In light of not being able to go anywhere nice or return home for the holidays, I continued my quest of buying unnecessary things instead. The most recent addition to my collection turned out to be a PlayStation 3, which weighs more than all the planets in our solar system combined and bears an eerie resemblance to the monolith from “2001: A Space Odyssey”. It now sits under the TV and quietly purrs away in an ever so menacing fashion, emitting so much heat I can now happily live without central heating during the coldest of winter days.
Taken from a restaurant in Ginza last night. I’m writing this entry using my mobile phone on the train home from work as there’s not enough arm space for me to open a book and read, and to be quite honest I’d rather not just have to stand and stare at the back of someone’s head for 10 minutes, which is the only other option. Last Friday some random weirdo decided to do a full gymnastic warm-up by using the handles for standing passengers. It was like a mobile version of the olympics, only totally rubbish. What was the other passengers’ reaction? Pretend to sleep, of course!
