A Golden Cage

I have just finished moving into the company’s housing – a strictly girl-only hall of residence scrupulously guarded by its supervisor-in-chief. It feels a little like a miniature Orwellian state.

Here are the strangest (and frankly privacy-breaking) rules that all residents must follow:

1. You must not bring boys in, and that includes your own father. The residence’s supervisor told me that “You [girls] should be grateful; this is how much your safety and wellbeing means to the Company.”

2. You are kicked out of the residency if you are still single at the age of 35.
3. You must mark your absences from work on a big white board with a day of notice.
4. You must write down where you are going if you are sleeping outside the residence (this includes holidays).
5. You have to signal that you are in your flat by turning on a designated green light in the foyer. This is done so as to ensure that you will not be oversleeping when you should be at work. Should your light still be on at 7.20 am (when you should be out and about on your way to work), the supervisor will ring your phone. Should you not pick up, he will go knock at your door. And should that fail too, he will force his way into your flat and wake you up.

None of this is enforced in men-only company housings. Japan still lives in a very paternalistic state with companies taking over your parents’ job. But I’m not 5 years old.

However, the bottom line is that, when you are short on money and the company subsidises 90% of the rent, all you can do is kow-tow.

A very short introduction...

For some strange turn of fate, I am about to embark on the most surreal journey of my short-lived life. As of April 2, 2012, I will become office employee no. 05XXXX in one of the biggest Japanese manufacturing MNC. This is a big deal for me, as I am (a) a foreigner* and (b) a tree-hugger and idealist (yes… I’m that kind of person). So given my background (all the way human rights!), no one is too sure as to what made them hire me in their ‘Simultaneous Recruiting of New Graduates’ programme. Probably nothing more than raising their total gaijin employees’ figures shown on their website (a handful, so far).

For my part - as a friend of mine put it - I’ll be a mole keeping track of the wondrously bizarre things that make up the world of a salaryman and try to post them here.

Occasionally, this blog will also become my portable soapbox where I’ll write about human rights in Nippon-land (its pretty bad over here).

* Well, to tell you the truth I am head-to-belly Japanese. But except for the non-existent eyelashes, everything in my appearance cries ‘Gaijin’. And translated into Japanology, I am and will always remain a foreigner to Japan.