COMPENSATION
My second day of looking around was much more enjoyable. I was offered a new salary, and they did more than just add 2 zeros! I’m sure I’m getting a better deal than I did in Australia, but the way they present it is so confusing that it could just be that I’ve compared the wrong numbers. In Japan, you don’t just get a salary on the offer, they let you know how much tax you’ll pay on that (about 10% – ha!), how much medical insurance comes out of it, how much superannuation, how much housing is allowed for, how much…
Sounds simple enough if what you end up with is what goes into your bank account, but then they start explaining it. The income tax is x% and starts straight away. The local tax, which is also taken straight out of your pay, is y% and doesn’t start being taken out until June of the following year (ie 13 months after I start), but you have to pay for every month you work. So I have to keep 13 months of local tax stashed somewhere to pay when I leave Japan.
I pay $q for medical insurance (compulsory even for those of us who don’t go to doctors) and I only ever have to pay $30 for costs during the month. What really happens is that when I go to hospital (or wherever), I get a bill for 20% of the cost. The government pays 80% and I pick up the rest. Every quarter I get a medical services report from the government and I lodge an expense report with P&G to claim the excess on $30 per month. The real catch is that only one copy of this report can ever be printed, so if it gets lost in the mail just after I have that $200,000 brain upgrade operation I’ve always wanted, I’m up for $40,000 unexpectedly. I might just hold off on the operation until I trust the Japanese mail system a little more.
Social security (super) is a little simpler. You put money away and get it when you retire. Once you have been working in Japan for 25 years you can collect the full amount. If you’ve worked under 3 years, you get back what you’ve payed. If you work between 3 and 25 years, you get back what you paid in the first 3. I’m sure the government thinks it’s fair.
The housing allowance is plus $m but minus $h. What this means is that if you get a place for $g which is less than $h per month, you have to cover the rent yourself (I’ve seen the size of room they provide for $h and it’s not plural), and if you go over $m per month, you pay the first $h plus the excess on $m. Put another way, the company pays $g – $h for anything over $h up to a maximum of $m. Simple.
Where it gets really tricky is that the majority of these are paid on a 12 month basis, but your base salary and tax are on an 18.1 month basis. The way this works is that every month you get enough to survive. Then in June and December, you get three months worth of salary to buy hi-fi equipment, and you also get .1 months worth of salary to buy christmas presents for your friends and family. Unfortunately for the friends and family most of this goes on shipping, so you can all expect a 5 yen coin each (I’ll try and find them in your birth year since that’s meant to bring you luck). I’m trying to negotiate lowering the hi-fi component and raising the christmas present component, but it’s all there in the offer and they’re being pretty strict about it. Sorry! ?
So, how did you go? Did any of you work out how much I’m earning? I haven’t. But I’m glad that I did the core of a maths degree, or I wouldn’t have a hope of knowing how much I can spend on a flat.
The rest of the compensation discussions were in English so I didn’t quite follow them.
HOUSING
They gave me the WHOLE afternoon to look at apartments.
I was shown 4 places at first, ranging from $m right through to $m + $700. Needless to say, they went from brand new to old and smelly. All were 2+DK or even 2+LDK. This of course means 2 bedroom (could be Japanese or western style) and a room that is dining/kitchen or living/dining/kitchen (the only difference being size). They all had bathroom, toilet, and washroom and outlets for the washing machine in one of those or in the LDK. The best one also had cable TV connection, video security, bath controls in the kitchen (press one button to choose the temparature and another to fill with automatic cutoff at full), and even wardrobes and a stove! I couldn’t afford it.
So what do you need to think about when renting in Japan? Curtains – you have to bring your own curtains (makes sense – having your favourite colour (always grey) brought from your last place is more important than having curtains that go all the way to the floor). Stove – many places come without stoves. Light bulbs and fittings – again, you may have a favourite colour light globe! Fridge, washing machine, air conditioning etc. – not a problem. Clothes rack – there are usually cupboards, but they have only one shelf – at thigh height – and no bar for hanging.
One of the good things about Kobe (I thought) is that the mountains are in the North, so a north facing apartment gets the best of the environment (cool in summer, warm in winter) and the views. Uh uh! Wrong hemisphere. I have to choose between climate and view (unless you like the view across the bay of all the man-made islands and ships).
Since it was still only 2:30, I got the agent to show me everything they had. We went back to the shop and he pulled out a book of everything in the area I was looking for. He then opened a section of about 200 pages (1 unit per page) in the price range I was looking at. Luckily he and the interpreter (same one as yesterday) by now had a good idea of what I was looking for. Not so much luck really – I was pretty vocal about what I liked and disliked in each place. It pays to be a noisy gaijin sometimes. ? This enabled me to tune out while they flicked through at high speed selecting and rejecting. All I caught was the occasional “too much”, “too far”, “too old” (not sure what too old meant – maybe more than 3 years; their own idea – not mine), “not concrete” (I needed somewhere concrete so that I can turn the stereo up sometimes), “etc. etc”,..
There were about 5 places that fit, but 4 turned out to be already taken. That left the ideal. This place was concrete, had a western room for my home theatre, a Japanese room for sleeping quarters, enough room for the bookcases and coffee table in the LDK. What really stood out was the security system, the stove, the 2 air conditioning units, the Southern aspect, and the bathroom that doubled as a clothes dryer. It was only a minute walk to a brand new station (but with a building in between to block out the noise) that was one stop from the Rokko liner (the monorail to work) and on a line that goes to Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe (the four big cities/historical towns in the area). It is close enough to ride to work easily, and right next to a supermarket and fitness centre (of which P&G is a member). The only fault is that it would cost me $g – ($m – $h) = $500 per month on top of what the company provides, but I just pulled out my calculus text books and worked out that I can easily afford it. It’s brand new too – finished in March 98.
You can understand why I’ve gone back to the HR department balling my eyes out because “I want it! I want it!” (noisy gaijin routine). They’re not really listening though. Their rule book says that FPLEs (yes, I’m a fipple – foreign permanant local employee) can’t choose a place until they move. Look! It says it right there in the policy manual. It’s even in English (though anyone who’s been to Japan with me knows that I’m concentrating so hard on the Japanese that I can’t even see English, let alone read it) ‘fipples can’t choose accomodation on the look-see’.
Sorry, what does it say? I can’t read English.
Fuippuruzu kaanto chuuzu akkomodeshon on za rukku-shii.
Aah! I understand. Japanizu aa infurekkushiburu! They didn’t understand me.
I think I need to brush up on my ‘Negotiating – Japanese Style’ skills.