転勤

From my hotel, I looked out on an extensive array of blue roofs. They weren’t a happy symbol, huddled together like a concentration camp while the meagre possessions of the occupants spilled into the alleys between. Each shack, I’d learned on a business trip the year before, housed a family who’d lost their home in the earthquake in January ’95. Even with all the construction in the city, three years on there were still plenty of vacant patches in the cityscape – patches that held the memories of a normal life for hundreds of families. But it wasn’t a lack of housing that kept these people here. Nor, I’m told, was it fear of collapsing apartment blocks. They chose to live in the shacks because they were rent-free and the families didn’t want to risk the cost of a real flat, or apaato as they’re called in Japan, with the sluggish economy. Whichever reason was true, the mood in Japan in 1998 was depressing, and the scene before me more so, but I couldn’t feel it. I was back. I was home.

I tore myself from the window and, suffused with joy, rushed through my morning routine and across the road into the Japan Headquarters. I was here on a ‘look-see’ to determine if I could live here and was willing to take a permanent assignment. My mission was to manage the voice and video services for the Japan branch, and to cut costs by eliminating all the incumbent vendors the Japanese were too polite to remove. I figured I’d better start practising my act as the big bad gaijin –literally, outside person – by pretending I didn’t speak any Japanese, and my first victim was the interpreter hired to get me through the commando health check in the local hospital.

“Mr. Gunn? Hello, my name is Nakano,” she said extending her hand. She was middle aged – possibly in her forties, but it’s always difficult to tell with Japanese – with a large mole on her top lip. “Please call me Nakano-san.” Nakano would be her surname, I knew, and the –san an honorific like ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ but unisex. She used it now to start teaching me some of the forms, but otherwise a Japanese person would never use it after their own name.

“Hello Nakano-san. It’s nice to meet you,” I said awkwardly, never comfortable with aisatsu, introductions, and worried that I might have bowed – the normal greeting in Japan.

“Please wait a moment. I have to check something.” She spoke with the fluency in English that I hoped I’d soon have in Japanese. I waited while she called up to Nakajima-san, her contact in Human Resources, to tell her she’d found me and to check whether there was anything else scheduled for me that day.

“How long have you been learning Japanese?” she asked as she turned back and lead me out of the building.

How did she know? “Why do you ask that?”

“Well, you obviously understood everything I just said, and your pronunciation of my name was perfect. When did you start learning?”

I realised then I’d never be able to pull off the big, bad gaijin act. My passion for learning the language and understanding the culture would betray me. “I learnt my first words when I was three,” I said in Japanese.

“sugoi!” Amazing. “Why so young?”

“My parents travelled a lot before they had children and when they settled down they missed the opportunity to meet so many interesting people, so they built up the Australian branch of a home-stay organisation called Servas. Ever since I can remember we had a traveller staying at our place almost every week.” I knew I was rambling, but it wasn’t often that the topic came up and I was enjoying it. “I’d come home from school each day not knowing who would be there. Dinner time was like a holiday. We never had much need for television. Anyway, right at the beginning, just as I was starting to speak well enough to hold a conversation, we had two Japanese guests in the one year – Yuki and Yoshi.”

“It seems they made an impression on you.”

“They did. They spent a lot of time teaching me origami and other parts of the Japanese culture and even a few words. I loved hearing about all these exotic countries from the other guests after that, but Japan has always been special. All my friends wanted to be pilots or doctors or whatever, but I just wanted to go to Japan.”

“So when did you start learning formally?”

“When I was in third grade. There was a Japanese girl in my class. Her father came out as an exchange teacher and brought the family. I got her number and begged my mother to ask him to teach me. He was excited that someone so young would take that initiative, so once a week I’d go back to their place after school and learn how to say ‘kore wa pen desu.’ This is a pen.
She laughed and threw me back the Japanised English version, “zisu izu a pen.” It’s the first English sentence that all Japanese people learn.

“It was like learning a secret code. In those days, Japanese wasn’t common in schools and my mother had to fight to get me into the one school in the area that taught it. Now, of course, it’s taught in almost every Australian school.”

“But you must have been to Japan before. Your accent is so good.”

“Well, my parents encouraged me by hosting one exchange student for at least a couple of weeks each year. But, yes, I came twice on exchange and once more on a business trip last year. The first exchange was in the Christmas holidays after year ten, but the highlight of my life was when I came back for a year of school when I was eighteen.”

I always called myself a cultural schizophrenic because I slipped easily between the two cultures. While many of my friends had trouble adjusting to life back in their home countries, the sight of Sydney Harbour from the plane was enough to ground me in Australia again.

“I think that my accent was much better then. It sounds awful now, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m out of practice or because my ear has improved and I can hear all my mistakes.”

“Don’t worry. It’s fine, and you’ll get plenty of practice. How long will you stay in Japan?”

My assignment was permanent, but I planned to move on after a couple of years. I didn’t feel comfortable saying that, though. “Who knows? Maybe some pretty Japanese girl will trap me here forever.” Nakano-san smiled knowingly. Obviously I wouldn’t be the first to be ‘trapped.’

We arrived at the hospital, which turned out to be only a few minutes walk from the office. “After you,” she said, pointing at the door. I walked through then stopped, a mix of wonder and terror slackening my jaw.

I’d been to a Japanese hospital before, but I had been too delirious to have any clear memory of the experience. What I saw now was somewhere between a doctor’s waiting room and a car insurance office. The seating was straight out of the waiting room, but I could see that they’d applied the Japanese brand of efficiency to the process of getting well. Japanese efficiency is always directed at getting the masses through the system as fast as possible, often at the expense of the individual. The reception was divided into six sections, all with a number dominating the wall behind.

Nakano-san knew the drill and marched me up to counter four, then handed my papers over to the nurse. Looking at her, I remembered my earlier visit and realised that it hadn’t been the fever or drugs that made me see pixies. The nurse was dressed entirely in soft pink from slippers to cap – probably intended to achieve some calming effect. She gave Nakano-san a list of steps in the process and a small beaker.

“Room 93 for a height / weight check,” said Nakano-san, reading the list. “Room 141 for a blood test, room 87 for an x-ray, 45 for a cardiograph, and 189 for eyes and ears check, but first…” She handed me the beaker and pointed the way to the men’s room.
I filled up the container and battled to stop the flow before I got the sides wet, then looked around, confused. I’d forgotten to ask where to take it and I didn’t like the idea of carrying an open beaker, nearly overflowing with urine, through a crowded room to where Nakano-san waited. Right next to where I was standing, still at the urinal, I spotted a window at groin height. In the obscure ‘form before function’ way of the Japanese, this was obviously meant to increase privacy. I’d seen the same in a love hotel, a hotel that charges by the hour, and I made the same mistake now as I had there. I bent down to look through. The girl on the other side gasped, and if I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I might have been offended that my face shocked her when the sight of my naked loins wasn’t worth a reaction. But the thought didn’t occur to me as I ran out and, red faced, joined the next line.

I made it through the rest of the morning almost without issue. They squashed me down to a more acceptable 181cm instead of the 183 or 185cm that 6’1” normally equates to. They all expressed awe at my ability to read the bottom line of the chart. I managed not to faint at the sight of my own blood being drawn into the sort of syringe I thought they only used for cows. But I freaked at the x-ray. The equipment was probably quite normal, but they actually strapped me to the backboard like some Frankenstein experiment. My pulse lurched even higher when the 4 technicians ran out of the room before activating the machine from the adjacent control room. It must pack an awful punch, and I imagined my entrails melting under the intense beam of x-rays. My Japanese colleagues never understood my fear of having an x-ray and seemed to delight in getting at least one each year during the company’s mandatory health checks. I put up with these mandatory checks, which always said I was healthy, but refused to let them x-ray me again.

Once the whole process was done, we went to line 2, handed in the report and were told to take a seat. My name would be called to arrange payment, which was, of course, at another counter. Finally, after three hours I was released with instructions to return after 4pm to pick up the certificate.

*

Over the next few days, I was taken through the whole induction process, most of which was just paperwork, but I was struck by the complexity of the salary system. The company has an elaborate formula to determine the salary of each person based on their function, their level, their tenure at that level, and their performance vs. others that fit the previous categories. It’s complex, but understandable. In Japan, I was lost.

“chotto chigau,” not exactly, said the grey-clad girl opposite me for the fourth time, too polite to say “No, you idiot!”

Nakajima-san, who had been Nakano-san’s contact on the first day, might initially have been happy to discover that I spoke Japanese so she wouldn’t have to explain it all in English, but that was fleeting. “The company will only pay the middle range of your rent. If your rent is below that range, you have to pay it all yourself. If it’s above the range, you pay the first part and the last part yourself.”

“OK. I think I get it.” The complexity was frustrating, and I had no way of comparing the package to what I had been earning in Australia. I had to understand the rent deposits with their refundable and non-refundable components, the transportation allowance, and social security that only pays out after twenty-five years. And then there was the gaijin allowance to pay for foreign newspapers and phone calls home. Yet it was why I had come – to experience the discomfort, to learn about the different ways Japanese people do things. And I had to admit that I was enjoying pushing some of the frustration back on Nakajima-san.

“So the rent is only paid twelve times, but the gaijin allowance is paid eighteen times, right?”

“No. The gaijin allowance is only based on a twelve month year.”

“But not the salary?” I managed to hide my grin by concentrating on copying the crossed arms and tilted head gesture Japanese use to indicate thinking.

“No, the salary is paid on an 18.1 month year – the normal twelve months, then a three month bonus in June and December.”

“That’s eighteen months. Didn’t you say 18.1 months?”

“Yes. In December, we’re paid a little bit extra to cover the expenses of New Year.” New Year is the big family event in Japan where presents of cash are given to children. “You can use it to buy Christmas presents.”