Disclaimer: to protect the private identity of individuals or corporations all names have been changed.
Tokyo exceeded every one of my expectations – and I had dreamed of visiting since forever. It is a city of glamour, fun, art, good food and excellent bars. Amidst the busy street crossings, shopping malls which sell everything-you-could-ever-think-of (and more!) and hustling commuters, you can even find moments of spiritual quietude in a rare Church.
For six weeks I lived in Japan. From my traditional share-house in the leafy suburbs, I travelled daily into the metropolis of Tokyo and also went on a beautiful trip to Akita in the Northern region of Japan, dominated by forests and natural beauty. The subject of this article, however, is not my exciting personal encounters with Japanese culture and extraordinary adventures, but in fact my work experience on a teaching program.
I have interviewed two of my dear friends who I met on the program, who have agreed to anonymously share their experiences. They are both high-achieving Chemistry students at UCL.
I was placed, along with my fellow interns, in a shiny corporate building in Shinjuku, central Tokyo. We were worked to the bone by the company from Tuesday to Saturday, though as Monday was often hijacked by the program for travel arrangements, many of us received only one-day off a week. The teaching element was enjoyable – the students were shy but very sweet, and were keen to know more about Oxford and university life. However, bonded by our shared trauma, my team members and I noticed that as the weeks progressed, things slowly started to turn into an unhinged tragicomedic drama, something like The Office.
The Food Stipend
Before we go into the ghastly details, a few words of appreciation: the company did provide us with accommodation (though some of us suffered more than others, I consider myself one of the lucky ones) and substantially reimbursed our flight tickets.
However, it remains to be said that we did not receive a penny for our labour, and instead received a subsidy of approximately £13 (only on working days) for our meals. Like in any big city, £13 doesn’t get you far – but the real issue lies in the fact that this meagre sum was dangled over our heads in the case we didn’t conform to company protocol. Late to work? Get ready to starve. Overran break-time? Sorry, you won’t be eating today.
In the words of my interviewee, Ella, it was, “really dodgy that they called it a food stipend but it was something they would hold over our heads and use as punishment.”
Thankfully, despite the threats from our company seniors, none of us had our food stipend removed. Maybe it was all bark and no bite – they had to keep us alive, after all!
The Promotional Video
On one evening after work, I was pulled aside into a back room on the seventh floor and recruited to film a promotional video targeting the company’s Japanese market. Under normal circumstances I would have been excited to contribute, but after a long day of labour, being forced into unpaid overtime media work didn’t fill me with bliss. My only consolation is that the video isn’t available overseas and so my professional reputation remains unscathed… for now.
Nepotism
A few quick Google searches may indeed have saved me the shock of finding out that those in top senior positions were actually related to each other, instead of having to gradually piece it together when things started to seem off. Credit is also due to Ella – whose research helped to expose the whole oligarchic structure.
In sum: both the main International company, ‘Let’s Go Japan’, which is responsible for enlisting the volunteers, and the Japanese partner company, which deals with the Japanese students, are owned by different members of the same family. When you sign up for the program, you are under the impression that these are two different entities. However, when things start to go wrong on either end, there’s no mutual accountability – both arms of the machine shift blame onto one another, deflecting and excusing unprofessional behaviour in the face of growing discontentment. By the end of the program, we were calling our fellow interns ‘comrades’. Vive la Revolution!
Evil Corporate Man Bob
It would be dishonest of me to write a review of my internship in Tokyo and exclude the real-life villain of the story. Let’s call him Bob. Bob, an American, hefty, fifty-something year old man, had clear favourites among the interns – I was not one of them. I believe that his disdain for me (which I felt was instantaneous) was either due to one of two reasons: I reminded him of the girl he had a crush on in High School who broke his heart, or, being both British and Female meant I was deemed a toxic combination.
Taking into account the experience of my fellow female Brits, I tend to assume it’s the latter; which doesn’t reflect very well on the company considering his hierarchical seniority. This discrimination was palpably felt on many occasions, particularly in one meeting in which I was told to be more ‘nurturing’ towards my students when my fellow male, American coach was applauded for being the funny ‘disrupter’ (yes, Bob actually used those words.) Was I being boxed into a sex-based teaching stereotype? It seemed so. My strong personal connection with my students was clearly not of importance, as I was later called into another meeting by Bob to discuss the problem of the presents which I gave as parting gifts to my pupils (cute silver medals). When minor details such as these were being blown out of proportion and I heard myself plainly asking Bob in one meeting if I was being targeted – I knew that something had to be severely wrong in the management.
A direct quote from Anna: “we felt really exploited and they treated us like employees when we were really volunteering.”
If it wasn’t for the support of my co-workers, and the fact that we all got into trouble together for being ‘low-energy’ – notwithstanding four long weeks of commuting for hours from the rural outskirts into Shinjuku each morning – I’m not sure if I would have survived the whole ordeal.
Moral of the story: do your research before you join a company and pick up on the red flags as soon as they rear their ugly heads. That being said, if you make solid friendships in your workplace and stick to the old ‘laugh instead of cry’ rule, there is a strong chance that even in the face of ridiculously rampant discrimination, you may still enjoy your time.