Why I hated working in Japan

Hey, so today I'd like to talk about the

time I was in Japan on the working holiday

visa. So back in 2011, I thought it'd be a

good idea to go to Japan for a year and

work there. I had 2 jobs. My main job was

working in a convenience store, and I

worked there for 26 hours every week. And

I also had a second part-time job where I

was only working for a few hours every

week in a kitchen in some kind of Japanese

pub. The main reason why I wanted to work

in a convenience store was because all the

other foreigners, they were doing English

teaching jobs, and I didn't want to be

like them. I wanted to be different. I

wanted a job where I could use my Japanese

language skills. Actually, that was an

excuse. The real reason why I didn't want

to do English teaching was because the

idea of having to stand up in front of a

group of people and teach them a lesson

terrified me. Also, I thought that working

at a convenience store would be really

easy. I thought it'd just be like standing

behind the tills, scanning items, giving

customers their change. How hard can it

be? Well, it was a lot more difficult than

I expected. There were so many things we

had to remember, and I kept forgetting

things, and I had a lot of problems with

the cigarettes. So there were so many

different brands of cigarettes, and then

they all had their different strengths of

nicotine. And I had problems with the

language sometimes. I couldn't catch what

people were saying sometimes, especially

old men. They would come in and they

wouldn't really speak properly. They would

kind of mumble like old people do. I

actually found the job really quickly

after arriving in Japan. 2 weeks later, I

managed to find the job, and I went for

the interview, and we just sat down and we

chatted. He didn't ask to see any of my

qualifications. He didn't ask to see my

Japanese proficiency test. Qualification,

which most Japanese people don't even know

exists. So we just sat down, we had a

short conversation in Japanese, and after

he could tell that I could speak Japanese

to a good enough level, he was happy with

that and he gave me the job. After a few

weeks, I started having problems with my

coworkers. I worked with this Japanese guy

who was studying law at university, which

I thought was the most boring thing in the

whole world. Why would you want to study

law apart from wanting to make a lot of

money? Who's actually interested in law?

There must be something wrong with you if

you actually think law's interesting.

There were 2 other Japanese people, this

Japanese girl and the owner's sister, and

the rest of my coworkers were all Chinese

and Taiwanese, which I really hated them

because the Chinese people were so

unfriendly and they just looked really

miserable. But then when they were talking

to each other in Chinese, they would like

turn into a completely different person

and they'd be really chatty and happy,

and I really couldn't stand that. There

was this Chinese girl I used to work with

and she was really pretty, but she was

really uptight and unfriendly. She was a

total bitch. Every time I tried to talk to

her, She just wouldn't show any interest

in talking to me. But then when a Chinese

person came, she would be a completely

different person. She would be nonstop

talking, she would be really chatty, and

she seemed really friendly. And there was

this other Chinese guy that I really

hated. So every morning before I started

work, I would go into the office and I

would take a coffee from the stockroom,

and I wouldn't pay for it. And I

desperately needed that coffee because at

the time I had this French girlfriend,

and she was incredibly horny all of the

time. And we ended up having sex until 2

AM in the morning every night, and I had

to wake up at 5 AM because I had to have a

shower and then I had to get the train

into Tokyo, which took an hour and a half.

And even after we had finished having sex,

my girlfriend wouldn't go straight to

sleep. She would just sit there on her

laptop watching videos. So I found it

really difficult trying to fall asleep,

and I was only getting about a few hours

of sleep every night. And by the time I

got to work, I was exhausted. I would have

died without that coffee. And then one

morning when I was drinking my free coffee

in the office, the bloody Chinese guy

comes in and he goes, aren't you gonna pay

for that? In this irritating tone. And it

was just so annoying. Why does he care so

much? It's not his company. It's not like

he loses any money if I don't pay for a

coffee. I just don't understand these hard

worker types. So I left the office and I

followed him to the cash register and I

paid for it just to get him to shut up.

And I gave him this deadly stare like

this. That'll show him. And then

during my break when no one was around, I

took a few more cans of coffee and I

stuffed it into my bag. And then there's

this Taiwanese guy that I also didn't

really like. He had a really long nose

hair sticking out of his nostril. And at

first he was really nice and friendly,

but after a while he started moaning at

me. He started saying things like,

Daniel, why aren't you doing it properly?

Why don't— why do you keep making the same

mistake? I don't know, why don't you pluck

your bloody nose hair? When I first

started the job, for my first day, I had

to practice greeting customers the whole

day. So in Japan, every time a customer

comes into the store, the people working

there have to shout at them,

irasshaimase, which means welcome to the

store. And I had to practice doing that

all day because they kept saying, Daniel,

you're not doing it loud enough, you need

to do it in a louder voice. And I just

hated it so much. And Japanese customers

are so rude, they don't even say hello or

thank you. At the pay petrol station,

English customers are so different.

They're so energetic and friendly.

They'll always say hello, and they'll

always say thank you when they leave. But

the Japanese people, it's like they were

dead inside. It's like they were so

miserable, like they hated their lives. A

few interesting things did happen. One

time I forgot to remove the sachet of

sauce from this microwave dinner, and I

put the whole thing into the microwave,

and the sachet of sauce just exploded,

and it was a complete mess. And then this

other time, this customer came in and And

I forgot to ask him if he had a points

card. And after I finished the

transaction, he said he had a points card,

and I said it was too late. And he was

just standing there like really shocked.

He said, what? You can't do that! What do

you mean it's too late? That's just

terrible customer service! And I just

said, sorry, next customer. And then this

other time, this really rough-looking

construction worker guy came in, and he

was paying for stuff, and my coworker was

doing the transaction, and I was standing

there on the next till just staring into

space. And I didn't realize he was saying

something to me, and he started to get

angry and he started shouting. He said,

oi, I told you to put this in the

microwave! He wanted me to put his

sandwich into the microwave. Who

microwaves a sandwich? The way he spoke to

me was so rude. He spoke in this really

low-class way, kind of like someone from

the Yakuza speaks. And then there was this

other time I was putting stuff in a

plastic bag for a customer, and because I

was doing it really slowly, she just

grabbed all the stuff, shoved it into the

bag, and ran off like a crazy woman. In

Japan, the customers are so rude towards

staff. They treat you like shit. It's like

they don't even see you as a human being.

They just see you as this robot working in

a store, and they can do anything or say

anything they want to and get away with

it, because they do, because in Japan the

customer is king. Oh, and there's this one

time when I went to the toilet and someone

had left a pornographic magazine next to

the toilet, and I was flipping through the

pages, and I just couldn't resist, and I

ejaculated into the toilet.

After a few months of working at the

convenience store, I kept making the same

mistakes over and over, and the owner's

sister, she got angry with me and she

started yelling at me, which was a really

real surprise. It really shocked me

because she was such a nice person until

then, and she said something like, why do

you keep making the same mistakes? You're

not trying very hard, aren't you? And then

I said, can I go home now? And I went

home, and I didn't turn up the next day

for work. I just quit. I didn't even tell

them that I was quitting. I just didn't

show up. So let's talk about my other job.

I was working in an izakaya, which is a

Japanese pub, and I was working in the

kitchen, just washing up and mopping the

floor. They only gave me 2 hours of work

on Friday every week, so I was working 2

hours a week at that bloody izakaya. I

don't even know why they gave me the job

in the first place. I wasn't even doing

anything useful. They sent me home before

8 PM before it got really busy so I

wouldn't get in the way. I think they was

just humoring me, like, here's a

foreigner, he wants to experience working

in Japan, let's just give him a few hours

of work here at the izakaya just to— just

so he can have some nice memories. I did

try to find another job after that. I went

to this interview for this kitchen job and

this stupid old Japanese guy interviewed

me and he kept asking me stupid questions

like, why do you want to work here? And I

said, because I need money to pay for food

and rent. And then he said, oh, so you

only want to work here because the money's

good? And I said, well, yeah, kind of.

And then he said, do you have any cooking

experience? And I said, no. And then he

said, well, you kind of need experience if

you want to work in the kitchen. And then

I said, but in the advertisement it said

no experience required. And he said, oh,

that's just for the waiter job. And then I

said, so can I apply for the waiter job?

And he said, no. That's how he said it.

He was like, だめですよ, like in this stupid

sarcastic way, as if, as if I'm gonna

employ you after you responded to my

stupid, why do you want to work here,

question in that sarcastic manner. And

then he started criticizing my CV. And

this is the stupid thing about CVs in

Japan. You have to handwrite it with a pen

with your hand. You have to buy this

special form from the shop, and then you

write out your details and your past

experience and education. You have to

write it all out in Japanese, and even if

you make one mistake, you're not allowed

to cross it out. You have to redo the

whole application form on a brand new

sheet of paper because if you cross it

out, it looks messy, and that makes it

look like you're not a hard worker.

You're not doing it properly, and it makes

you look lazy. It's just so stupid. In

Western countries, in England, we write

our CVs on a computer and then we print it

out. Come on, Japan, it's 2017.

Stop living in the past. It took me about

5 or 6 attempts to finish my CV. I kept

making like tiny mistakes when I was

writing the kanji, and it was so

frustrating. In the end, I just got my

Japanese friend, the guy who gave me a

blowjob, to write it for me. And then that

stupid old Japanese guy at the interview

started criticizing my CV. He started

saying things like, oh, you shouldn't

write this like this, you should write

this here, and you should write it like

this. And then he said, oh, you only have

level 2 Japanese proficiency test? That's

not very good, isn't it? That's not level

3. Fuck you. I hope his restaurant went

out of business. I hope he went bankrupt.

How dare he criticize me? Can you imagine

if I showed this video to my next

employer? My future employer? Imagine his

reaction. He'd be so shocked. I'm such

a good worker.