The Great Spirit Quake, Year 13 of the Emperor
...written on 2000-12-30, @ 00:24:41
Tales of Kim's Life in Japan
Fri December 29, 2000
Soon it will be time to write a new date! 2001! Now that will be mighty strange. In Japan, they keep track of the date by how many years the current emperor is in power. So Japan will be headed for year number '13' on Jan 1. The number '13' isn't an unlucky one for the Japanese, but the number '4' is. The word for four sounds the same as the word for "death", so avoid giving 4 of anything to a Japanese person. I have seen 6 car parking lots with numbers on each space that omit the number '4', I mean, who would want that space? They keep the number on elevator buttons though.
My cold is almost gone now. It only took 12 days to get over it. I only missed one day of work, but would have taken more off if it wasn't for the Japanese work ethic. The day Hide took me to the clinic he said I could go home and rest, but that I should come to work the next day. I did, but I looked so pitiful that Manami asked him if I could go home. He said yes in such a begrudging manner that I stayed at work anyway. Last night I even stayed a couple of hours overtime. Today however, I came in and Hide was the one coughing and groaning. I brought him some hot green tea. I can hear coughing all around the office. Miki even has a cold. The old "I wanna be a martyr for my company" work ethic is undermining the health and well being of the Japanese workplace and eroding the Japanese family.
Last night Hide and I left the office at midnight and his parting comment was that he had to be at the office at 7:30am and probably work again until midnight, or 1:00, or 2:00. This kind of declaration doesn't impress me. Just who the heck does it impress anyway? Nobody, because such blind devotion is EXPECTED. Woe unto you if you use all of your annual vacation days. Woe unto you if you let a puny cold keep you out of work. While some of the larger corporations are slowing down a bit, the small to middle sized companies are still hammering away.
I've heard many people here say, "I love my job" or " My job is my life." Yet they are run down, sad, and bitchy, their families never see them, they're lonely because they don't get out and socialize, but give them a day or two off and they return energized and refreshed. Yoohoo, Japan! There is a correlation here! Fred says he is voting me in as the next company manager because I would demand that people go home and rest or do something interesting.
As I traveled through Latin America almost 20 years ago, I was struck by the differences between the people from the Dominican Republic and the people of the Andes. If you know the merengue and salsa music of the Caribbean, you know it's mostly a lively, upbeat music and despite the daily hardships many Dominicans faced, the country's overall mood was a happy one. I remember an Andean song I heard while I was traveling in Ecuador and Peru, "and please teach me how to be happy, because I was born unhappy." To me it feels like Japan is under a similar tremendous strain. Millions and millions of Japanese psyches are suffering and if reform of some kind doesn't come soon, the entire society will shake, crack and crumble from a moral and spiritual deficit earthquake that will surpass the measurements of the Richter scale.
Steps must be taken to preserve the spirit of the 5-7 year olds so they don't lose their happiness and inquisitiveness to become withdrawn, apathetic, spoon-fed, emotionally crippled teenagers who will then become empty, burned out office workers.
Who can lead Japan into a state of well being in the next century?