(1) They
pay cash. Cash! In the year 2020! Never in my life had I ever before been paid
cash for full-time or part-time work. In
Korea and the U.S., as soon as you get hired they ask for your bank information
so they can set up direct deposit. With
my company here, each month I get an envelope stuffed with ¥10000, ¥5000 and ¥1000
notes along with some coins and a tiny pay stub. The amount is always accurate, so I’m not
worried about not getting what I’ve earned.
It’s just that one month’s salary in cash is not the type of money you
want to be carrying around.
When the
company began in the 1980s, paying people cash was probably the norm, but times
change. Japanese people are loathe to
change, though. “This is the way we’ve
always done it. Why change?” So typical.
After I set up my bank account, I asked Ochiai-san, the company owner,
if she could do direct deposit. She refused. “If I do that, I won’t see you once a
month.” When you do see me, you talk for
2.5 minutes and then you’re on your way back down the mountain. So what’s the point?
At first, she
was expecting me to go to her office in Saitama to pick up my salary. That’s five hours and ¥4000 roundtrip. No way.
People with cars or those who live paycheck-to-paycheck can do that
mess.
My school was
the most remote of all the schools serviced by the company. All the others are in easily accessible small
cities and towns. In order to reach the village,
you have to drive up a windy mountain road.
Although Ochiai-san drives herself everywhere else, she’s afraid of
driving on the mountainous road that leads to my Gunma village, so whenever she
goes, her secretary, husband or IT guy drive her. I guess sometimes she was unable to get
someone to driver her, so I sometimes got two or three months’ salary at once. Lucky for her, I’m good with money, so I can
be patient.
My second
year, the new elementary English teacher was a recent university grad from the
U.S. He was up to his neck in debt, had
no budgeting skills and liked to spend money unnecessarily. He often had very little money left at the
end of the pay period. So when payday
was approaching, he talked about nothing else.
And then he would take the bus to the town at the bottom of the mountain
( ¥2500 roundtrip) where Ochiai-san would meet him with his envelope. Not I.
This is why
there are so many money frauds in Japan that don’t exist anywhere else, because
people walk around with wads of cash rather than use cards or do electronic
transfers. My co-teacher told me that
several of our co-workers do not trust ATMs and only go to the bank when
tellers are open. These people are in
their 40s and 50s, not old at all.
(2) Most
of its teachers have Japanese ancestry or are married to Japanese people
and have been living here for more than ten years. That’s a problem for a newcomer like me
because they’re not used to providing teachers with the help that other
companies (with single, foreign teachers) are accustomed to providing.
When my boss
went with me to find an apartment in Saitama, it was her first time ever doing
such a thing. When we finished the
hours-long process, she exclaimed at how involved it all was. She’s been in business some 35 years and had
never helped an employee get an apartment. When it came time to move, I asked
if her husband could drive my stuff from Gunma to Saitama in his pickup
truck. “Find a moving company online,” she
said, flippantly. Bitch, what? Do I look like a hafu to you? Do I have a Japanese husband or relative to
help me with that? I can read katakana
and hiragana, but websites are full of kanji.
And how would I even begin to find a moving company online? I’m a very independent person and try to do
as much for myself as I can. So when I ask for help, it’s with great effort and
it’s because I really need it. Don’t
wave me off just because other employees don’t need the same help.
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