Royally messing up in Japan

[edogaijin]

Until a few months back I worked at one of the biggest companies in Japan. I was fired due to 'cultural reasons' that basically had to do with a female coworker and myself. Unfortunately I have no savings to speak of. What should I do in this situation... Return home? Collect unemployment benefit? Try to find somewhere to live with a friend?

Looking for constructive advice here.

 

[nice gaijin]

why is "look for another job" not on your list?

what do you WANT to do?

 

[edogaijin]

why is "look for another job" not on your list?

what do you WANT to do?

Well looking for new work goes without saying. Just wondering if anyone on JREF has a story of someone that really, really messed up in Japan. It seems like a lot of Chinese and Koreans here have a support network in their community that we Westerners do not have exactly. Maybe I'm imagining that.

I have no family here, and my rent is up at the end of this month. Even if I start working now I'd get paid next month since that's how most English teaching jobs work.

 

[nahadef]

You personally should go home. You've made a point of the fact that you consider America superior and you don't want to change to fit your adopted country (though a lot of that might just have been bitterness at your situation...)

If you don't like Japan's ways, you don't like that they aren't thankful to Americans enough, think they should change for your sake, then I don't see the point of you trying to make it in the long haul. Better to go home, and you can tell friends and family that the country was too stubborn to accept you or something, since it certainly wasn't any fault of yours, right? Fired for 'cultural reasons'...

 

[edogaijin]

Fired for 'cultural reasons'...

Company cultural reasons. The company said I was not a fit for their culture... mostly because I didn't want to go out to insanely unhealthy binge drinking parties or work unpaid overtime.

 

[Half-n-Half]

I guess the important question is, do you still want to live and work in Japan?

 

[nahadef]

Company cultural reasons. The company said I was not a fit for their culture... mostly because I didn't want to go out to insanely unhealthy binge drinking parties or work unpaid overtime.

Are you sure it wasn't because you wanted to keep talking about America and the war? You think you're persecuted on this site for a whole lot of different reasons than people actually have for disliking you so I don't know that I trust your estimation that you were terminated for not binge drinking.

 

[edogaijin]

I guess the important question is, do you still want to live and work in Japan?

Yes, but not at a Japanese company. I've seen enough of the obscenely common corporate 窶堋｢窶堋ｶ窶堙? massive unpaid overtime and ridiculous drinking culture that goes on at the average big company in Japan. To this other forum troll/stalker, I can safely say that America rarely came up in any workplace discussion and that I have probably discussed WW2 in real life maybe once in my entire time in Japan. That was with an old man that seemed grateful for the US military occupation, saying we'd done a lot for the Japanese economy back then (which is probably true)

 

[nahadef]

Yes, but not at a Japanese company. I've seen enough of the obscenely common corporate いじめ, massive unpaid overtime and ridiculous drinking culture that goes on at the average big company in Japan. To this other forum troll/stalker, I can safely say that America rarely came up in any workplace discussion and that I have probably discussed WW2 in real life maybe once in my entire time in Japan. That was with an old man that seemed grateful for the US military occupation, saying we'd done a lot for the Japanese economy back then (which is probably true)

So when you told your story about how you told off a Japanese by letting them know they were lucky Tokyo didn't get nuked, or whatever inane thing it was you wrote, that was just you posturing online in some way? It did seem too ignorant to be true, so maybe you were just trolling. All the same, the kind of person who writes what you have in your short time on this forum, well, what do you have to offer the country whatsoever? Seriously, what do you bring that 1,000 Japanese 20-somethings couldn't, and without the self-pitying attitude?

You asked for honest advice, and my honest advice is that you should go home. You don't sound like a responsible adult whatsoever. You have chip on your shoulder, and place blame everywhere except on yourself. Your company was so terrible? Why didn't you quit, why did they have to fire you? You're not ready to live abroad.

Good luck finding a company that doesn't force you to binge drink. In my experience (including a nomikai just last week where I drank Coke only), as much as staff wants you to drink with them, when it comes down to it, they want people who are competent at work. That always comes first.

 

[edogaijin]

good luck finding a company that doesn't force you to binge drink. In my experience (including a nomikai just last week where I drank Coke only), as much as staff wants you to drink with them, when it comes down to it, they want people who are competent at work. That always comes first.

This detracts from the rest of your post, in my opinion. I don't think normal companies "force" their employees to binge drink. I was on a team of alcoholics that worked until 2330 every night. I went home when my work is done. I very highly doubt that normal Japanese companies force their employees to work late most nights and/or drink to excess. That is simply unhealthy and absolutely ridiculously self-destructive as a lifestyle.

What does being competent at work have to do with working late or binge drinking? Maybe I'm reading your post wrong here, but I don't see these as related at all. If anything, wouldn't a competent worker be efficient and therefore be done with their work by quitting time and then go home roughly on time?

 

[edogaijin]

As for what I have to offer the country... Well, put bluntly the combination of native level English skills, a high level of education and international work experience. The truth is Japan is bringing foreigners to Japan, because well... Japan needs foreigners to work here. In many fields outside English teaching, including in the IT sector and finance sector. English is the lingua de franca for technical documentation, and even most software engineers don't spend most of their time writing code. Therefore having a programmer that is able to read the documentation from Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft or Oracle at a native level is a huge advantage to hiring a Japanese that might simply be unable to reference the proper documentation. Add to that a lot of software languages are naturally close to English since they were made in America and Western Europe.

All I'd say in response to what do North American and European programmers offer Japan? Well, I mean there's never been a Japanese Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds, let alone a Japanese Steve Jobbs.

 

[Dotanbatan]

My constructive advice is that you should go back to America.

Get a job in the States, get your finances and personal life back on track and then, if you still have an interest in Japan, come back for regular holidays...... where you can live it up and not worry about conforming or changing your habits.

 

[FinancialWar]

You should move to China, Westerners are treated like royalty there.