The Loss Of My Eye-Candy
If you are from Tsuruta, stop reading here. You'll only be offended by what follows. The rest of you... are you interested yet?
Japanese offices work in ways incomprehensible to Americans. Each April, the start of the fiscal year in Japan, people transfer jobs. These changes aren't requested or voluntary. Orders arrive from above, often a short week or two before they take effect.
What sort of transfers occur? Any. Agriculture department workers transfer to the garbage section. Health workers transfer to the planning section. Cool people transfer out of the foreigner section.
All right. That's a bit harsh. However, it happened. Foreigner-friendly Saito and Tatsuro escaped the Kikakuka (my department). Tatsuro celebrated the end of constant 12 hour days. I mourned the loss of my "office boyfriend" (hey, that's my sister's phrase - it only means we joke with each other at work). No more eye-candy sitting across from me all day long. Nobody to "accidentally" bump into me. No music trading partner.
Saito, my old supervisor, transferred. In his place, Yamamoto, who hadn't said more than twenty words to me since my arrival. Worry added pain to my annoyance at being back in Tsuruta after two weeks on Maui.
(Yamamoto's turned out to be okay after all. Now that his job demands relating to me, he's all to happy to be friendly)
To make things worse, only one person transferred into the department, leaving us shorthanded. My supervisors' workloads doubled. Being Japanese, they willing submitted. What else can they do? If they leave their cush government jobs, they will never find good employment again. That is Japan. That is the bane of a system offering lifetime unemployment.
And what do I do for social interaction at work now? For Japanese practice? Occasionally I chat with Chiaki, my direct supervisor. I chat with the little kids in the schools. And sometimes, I wander down the hall to have a little flirt with my ex-office-boyfriend.
