A British woman working as an English teacher at a school in Japan decided to return to the United Kingdom (UK) within a year after being unable to stand the Japanese work culture.
According to Business Insider Japan, Georgia Hennessy relocated from London to a scenic town in Japan in her early 20s to teach English at a high school.
She had expected leisurely afternoons walking among rice paddies and a slower pace of life.
“Of course, I knew it would not be easy. I fully expected to struggle with the unfamiliar food and the complex language,” Ms Hennessy said.
However, I never imagined that Japanese workplace culture would be so vastly different and so challenging, compared to London,” she added.
From day one, various colleagues handed her individually wrapped cookies daily.
Confused, she asked one of her colleagues about the act and learned about omiyage, a custom where employees bring souvenirs to their co-workers after taking time off to show gratitude and apology.
Her colleague then picked one of the treats and further explained that the employee who distributed it had attended a funeral the previous week, and the gifts reflected that.
Source: ON VIXION on Pexels, for illustration purposes only.
Ms Hennessy counted the number of people in the room and realised she needed enough treats for all 40 colleagues whenever she made a trip.
“The realisation that I had to bring back enough souvenirs for 40 coworkers on my return journey slightly dampened the joy of the trip,” she remarked.
She even wished she could tell her colleagues to leave her out of the custom so that she didn’t feel pressured to do the same.
In addition, Ms Hennessy’s contract granted 20 days of annual leave, less than the 25 she was used to in the UK.
However, her supervisor advised her to save 10 days for sick leave, saying that if she used them all up and then fell sick without a hospital certificate, her leave would be unpaid.
Three months in, she fell ill for two weeks and found out that her paid leave was halved.
Ms Hennessy also shared that teachers were expected to report to work during school holidays even when students were absent, a practice she found surprising.
Source: kieferpix on Canva, for illustration purposes only.
When she complained about it to a fellow teacher, he showed her his unused days, which totalled 120 days.
“I haven’t taken a single day off in six years,” he said.
She observed colleagues working 12-hour days, coaching clubs daily after classes. Feeling pressure to conform, she stayed late even when it was unnecessary.
After weeks of working 8am to 6pm, a fellow teacher told her she had finally “blended in”, leaving her anxious and frustrated.
When a year was up, Ms Hennessy resigned.
While the Japanese system was efficient and consistent, her own British values of work-life balance clashed with expectations.
Source: visualsofdana on Unsplash, for illustration purposes only.
She realised that the problem did not lie within Japanese office culture itself. Rather, she was far more deeply ingrained in the British philosophy of work-life balance than she had ever realised.
The Briton reflected on the difficulty of discarding ingrained values and acknowledged Japan’s system worked within its own logic.
Ms Hennessy now lives in London. Despite moments of nostalgia for her former job in Japan, she is convinced that London offers the office culture where she truly belongs.
Also read: Company in Japan publicly humiliates intern for not meeting sales quota, intern quits on same day
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Featured image adapted from kieferpix on Canva and visualsofdana on Unsplash, for illustration purposes only.