Living and Working in Japan
A Daiwa Scholarship blog update from Rachel Venn, DS2022
This is one of my favourite study spots, the place I come to when I want to get things
done. A front-row seat, the desks here face a psychedelic array of buildings, lights,
cars, and people - people in their thousands, clumping up into tidy groups and spilling
across in all directions when signals release them from the sides of the road. Adverts
move across the square like living creatures - Shibuya’s resident mascot dog, Hachiko,leaps from building to building while pulling faces at the people below. Like clockwork,
a Yamanote line train rolls across the scene every few minutes, as arterial and regular
as a heartbeat. This is Shibuya Crossing, almost always used as a symbol of Tokyo. Forme, coming here always reminds me that I really am on the other side of the world, in
this city that seems almost mythically removed from reality until you stand here in real
life. This isn’t the cheapest seat in Tokyo, but I think it’s worth it - there’s almost
always something to catch my eye as my gaze wanders from my laptop. And the snacks
are unlimited...
It’s easier to reflect on this city from up here. A city of contradictions and littleabsurdities. Convulsive bursts of colour and energy and swathes of bleak concrete.
Relentless urbanism and untouched nature. Kindness and politeness and distance andseparation, heart-touching sincerity and game-like insincerity. Nearly 40 million people- and nearly 40 million strangers.

I felt quite pleased with myself when I first looked through my photos of Japan, as somany seemed to pop out and explode with colour. I quickly realised that this had
nothing to do with me - Japan is a country with all the contrast filters on. There aremany grey and repetitive places, but when the colours come, they come at fullintensity. Take the tree above, spotted at a central Tokyo park in December. The
seasonal(momiji) red leaves of these trees command such respect that people willtake mini-pilgrimages to parks, bonsai, and even up mountains to capture their fleeting
vividity, much like is famously done for the cherry blossoms in spring. Shopping streetshung red leaves over the lampposts, and I was served a plate of fish with a decorative
red leaf as the centrepiece. Japan has given me an eye for contrasts, and a sense ofclockwork. The seasons come one by one, and are to be appreciated each in theirproper place and in the temporal sense of impermanence they represent.

紅葉

Things are different from how I’ve learned to expect them. The winter air scratches,
dry in my throat, as the grass turns pale and dies away, before coming back luscious ina heavy, wet, summer. All the staff in the coffee shop turn and bow to me as I hurryout to use the bathroom. A five-year-old child confidently enters the packed train on
his own and reads the signs above my head with more confidence than I’ll ever manage.

This might sound a little unusual, but lately, I’ve been thinking about windows.
Something I was not prepared for when I came to Japan was the novel existence ofWindowless Buildings. You can gaze around Shibuya Scramble, possibly the mostextroverted and relentless square on Earth, and yet most of the buildings facing it havetheir windows walled away or replaced with deceptive black glass. Entire department
stores loom with 15 stories of blank and expressionless concrete, and I keep a list on
my phone of cafes where I can sit and actually look out of a window to the outside
world. On that other planet of architecture, traditional Japanese wooden buildings
have not windows but sliding(shoji) paper frames - and a window behind these,sure, but one rarely exposed. The light that filters through the paper filter is calm anddiluted, and gives away no secrets of the inner world it illuminates. In the traditionalcountryside house where I spent my homestay, I could never see out from inside thehouse, no matter where I tried. I’d slide my hand at the end of a room through acurtain, then a shoji door, then a net curtain, and then a pile of old boxes, to then be
finally faced with impenetrable, frosted glass. I’m still not sure what conclusion todraw from this, or if there is even a conclusion at all - maybe looking for deeper
meaning in this is as insightful as trying to distinguish the weather through atranslucent window.

障子

I’m a scientist, but let’s go with an unscientific working model for now. Japan is a
deeply private country. Again, contrasts come to mind - the internal and the external.
There is safety in a windowless space, a sense of privacy, and control over a completelyinternal environment. Outside, there is vulnerability and there is performance. Japan’s
emotional face is one that hides away. In practice? You will rarely hear what people
really think or what they really intend to say. You have to ‘read the air’, like trying topeer through that frosted glass, after swiping through all the layers that lie before it.

There are charms and delights too. I’m often moved by the sincerity of simple andthoughtful actions. For example, I’ve been adopted by an older couple, Koji and Kyoko,
who affectionately style themselves as my “Japanese grandparents” and invite me forexquisite home cooking once a month or so. They mean a great deal to me. One time, I
turned up to find a row of teenagers facing me in the apartment, who all immediately
bowed and introduced themselves one-by-one. Kyoko turned to me with stars in hereyes. “I find young people for you. Young people party! Our doctor’s children.” I don’tknow the actual circumstances, but a fairly amusing mental image of Kyoko borrowing
her doctor’s kids for this “young people party” at her latest appointment entered mymind. I rarely leave Kyoko and Koji’s apartment empty-handed; several times, I’ve had
a warm egg pressed enthusiastically into my hands at the door “for the journey home”.
Whether between friends or strangers, it’s the thoughtful touches and small details ofJapanese society that stick in my mind. Roadworks are accompanied by ten or more
staff apologising and waving what can only be described as lightsabers. I try not tostand outside in the rain anymore, since twice, strangers have run out of theirapartments to insistently hand me an umbrella and then flee. All around, we are
implored to “please enjoy” so many things... souvenirs from little trips, sweets andtea, deer-themed trains... I personally enjoy that when it rains, the policemen get out
a second, clear, raincoat hat, to wear over the top of their original hat. I’m not sure
you’ll find that one written anywhere else, though. Fortunately, Tokyo has room for us
all to “please enjoy” our own random choices of things.

I didn’t have the smoothest start to working in Japan. Oh, it’s been worth it, for sure.
But it has been a continual, cultural, and occasionally uncomfortable learning
experience. For various reasons, I had thought that while I observed all theinterpersonal idiosyncrasies in the people around me, my working experience in aninternational sector would be different - a haven of globalised familiarity. Of course,that wasn’t exactly the case.
I had some ideas about what this world was like before I finished my year of studies.
Japan is the home of the salaryman - the over-worked, under-recognised employee-forlife toiling in a dress code under fluorescent ceiling lights. Calling someone a“salaryman” has a vaguely disdainful connotation in the West - not so much in Japan.
Many self-identify by it. You can famously see a sea of them if you sit in the coffee
shop overlooking the train tunnel at Shinagawa at rush hour; thousands upon thousandsof men in black trousers and white shirts, with black backpacks and uniform hair,marching in step to the beat of the Yamanote line. It’s not a particularly inspiring view.
But these vestigial salarymen are still the cells and veins of the Japanese economy.
A change has emerged in the Japanese economy in recent years; the rise of start-ups.
My company is a start-up, and its innovative concepts are part of what drew me here.
There are no ‘salarymen’ in my company. But while more and more institutions arebecoming dynamic and mobile, culture is a heavier mass and slow to change. I work inthe space sector, and one of my first challenges in Japan was networking with thespace sector as I did back in the UK. Cold (or lukewarm, with mutual contacts) reaches
for connection were met with polite bafflement at best and silence at worst. One callwith a professor I’d been encouraged to reach out to by contacts in Europe opened witha direct, “What is it that you want from me?”. I don’t think it was mean-spirited, but
the culture of professional community here is just so different - and fundamentally, I
am an outsider. Trying to build a network of genuine connections in Tokyo felt liketrying to ice skate uphill.

For example, in a bit of a rogue move, I ended up on the organising team for the G7Youth Conference in Japan last spring. This was one case where cold-emailing things
that sounded interesting actually manifested an interesting kind of outcome. I’d seenthat the G7 conference would be in Hiroshima that year, and that my topic - spacesustainability - was likely to come up, so why not try and dip my toes in? I think thatthey were so surprised to have a random application from a foreigner that they added
me into the team. This doesn’t seem to have been the regular route in. People kept
asking me “who do you know?” and “who introduced you?”. It seems the circle of young
people in Japan connected enough, fluent enough in English and interested enough inforeign policy to be a part of this kind of project is quite small. Several team members
flew in from Harvard University just to preside over events. The team was rigid inhierarchy and honorifics were abundant.
They never really worked out what to do with me in that event, so I essentially ended
up just supporting international delegates with English. I got a couple of things out ofthat experience, though. Firstly, I observed the culture of the younger ‘leading’generation in Japan, and started to appreciate that some differences in communicationstyle are not going to change with the generations. Better, I enjoyed some prestigious
venues above my usual rank in society such as going in the National Diet and attending
luscious hotel banquets addressed by Prime Minister Kishida himself.
Through the Daiwa Foundation, two of us ‘space scholars﻿’ were also fortunate enoughto meet astronaut Naoko Yamazaki, a graceful and formidable force in Japan‘s spacehistory, who I’ve bumped into a few times since. It was very exciting when she seemed
to recognise me, given that she is famous enough that I’ve picked up a lego model ofher in a Shibuya department store. Another underrated experience from learning
Japanese has been speaking to Japanese astronauts I meet at space conferences
abroad. The look of astonishment on Koichi Wakata’s face as I approached him inAzerbaijan speaking Japanese almost made all those hours of language study worth it initself. Let’s hope that interaction left a memorable impression...

And here we come to my work placement - the grand finale of working experiences inJapan for students on the Daiwa Scholarship. I came in the somewhat privileged
position of knowing exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it. As aformer engineer interested in space policy and international relations, the number ofapplicable institutions for me is quite small. It just so happens that a world-leading
start-up in space sustainability is headquartered in Tokyo; here we find a modern andinternational example of the changes being experienced across Japan’s economy.
International does not mean culturally neutral. I started off in the Japanese branch of
the office, where the staff and the language are almost universally Japanese. There
were some misunderstandings with my supervisor, who eventually told me, “I think thatyou and I have different ideas of what an internship is”. It has to be noted thatinternships are not common at all in Japan, where students usually proceed fromuniversity directly into a job secured from their penultimate year. I realised a few
things: in Japan, colleagues are unlikely to address problems or misunderstandings
directly; people will make unspoken assumptions and both parties must dance aroundthese; and through the art of “reading the air” we thought about earlier, we talk in
professional settings like we are communicating through a translucent plate of glass.
It’s not inherently good or bad. It’s simply different, and it’s crucial to understand this
syntax for anyone who intends to work with Japan.

I benefitted from later moving to the international department of the office andworking on projects across my company’s global entities. I think, for me, this works
better. My future is not going to be working in a Japanese office environment. But
being in the HQ in Japan has provided countless opportunities nonetheless - I’ve met
ambassadors and politicians, attended events at conferences and embassies, metastronauts and friends. I’ve also learnt a lot about my field and the working world. AndI’ve learnt a lot - more than most people can ever dream of learning - about Japan,that mystical nation so very far from home.
What a privilege it is to call the distant mundane and familiar. What a privilege it is totake that chance, that risk, of discovering somewhere so very different from what youknow. Challenges are a part of the journey. When I applied for the Daiwa Scholarship, I
spoke about how it’s important to understand a global perspective on space, since
space is a borderless and intrinsically international arena. Now, I look back and think:actually, isn’t the Earth the same?

Above: Mt Fuji, guardian of Japan, emerges as we reach the summit of a mountain in West Tokyo.
Below: The summer sun sets on a day snorkelling with friends in the tropical islands of Okinawa.