The Official Report: English Version

For your consideration. Home on Wednesday.

When I first began to imagine what my six weeks in Saitama would be like, I thought about all of the stereotypical images of the Japanese business world: men dressed in suits exchanging business cards with a bow and rows of people working at computers in an office, working hard from morning until night. I thought I would need to have impeccable keigo (polite honorific speech) in order to not embarrass myself in front of the shachou (company president), and I worried about what I would wear every day. However, the company I was placed with is not actually a company at all, but a cooperative association (seikyou) named Saitama Co-op. While I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be pretending to be a powerful businesswoman, I was also pleasantly surprised, as I had been a member of Oberlin’s Student Cooperative Association (OSCA) and was curious to see what a Japanese co-op was like, especially one on such a large scale. Unlike Oberlin’s co-ops, which are limited mostly to providing alternative housing and dining to students, Saitama Co-op does everything from groceries to health insurance to cultural centers with an emphasis on affordable, healthy living.

I had two personal goals for this internship. The first was to be able to adapt quickly to new situations and jobs, and to be able to carry out those jobs with efficiency and accuracy. Obviously, a lot of that had to do with my Japanese skills and listening comprehension, and I always made sure to ask clarifying questions if I wasn’t completely sure what it was I was supposed to be doing. I am fairly confident with my Japanese, as it was one of my majors at Oberlin and I spent a semester studying abroad at Kansai Gaidai in Osaka last year. Everyone was very complimentary of my Japanese, but I know that there is still a lot more to learn, and I need to keep being diligent about my studies now that I have graduated. I did feel a little bad for the people I worked with at first, as they seemed to have been concerned that I would not understand Japanese, even though a minimum of three years or equivalent of study is required for this internship. However, they were soon put at ease, and we had many great conversations about Japan and America, and Japanese and English, which ties into my second goal: to talk to anyone who was interested about my experiences as an American, a native speaker of English, and a student of Japanese, in order to do my part as an ambassador. There are plenty of misconceptions held by both Americans and Japanese, and as someone who bridges those two worlds, I find it to be a sort of duty to stress that the world is full of all sorts of people, and thinking in absolutes is rarely useful (for example, is it true that all Americans can’t use chopsticks or eat raw fish, or, is it true that there still aren’t many Japanese women in the workforce. I was actually surprised to see that most of the people I worked with at Saitama Co-op are women).

I moved around a lot during my six weeks in Saitama, working at three different locations within Saitama Co-op. I spent the first week at Saitama University working the cash registers in two different convenience store-type locations and the book store. This took some adjusting, as transactions are unsurprisingly carried out entirely in Japanese, and I had to learn how to use the cash register, which I had no experience operating in any language. I was glad that my Japanese numbers were already strong, as I had to narrate what the total was, how much money the customer gave me, and how much their change came to within a short span of time. I also had to further familiarize myself with Japanese currency and be able to recognize how much money the customer had put down rather quickly. Perhaps the most practical thing I learned is that if you would like the person ringing you up to take whatever money you have set down and change it, it's useful to say onegaishimasu (please take care of this), so they don't keep waiting for you to put down exact change. It’s also a useful way for a customer to begin a transaction, and I now use it every time I buy something as an ulterior motive to let the cashier know that I speak Japanese.

One of my favorite parts of Japanese monetary transactions is that there is almost always a little tray where the customer puts the money, and there it sits while you finish with your business. You don’t have to hold their money somewhat awkwardly in your hand, and it doesn’t have to sit there on the counter looking like it could blow away at any second. Instead, like many things in Japan, it has its proper place, and there it stays until your business is done, when it goes into the register. They often have little rubber nubs that feel nice to touch, so that you’re not grasping something hard all day. It’s the small things that count.

I also sold bento (boxed lunches) during lunch time, which was fun even though it was ghastly hot outside (as it was the entire time) since the ladies I worked with were very sweet and entertaining. There was no cash register however, so I had to calculate change in my head, which I’m not very good at in English or Japanese. Still, like my regular gig at the cash register, any time I had an issue, there was somebody right there to help me out. From my first day, I felt like I was being treated as a member of a team, and that I had been accepted into the extensive co-op family.

The next two weeks, I went on grocery delivery runs with a woman named Shimizu, and we quickly became friends, passing the time in the truck talking about Japan, America, and food. I love all food anywhere, including Japanese food, which always seems to surprise people. We mostly went around apartment buildings making deliveries, and it was nice to constantly be in the company of another person, and also to move around on the job. Standing in one place working a cash register is extremely tiring, and my shoulders and feet hurt a lot after every day at Saitama University. Conversely, making deliveries included a lot of down time in the truck and in the office, and the boxes were rarely heavy. I loved eating lunch with Shimizu-san and her friends every day, and it seemed to me that the women I worked with are very happy with their jobs and Saitama Co-op. The fact that they accept interns like me is probably also testament to the co-op’s priorities.

The last two weeks I spent working at a grocery store in Sayama-dai, which is more in the countryside. Naturally, I spent some time stocking shelves, but I also got to do work behind the scenes, which I found to be more fun. The first two days, I worked in the produce department, doing a lot of packaging. I was surprised to find that Saitama Co-op does a lot of its own packaging of fruits and vegetables, catering to the whims of the co-op members who shop there. For example, I made a lot of half size packages, which we prepared in response to customer comments that they only needed half of a head of cabbage, or half a bag of spinach, at a time. As someone who has spoiled many a half a head of cabbage because I couldn’t use it quickly enough, I thought it was great that Saitama Co-op was able to give its customers what they wanted on such a local level. I have found also that Japan tends to package a lot more of its produce than the United States does.

After produce, I was taken under the wing of the manager of the souzai section, Kikutani-san. Souzai is where they actually prepare food, like bento, sushi, tempura, yakitori, and katsu (fried foods). It is perhaps akin to a delicatessen in that respect. As a side note, on most Saitama Co-op signage, it says “co-op deli,” which does not stand for delicatessen, but for “delivery” and “delicious.” Japanese English is its own beast. I had lots of fun working in souzai, as all the ladies were very nice and funny, and I got to use sushi-making robots. Personally, I am a little miffed by how stereotypically Japanese this seems: sushi and robots are some of Japan’s most famous products, and putting them together seems both natural and like a bad joke, like something you would see on a novelty T-shirt.

In addition to my regular work, I was also treated at least once but sometimes twice a week to touring various facilities, both those operated by Saitama Co-op and by Saitama Prefecture. I was placed in the care of two remarkable individuals from Saitama Co-op, Nagashima-san and Tsuchiya-san, who took me around to places like the food product inspection center, in order to learn more about all the aspects of dealing with food sales. They also took me to more cultural spots, like the Bonsai Museum in Toro, which I highly recommend. I could depend on them for anything, and they were so warm towards me that my fellow interns mistook them for my host family on the day we visited the governor. That’s right, we met the governor of Saitama Prefecture, part of our six-week-long VIP treatment. We were taken around to all sorts of places around the prefecture, like the 2002 World Cup soccer stadium, a saké brewery (complete with taste testing), and a breathtaking shrine and ryokan (inn) on top of a mountain amongst the clouds in Chichibu. We were not just interns, we were guests of the government. We enjoyed delicate meals of Japanese food and got to do a lot of hands-on projects, like make washi (Japanese paper) and soba noodles. If the experience was two parts work, it was one part playtime, getting shuttled around in an air conditioned van, which is not a bad gig considering the unbearable 98° F humid weather.

Since I already knew a lot about Japan, culturally and linguistically, before I came to Saitama, it is a little difficult for me to discern what would stand out as surprising about Japanese business. One of the things I did enjoy as a member of the work force, however, was the general air of politeness that permeates everyday conversation, such as adding the slightly honorific o- prefix to words like obento (bento) and okaimono (shopping), and also the various greetings (aisatsu). To start with, there is irasshaimase (Welcome!), which is cheerfully bleated by all shop workers any time a customer enters a store. Amongst co-workers, there is the wonderful phrase otsukaresama desu, which people throw around lightly, but is ultimately a way of acknowledging somebody’s continued hard work at their job. Being told this every day is very satisfying, and I love that somebody thanking you for doing your job is built into the work day.

I am incredibly grateful that I had the opportunity to come to Saitama this summer and experience what it is like to work in Japan, and to belong to a larger, incredibly supportive community in the form of Saitama Co-op. This experience has inspired me to keep striving in my language studies so that I can one day live my dream of being a professional translator and/or interpreter. It is so incredibly important to experience cultures other than one’s own in order to gain perspective on one’s native country and language so that we can make this world a more peaceful one. Everyone I met was extremely nice and generous, and a lot of the people I worked with gave me the impression that I had met them before, or reminded me strongly of someone I know back in the States. I felt like I was already surrounded by old friends, which is an incredibly comforting feeling. Even though we may be of different nationalities, I believe the common thread of humanity is enough to unite us, as well as some mutual language study. There was a quote in the orientation package prepared by Ohio State University that really stuck with me, which read, “When people talk about other cultures, they tend to describe the differences and not the similarities.” Surely, cultural differences are fun and interesting, but ultimately it is the similarities that tie us all together.