Having worked in Japan full time for 3 years now, I’ve heard a lot of 社会人のマナーとして in the workplace, but the one that threw me over the edge (and made me write this post) was when I got in trouble today for stapling pages together with the staple being horizontal and not diagonal. Holy. Shit. I almost laughed in my bosses’ face when she said that to me. I even asked her what the reason for that is, and she literally just said 社会人のマナーです.
So, I’m interested to hear what some of the stupidest “manners” you’ve all heard during your time living in Japan. Please give me some entertaining reads while I contemplate my life in Japan…
Edit: I’m glad I made this post, these stories you all have are hilarious. May we all learn to be upstanding citizens.
27 comments
The same thing has happened to me.
Also have gotten in trouble for handing my meishi to a customer with a (narrow) table in between us- even though it was done very properly with both hands ofc. Oops.
And got a long lecture by pouring beer for my boss with the beer bottle label facing sideways (should be facing up).
I’ve also been warned that people of the opposite gender should not go to lunch or get a coffee alone together, because it would look sketchy.
But I think the funniest was that it’s rude to use keyboard shortcuts for the お世話になっております and よろしくお願い致します in emails, because it’s not respectful towards the customer. I was told I should type it out every time- as if they could tell the difference.
When I started working I actually got told off once before, by a Japanese colleague, when I did the same thing
Been stapling it the “proper way” ever since
Other business/社会人 faux paus:
* Kanpai-ing with my glass higher than my superiors
* Not having the correct level of foam after pouring beers (and also having to continuously look at the bosses/client’s glasses like a hawk to make sure to top it up if it fell below a certain level lol)
* Not lining up clients’ meishi on the desk in a certain order (can be either horizontal or vertical but has to be from most senior to most junior) during meetings (gets confusing when you have 2 or 3 guys with the same 部長 or GM title)
* Not bringing your laptop home (edit: expected to respond to clients’ needs after hours although this can already be somewhat done on the company phone)
* Not printing out the presentation slides and bringing a physical pen and notebook to a meeting (deemed as “looking unprepared” even though its all on the laptop)
* When printing out A3-sized documents it needs to be in that particular “z-fold”
* Don’t be late or skip work after a super heavy night of drinking or some crazy shenanigans even if your Japanese colleagues are drunk as hell and say “ahhh I’ll go in late tomorrow” or “ahhh im gonna take a day off tomorrow” – you may think all of you are in agreement but they will be there seated by 9am and working normally, as if last night never happened
Edit: Just remembered a few others –
* Don’t forget setting up the jizen (pre) meetings! Arranging a pre-meeting for a meeting to “align” / let your superiors know what the meeting is about even though the agenda is already in the email
* Have not experienced this myself but I have heard stories of some superiors being pretty fixated on how you input the names/addressees of recipients for emails (got to start from most senior to most junior)
* Ensuring that your desk is spick and span before leaving, seniors guys would walk by and if they spotted a messy desk they’ll stop by the desk for a second and make a comment like “kitanai ne” before moving on
* Having to lug around an old school metal briefcase when carrying “sensitive” docs/printouts as putting it in your normal work bag would give a bad image to clients (“not treating sensitive information with enough care”) even though that metal briefcase attracts more attention than a normal bag
* The brushing of teeth and finishing mouthwash gargle after lunch, after smoke breaks and before meetings (everyone carries the travel toothbrush case)
* Having to include a phrase similar to ご迷惑をおかけして申し訳ございません in your email to the entire department (or at the very least, your team) if you have fallen sick and can’t come in to work or take PTO
Overall, I won’t say it was a bad experience working at a nikkei. Definitely silly at times but now that I think back it was interesting and worth the occasional chuckle
When I worked at a really small-sized company, I was berated for not profusely thanking the company president for how gracious he was in letting me take PTO.
I think that this thread will be entertaining…
I hope that you will consolidate the rules* in a meta list 🙂
* for us barbarians
Just a couple of anecdotes that I’ve heard:
– not bowing deeply enough when on the phone with a client (apparently they have superpowers and can “hear” whether you are doing it or not)
– placing a postage stamp *slightly* crookedly on an envelope and being ordered to scrape it off and stick it back on again correctly
– failing to buy a White Day gift for one of my grandpa students, who complained to the school, who ordered me to get something for him and apologize (this actually happened to me)
Great topic!
Most of the manners you guys list are Indeed ridiculous, but I was taught “how to staple documents” in my country too haha but there was a reasoning behind it – you staple vertically as close to the edge as possible, that way when turning over pages you don’t make massive dog ears, therefore it looks more neet when you’re scanning those stapled papers. What is common knowledge in Japan, is the other way around abroad ですね~
Being from Texas I’m used to the ladies first culture and I got told by a colleague that I don’t need do pour the women their drinks ( at a nomikai) and they should pour it for the men. I laughed and didn’t agree with him . Same colleague told me I don’t need to hold the door open for women either…..now he’s my subordinate lol.
Honestly these details are something i’ll never be able to fully adapt to in terms of Japanese culture
I was told while cleaning in the office that I wring washclothes out like a child.
I have the opposite problem. People don’t tell me about what the right business manner. Regardless if it’s about bowing, meshi exchange, greeting, elevator etiquette, anything. If I ask “hey whats the proper manner for this thing”, people tell me “it’s OK people know you’re foreigner so don’t mind it.
The most stupidest thing I heard from my client is he wanted me to answer his phone after 8pm and he just literally said 「社会人(日本人)のマナーだから」and even complained that he couldn’t stand me anymore because I never reply after 7pm lmao
That dude was around 40 y/o, not even that old.
Got in trouble once for not continuing to bow long enough after the elevator doors had closed.
The doors closed, I stood up, and two minutes later I was treated to a short lecture on the appropriate amount of time to stay bowed.
One of my western colleagues has been here for so long that he’s been completely indoctrinated by some of these little rules. It’s funny watching him tell off some of my other colleagues for getting some of these wrong:
– always take your coat off before going inside, and carry it on your left arm. Right arm is wrong apparently
– you have to knock three times on the meeting room door, two is wrong and rude
– excessively apologise for coming to a meeting in coolbiz, despite it being practiced by all of the people you’re visiting (and it being 38 degrees C outside)
– never skip breakfast before an early morning meeting because it can “make your breath smell”. This one made me laugh, never heard it from anyone else
– all the other standard stuff about seating positions, meishi etc
You do end up unconsciously getting used to a lot of this stuff but getting chewed out for seemingly minor things the first time is always a bit jarring.
Meh maybe a different category but I remember being told not to eat in the office kitchen at night because it made somebody else hungry.
For context, I had a gaijin flat above the office and shared the kitchen with downstairs. Work had well and truely finished for the day (it was like 10pm – their shift had finished at 5pm but they refused to leave). I’d cooked my dinner in the kitchen because I’d just gotten home from the gym and was really hungry (TBH I was surprised they were still there… as their supervisor I’d already told them to go home, an instruction that they ignored. Of course this was 1/2 the weirdness… as their boss I set their work and they had NOTHING to do, but insistent on ‘being there’ to make-up their own work).
Anyhow I cooked my dinner and was sitting there eating it in the kitchen (my kitchen as that was the arrangement after hours). They came out and started saying that in Japan NOBODY eats in an office and that it’s not cool because it made them feel hungry. I told them to go home and also offered them some if they were THAT hungry. Instead they chose to keep yelling at me while I sat there 1/2 asleep thinking ‘OMG what drives this person?!?’ I never quite cracked that nut. Moved on for a better opportunity and didn’t look back.
My workplaces have thankfully been more western and no silly rules but my brother said he got in trouble once when he handed a pack of cigarettes to his boss with just one hand instead of both hands.
She’s not wrong, a diagonal staple is a cleaner fold so you’re not fighting when flipping back and forth between pages, and the document doesn’t get as ragged which helps with professionalism. That being said, calling that “manners” is pretty funny. This might be a “straw that broke the camels back” situation and she’s not happy about more than just this.
Got scolded in front of the entire office and told I didn’t understand how businesses work.
Why? I attached my receipts to my monthly accounting form with strips of opaque tape rather than clear (nothing on the receipt was covered)
That place was so dysfunctional and causing me so many stress-related health problems that after 2 years I requested and got a transfer to the head office. When I told my manager i was transferring out, his only comment was “you’re fat.”
I spent 3 years at HQ and loved how friendly, smooth-functioning, and non-toxic it was in comparison. That HQ was Dentsu.
I wonder how many of you have memorized the rules for the correct order of seating or standing when in
1. A conference room
2. An elevator
3. A taxi
4. A hostess club
reading through this thread makes me feel grateful that my inaka company is surprisingly lax about a lot of shit.
one thing my extremely proper Japanese senpai taught me was to never walk behind a superior in the office. of course you try not to walk behind people if you’re passing out tea or whatever, but even if everyone’s just going about their work, or standing and chatting, don’t walk behind them, because… throwback to feudal assassination attempts I guess? and now to this day I will reflexively take the long way around the entire office perimeter just because a director is talking to someone at the desk next to mine, and I can’t be so rude as to walk past them.
うっせうっせうっせわ〜
Seriously? Is nobody else siding with OP’s boss on the stapling? Diagonal staples make it easier to turn pages without tearing, since the fold is aligned with the staple. What kind of monster staples horizontally?
I think about things like this thread every time someone posts something shitting on English teaching and acting like joining a Japanese company is peak Japan life lol.
I think this is a somewhat famous / notorious essay in the small world of Japan expats, but it came to mind when reading the question.
The essay is at
[https://kotaku.com/japan-its-not-funny-anymore-5484581](https://kotaku.com/japan-its-not-funny-anymore-5484581)
and the part in question:
*In many Japanese offices, you’re required to scream “Good morning!” at the top of your lungs, clapping your hands to your thighs, as soon as you enter the office area every morning. Everyone in the office then shouts “Good morning!” back to you. At my orientation for one company, the Human Resources Girl — whose face (figuratively) literally screamed “Hall Monitor” — was going over the “Good Morning!” protocol. Her explanation weird despite its terseness: “This is how adults interact in Japan.” Most of the people at the orientation, like me, were under twenty-five. “Before we move onto the next item, does anyone have any questions?” I seriously and portentously asked a question, then, which I thought was hilarious: “If we’re the first one in the office in the morning, do we still have to scream ‘Good Morning’ and clap our hands to the sides of our legs?” Her answer was immediate, and humorless: “Yes.”*
I really hate any bullshit of treating people different based on seniority or sex. Get fucked. We’re all human and I’m treating everyone the same.
My Japanese BIL tried to berede me for playing video games in my 30s. I’m a responsible father and adult. Fuck off.
My Japanese friend worked at a nabe place. She told me she once was scolded by her senpai because when she placed the nabe, the serving spoon was facing the guy. Senpai said ‘who do you think is going to serve?
So she had to go and turn the spoon to face the lady.
Bookmarking this thread to maintain my sanity.
Today my boss reprimanded me for repairing a broken spray bottle rather than throwing it out and informing her… “Don’t fix things! They are not your things to fix!”