My wife and I are going to my home country to visit my whole family for the first time, but it is very far and by the time we arrive, we will only have 4 whole days excluding the day we meet with family to experience my country, culture and cuisine in what would be a week+ vacation schedule. I’d love to extend this as having time to relax is also part of what I would consider my culture and so we went back and forth on it as there are several things that make this limit as short as it is and things have popped up over time, but the seemingly strongest reason which is the only real problem in my eyes is the worry about taking too long of a vacation(with the idea of this being a kind of marriage after-party as we got married last year in Japan about one year ago). The problem we keep going back and forth on is that she worries about two things when it comes to being away.
1. She worries about what her coworkers might think of her taking closer to 2 weeks vacation instead of 1 week+ which is seemingly normal and that they will think she takes too long of a vacation.
2. She worries that her kouhai, that she has a one year seniority over, will be troubled when both her and the other senpai is gone(as they will be going to training) and that they will be having a hard time doing the work.
Nr 2. Isn’t something we have talked much about yet as the vacation time seems more like the main issue. Not sure if we got it solved, but the boss and kouhai all gave permission to take the vacation(seemingly unrestricted)
Now for the vacation. What I’m thinking about is that if she were to go back to Japan with the 1 week+ schedule, it would only give her two extra days of work at the end of the week. So the difference is having 4 free days and 2 extra work days vs 8 free days and no extra work days. To put the days off into a calendar perspective, it would be either taking two whole work weeks off July 1st-July 12th or it would be taking off a while workweek off and three working days off July 1st-July 10th. In total 8 working days vs 10. Or in a perspective of being perceived ”away” 13 days vs 17 days.
Would you say an accurate reflection of japanese work thought is that 2 whole weeks even in exceptional cases such as (a delayed)marriage party for young people is unacceptable? Is 7-8 workdays off something something other japanese workers(at a government job) will look upon as significantly different than 10? And mind you, she has already gotten permission from her boss and her kouhai to take a long vacation, but still worries about the other people’s thoughts and also her bosses boss.
There is also another thing I feel. If people think it’s bad, then are they not disrespectful towards the boss’s decision to permit it as well? I’m curious about your guys thoughts on all this as it seems my wife could be swayed to do an even shorter vacation by what is acceptable based on other people’s opinions(work culture) but is for some reason not very open for extending to two weeks almost as if it’s on a principle that young people can’t take two week vacations. I’m wondering if it really is more so in people’s heads and less so what other people actually think as we have a high tendency to think that other people think about each of us a lot more than they actually do.
by Pendu_uM