Hey everyone,
Following up on my previous post – I’ve accepted the offer! Yay!
However, there are a couple of points that have left me a bit puzzled:
1. I requested a PDF document detailing the housing allowance rules and regulations( they screen shared it with me during the meeting mind you). Instead of providing it, they’re scheduling a meeting where I can take ‘screenshots’ of the relevant sections. Why not just send it??
2. They also have some sort of rules that new hires live in company housing for two to six months.
I’ve asked about the possibility of bypassing this to move directly to my preferred accommodation because this clearly makes no sense. I have no interest in moving twice within months with all the furniture that I have so I would rather choose my own place and be done with it but apparently the head of Hr wants me to explain my reasoning behind this ‘decision’ before deciding whether or not he’s going to accept it? So guess what? We have another meeting to discuss just that. Yay.
Is this sort of thing normal in Japanese companies?? Clearly I’m off to a good start lol
10 comments
In my experience, employers don’t generally like to put things in writing. As for the company housing requirement, that’s not all that unusual. When I worked for one of the eikaiwa chains they required that, so I had to take the apartment, but I didn’t actually live there. I just dropped by there a couple of times a week to check on the place and make sure everything was ok.
1. Plenty of Japanese companies are really strict/paranoid about proprietary documents, potential leaks/hacks etc. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense
2. My best guess is because “that’s how it’s always been done.” Again, plenty of Japanese companies (and people) who do things because they’ve been required to do so unquestioningly. As an outsider, sometimes it’s good because it provides structure and stability, other times it’s just grossly inefficient. Learn to live with it and pick your battles, is my advice. Definitely calmly explain to them how much a hassle it is to move twice in a short amount of time.
I should add that it’s not “all” Japanese companies, as company culture obviously varies from one place to the next.
At my wife’s Japanese company, that my western company does business with so I’m on the receiving end of this, they can’t just email attachments.
Any emails with an attachment are held and can only be released and sent by that person’s line manager. Fair enough I guess.
But, then the email server zips the attachment with a password, and sends a second email with the zip password. So there’s no additional security from the zip and password because the password is sent in plain text in a second email.
So annoying. Why can’t they just send the attachment?!
sometimes japanese company has branch. After onboarding (training) in the main, you will be sent to branches in another location, which is why they provide housing for short term and saves you the trouble of renting when it is unsure of where you will be going after onboarding
Can you just accept the housing part and then just not move in? Find another place. Of course go there a few times to keep up appearances. Are they making you pay for it?
I’ve read that the Japanese government is currently researching how to utilize AI technology like ChatGPT to better help generate and automate text for the faxes they want to send!
Don’t know about #2, but my guess in #1 is that the pdf document contains the housing allowance, etc. for all payscale grades and HR thinks it’s easier for them to just show the sections applicable to you than create a separate document just for you. 🙂 congrats on the job!
Welcome to Japan.
You have described 90% of Japanese companies.
Have fun!
Company apartments are less common now than before.
They exist for a few reasons: 1) potentially building unity/friendships within new workers at the company 2) subsidizing housing costs for new hires with low salaries 3) (in the more sketch cases) increased influence and visibility into your personal life
I can only figure that the company housing isn’t particularly popular so they’re forcing new hires to use it to make a return on their investment for it.
The above is mostly speculation, do what you like with the info. You could try to use the costs of moving twice as leverage to ask them to pay for the second move if they insist on you using the company housing
1. _All_ company internal documents are classified as 社内限定 (in house only), and you have to go through some bureaucracy to show them to non-employees. Even displaying them on screen is forbidden in theory, but here we see an example of Japanese flexibility in interpreting the rules.
2. Never heard of such a rule. In my case I wanted to stay in the company dorm for a few months to have time to look for a nice place, but wasn’t allowed to live there for such a short time period. I ended up moving from the first shitty apartment after a year.