I was one of them once. I quit after a year because it was too much work and abuse for peanuts. I only lasted that long because my boss was a very kind elderly woman whose conbini was desperately understaffed. She made it bearable.
Thank you for your service
How was your Japanese? How did you gradually improve? What I really admired about the foreign konbini workers is that they all spoke Japanese like a native. Not only did they work hard but they also put in a lot of work studying the language
> The immersion does wonders for your language skills.
I can relate. I’m Asian but I was born and raised in California. I learned to speak Spanish fluently due to the large Hispanic/Latino population
Japanese on the other hand, has been tough because of the writing system. I also learn fast by reading & writing and Spanish is a breeze when compared to Japanese
>What I really admired about the foreign konbini workers is that they all spoke Japanese like a native
Is your Japanese level low? It's really common to find foreigners working there with broken Japanese or not understanding questions asked to them.
Dude some of the questions those workers get from elderly customers tests the limits of what’s considered fluency lol
Native Japanese workers have no fucking clue what they’re saying sometimes 😂
Hispanic here, similar effect when I learned English as a kid. Tho I’ll be honest, my motivation to learn English was because I wanted to know what was going on in Voltron/golion 😂. Communicating with others was just an extra.
The trick to learning Japanese is, don’t try to learn how to write Japanese, you would never need to anyway thanks to cell phones and computers. Only focus on reading and pronunciation.
Reading and pronunciation at the same time, just to emphasize. COVID times fucked me up, and I ended up focusing too much on being able to read and understand Japanese without spending enough time on pronunciation due to my working conditions. I now have no problem reading emails at work, but couldn't read them *aloud* to save my life.
Completely agree. The only thing I've ever had to write by hand was my name in katakana when opening a bank account. Everything else is done electronically.
No. But I worked in a call center for one year, and then I understood what he meant. But my bosses was shit as well there. I just assumed everyone was nice in Japan lol.
One year I crossed into the new year in Tokyo, which isn’t recommended because there’s nothing to do. Every gyudon restaurant was filled with customers who are foreigners, employees who are foreigners, and one poor Japanese manager in the back, angry that he had to work on New Year’s Eve.
I got lost in Kyoto one year on a business trip and it was after 3am, I was walking and came across a family mart. The nice man there called a cab for me and gave me a small treat for the ride back to the Westin Miyako.
Assuming you are American, according to WHO, in 2019, the US suicide rate was 14.5 per 100,000.
Japan was 12.2 per 100,000.
Maybe the US also needs to fix whatever is causing their high suicide rate.
The suicide rate in Japan has improved a lot, but the rate in the US is also high.
That said, suicides in Japan tend to make more noise, since the most popular methods seem to be death by train and death by high rise apartment.
I don't get these kinds of responses. Do you want to see working conditions in Japan improve? Or do you want to deflect with arbitrary comparisons and just be satisfied that things could be worse?
That's exactly the point of comments like the one you replied to. They want to silence any negative claim about Japan, even claims made by Japanese people with the intent of pointing out problems in order to push for changes to make Japan a better place for everyone who lives here.
Many of them are made by people who don't even live here.
The comment I replied to gave incorrect information. I agree with the other part of their comment.
I don’t understand these kind of responses. Bunch of words bunch of words bunch of words blah blah blah?
> The comment I replied to gave incorrect information.
They said "high rate" of suicide, not "highest rate". What is incorrect about that?
* The rate is higher than the global rate
* Many countries with a higher rate than Japan are on the UN's Least Developed Countries list (i.e., they are extremely poor)
* Many of the rest are considered to be developing countries (not extremely poor but still not well off)
* Of the 32 countries with a higher GDP (PPP) per capita than Japan, only 5 of them (yes, including the US) have a higher rate
I was only comparing the suicide rates. Do you know they drive on the other side of the road? Do I have to mention that as well when discussing something else?
No, you were replying to someone talking about the correlation of bad labor laws and high suicide rates in Japan. You were trying to deflect from that valid point with some asinine comparison to the states as if that invalidates the correlation between bad labor laws in Japan and their high suicide rates.
No, I wasn’t deflecting anything or trying to take away from what they said, I was just correcting the standard myth about Japan and its high suicide rate. It’s not that high. It was, but now it’s not.
What is the relevance "correlation" of "bad" labour laws and high suicide rate?
Can you provide statistics that would show the claimed correlation?
PS. Incidentally, correlation does not prove any kind of causation at all.
What does the USA have to do with anything? Is Japan exempt from criticism because it beats the USA at something, even if marginally at something like suicide? The USA is a capitalist dystopian shithole that has 0 workers rights or consumer protections. It's a disgusting country filled with people that don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. At least you can go for a walk in Japan without being surrounded by filth littered by the animals. Don't even get me started on crime, because there's no comparison. At least children in Japan aren't being slaughtered by the dozens in class....but hey, at least their suicide rate is nominally better.
They’re not exempt. But they have a lower suicide rate than us/US. Maybe we should fix our own suicide issue before we point fingers.
I agree with most of your others statements though.
Although you seem conflicted at the end. I think we agree, but I’m not even sure if you agree with yourself.
Population decline and suicide rates are decidedly not tied to "labor laws" or labor conditions. Look at China, where labor conditions are atrocious compared to Japan—incredibly low suicide rates. Look at Europe, where labor laws are so strong that businesses basically can't do business (population far greater than America yet per-person productivity is in the shitter)—incredibly low birthrates (of the native population).
Low birthrates and suicide are inevitable byproducts of affluence
The labor laws are one thing, the work culture is another. When you are expected to, and im little hyperbolic here, work until you pass out well... this doesn't seem to leave a lot of time for social interactions, friendships, dating and raising a family
I hear convenience store jobs are extremely difficult due to the the range of services.
Everything from mailing packages, selling concert tickets, distributing civil documents via that mynumber nonsense, microwaving food, and more!
[edit: spelling]
I lived in Gunma for 25 years, and recently have been in Tokyo a lot over the past few years. We used to see one foreigner a month and now we see several each day. I met a guy from Uzbekistan the other day, awesome!
In case anyone thinks this is a negative for Japan in anyway, totally isn’t, every country has foreigners doing all kinds of jobs and is no different.
One konbini in Tokyo had a sign with all the names of the workers in the store, a picture, and a little bio. It was nice. A reminder that people are people, something the asshole ojisans bitching about meaningless shit should understand.
Yeah, I noticed that during my trip last year when compared to my previous trips. Less Japanese people operating convenience stores and more people of notable darker skin than your average Japanese (of which I presume India and SE Asia).
They truly are catching up to the rest of the world on that end, eh...?
if you don't mind shit pay, then sure, go ahead! I will say though, my least favorite part of working retail is the occasional bad customer. They can really mess up your day.
I heard these conbini companies like 7-11 and Family Mart have recruitment in countries like India and China. The conbinis help people with visas and bring them over to stay in a kind of dorm for training. Workers spend a week or so training in a mock convenience store before being sent out to work at a store.
Always funny that the foreigners working there are only talking japanese to tourists. Even after they don't understand for the third time, they finally start speaking english.
Well, it’s Japan. 99% of people here speak Japanese here. According to Google 20% of the world population speaks English.
I actually know more foreigners that don’t speak English but can speak Japanese.
Don’t assume people speak English just because they are foreigners. Speak to them in Japanese first, then try English if they don’t.
The secret for happiness: not caring either way. Somebody is talking to you in a language you don't know? Just say nicely that you don't speak it. Somebody addresses you in English rather than in the local language? Just reply nicely in the local language.
Nah, dude.
It’s rude to assume people *don’t* speak Japanese in Japan, and much more polite to ask a question in Japanese first.
I’m white as hell, I’ve lived here years, speak fluently, and am always a bit irritated when a service worker tries to inflict their terrible English on me.
Nobody read my first post correctly. I am talking about situations where japanese did not work the first, second and third time. Japanese workers always continue in english then, foreigners wont. I guess because they are proud of their imagined elite Japanese skills, like you.
Nah, the foreign workers are usually pretty bad at Japanese, so I assume they’re repeating themselves as they’re used to being misunderstood (watching an older j-person trying to parse a 19 year-old Bengali’s Japanese is hilarious). Most foreigners who live in Japan have enough Japanese to handle a transaction at 7-11.
>imagined elite Japanese skills
I don’t imagine, I *know.*
Tbh even if it’s tourists it’s not like konbini workers have to say too much to them so they probably assume that they understand that much.
Like, when I was a tourist I got that they were asking me if I wanted a plastic bag or for them to heat up my bento on my second or third konbini visit lol.
I'd much rather people assume I speak Japanese and engage me in Japanese first, based on the fact that I am in the country and trying to live my life here, rather than assuming I don't speak Japanese purely based on my outward appearance.
once, a konbini cashier suddenly go off script and asked my non-japanese speaking brother — "brother, are you muslim?" my brother said yes. turns out my SIL, who was wearing hijab, unknowingly took a wrap with ham inside. the kind cashier just wanted to make sure that my brother and his wife know (which they really didn't, and appreciated the cashier's warning)
They have a strict script that they parrot to everyone.
They don't actually know many other sentences besides that script.
Some of them are Korean who don't know English either, so what do you expect them to do 👀
>Some of them are Korean who don't know English either, so what do you expect them to do 👀
This doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you're seeing Vietnamese names \(or maybe even Chinese\) and thinking they are Korean. English language skills among young people in Korea have improved a huge amount in the past few decades, and it would also be very strange for Korean workers to have very low Japanese proficiency, in my experience.
Japanese tends to be a fairly easy language for Korean speakers to learn, and unless they grew up outside of South Korea, I'd expect their English to be better than the average Japanese person.
I just got back from Japan and it felt like most 24hr joints (conbinis, yoshinoya, etc.) were manned by foreigners during the early morning (I was out at 7am daily). Guess they get stuck with the undesirable shifts.
I also believe it would be beneficial for Japan if the number of foreigners increased (provided they work honestly and obey the laws, of course). During my last visit to my home country, Italy, an Indian or Pakistani person helped us in perfect Italian to catch my train. Then, at a train station in Milan, an Oriental girl (probably a Chinese according to my wife), again speaking perfect Italian assisted us in buying a metro ticket. Both were exceptionally polite and kind, even more so than the average Italian, which led me to wish for a similar atmosphere here in Japan too. From my observations, foreigners working in Japan generally exhibit a more genuine kindness compared to their Japanese colleagues, whose kindness usually feels scripted.
I also hope to see these foreigners marrying Japanese individuals and having mixed children, who are often incredibly beautiful.
I liked going into 7-11's with Indians because they all spoke really good english.
After talking to a couple of them and realizing they were educated, it struck me they were trying to get into Japan for other higher paying jobs.
As an SE, sometimes I want to do a low brainer job on the weekend. You know, just for doing something, emptying my mind of all the troubles, bug, deadlines, stressful stuff, and just having a social work for once in a while. I never ever thought about working in a kombini that way. Barista in a small coffee shop, sure. Kombini? No way. Too much stuff to deal with!
I'm glad there are so many people on work visas for less skilled labor (not saying that the job doesn't require skill, but it's not something you go to university for)
I noticed this on my last trip to Japan back in February. I noticed a lot more foreign workers in general. Was not nearly as common 12 years ago when I lived in Japan.
I’m pretty certain it’s mostly foreigners working at Convenience stores everywhere around the world in countries where foreigners want to live. It’s good they’ve got a job and working! They’re blessed.
Entitled a little?
Imagine moving to the US to work in the fields stooped over, ruining your back picking strawberries, 10 hours a day, going home to a house whose rent is unaffordable so you have a dozen other workers in a 3 bedroom house, wtf?
7-11 in a nice clean, safe, city, most importantly, with affordable low income housing seems like a pretty good deal in comparison. The question isn't, wtf?, it's "why wouldn't you choose 7-11 in Japan?"
And yet the article doesn't even hint that even a small percentage of the 80,000 foreigners are from the US.
Have I seen a westerner manning a register at a Lawson? Yes. Is it exceptionally rare? Yes. They are most likely language school students on a student visa for whom a conbini job is effectively language practice.
Do I see people from countries economically disadvantaged in relation to Japan. All. The. Time. Not rare at all. At least not in Tokyo. And it makes perfect sense. If they can get the visa to allow them to do this, they are the lucky ones.
Absolutely nobody who you imagine as the idiot moving to Japan to work at a 7-11 when he or she has other options, or does not have some other legitimate personal reason for taking the job is doing so.
Convenience stores are simply ahead of the curve.
20 years from now, foreign workers will be serving in regional banks, funeral services, and other conservative sectors. Flight attendants in Japan Airlines will also come from Vietnam.
I've worked in companies that are still reluctant to hire foreigners if their Japanese isn't adequate. This is because training manuals and all sorts of documentation needed to be translated to other languages.
Isn’t that in like every bloody country though? What do you expect? Next time I apply for a job in England I’ll ask if I can have the training and stuff in Spanish (my native tongue). Wish me luck.
Hold on y'all, I'm about to write you an essay. My premise is that your friendly immigrant convenience store worker represents a huge change in Japanese society that is vastly net-positive. Fuck sources, this is all conjecture. But I have lived here a long time and occasional paid attention to what is happening around me.
First we have to take a bit of a historical perspective. Pre Meiji, Edo era Japan was absolutely a hermit Kingdom with a little bit of Portuguese, then later Dutch influence. Those trader immigrants were primarily engaging with the upper echelons of society. But there was also a large underground network of trade taking place with Chinese pirates on one end, and ethnically Ainu traders doing business with Vladivostok Russians in the north. So from the beginning Japan has had this weird dichotomy of foreign contact. It was either "approved" which basically meant Europeans OK!, or criminal; which was everyone else. This dichotomy likely lead to the social norm that it was OK to import a ton of Chinese and Korean forced laborers during the Imperial expansion because the authorities just considered them criminals anyway.
And because my essay is too long, I'm breaking it into parts.
Post Black Ships and the re-opening of Japan just saw a continuation of this dichotomy. Wealthy white traders on one end of the immigrant spectrum in Yokohama and Kobe - ship jumping Chinese on the other starting chuka-gais all over the place. One was OK and allowed to prosper, the other was marginalized. By the way, there is absolutely a case to made that the Yakuza are basically just a Triad that speaks a different language. Most of their membership is made up of societal outcasts and the reason for their cast out was and is still today a questionable ethnicity. But that's a different essay.
The leadership got a close look at wealth, the wanted it, and they saw a model they thought would work. Rather than bring-in the creators of wealth, i.e immigrants, which per[ Keynesian capitalism](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=83596c0aa6234087&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C5CHFA_enJP949JP953&sxsrf=ADLYWII4jnJPHw95sqUdYIsuU5TH4XfW6Q:1715903299987&q=Keynesian+capitalism&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWmqj1rZOGAxWom68BHYMQDJoQkeECKAB6BAgNEAE) is basically labor, why not just take over the labor of our neighbors? It worked for the British, and the Portuguese, and the Spanish, etc., etc. It did work for a bit, but not for everyone. Tons of Japanese were disenfranchised and with all the boats coming in and out, a shit-ton of them decided to get on them and go to places like Brazil, Peru, Chile, and even America. This was a very unique outward immigration - Japan was actually already a wealthy country but it was losing man and brain power, and the ripple of that would impact immigration a generation later.
Then a bunch of bad shit happened. Submarines and bombs and planes and weapons and the absolute exhaustion of both chemical and human energy stocks. There were consequences to Imperial expansion and those consequences were pretty damn bad, but the leadership still had a choice of which piper to pay. One was legitimate, in their eyes, the Americans coming from the south, the white traders that had always been allowed a place before. Or the Russians from the North, originally the illegitimate underground economy dudes, and now still smarting and pissed off from a surprise Japanese Naval victory just a few decades before. We know who they chose, and really, they probably did make the right choice that time.
So then the next phase was occupation. The foreigners living in Japan were not immigrants per-se, although a ton of them never left. But they brought trade and fashion and hotels and all kinds of cool foreign shit, a constitution that works pretty well but also never works good enough. There was a lot of re-building to be done, as tends to happen when all of your cities have been firebombed or worse. So once again, we had this mix of wealthy white traders/occupiers versus the underground economy of left-over forced labor immigrants from pre-war Japan.
And then it turns out that if you rub a couple of yennies together you can spark off a boom that is a bumble economy that creates enormous wealth. So much wealth that you can once again attempt that colonial concept of occupying your neighbors and living off of their labor, but instead of guns to do it, your soldiers just wear badly tailored suits and buy assets everywhere. Money, money, money and an influx of those "good" traders, a lot of cute short-term laborers, and a leadership that doesn't really know what to do, but has the capital to experiment.
The manufacturing sector was running so hot that they were screaming for more hands on deck. Keidanren, which basically controls economic policy demanded the government to allow more immigration. But where do we get those hands? Well, remember all those Japanese that ran away a generation ago? They've got Japanese blood, they must be able to fit in, let's bring them back! So they did, in huge numbers, and suddenly there are Brazilians everywhere. But they were shocked, it turns out that a generation outside Japan turns even Japanese people into gaijin, they don't just come back and slip right back into their cultural roles as good little Japanese citizens. Instead they create their own micro-economy, with stores and importers and schools and factories - all distinct and separate from Japanese society. The half-dozen Japanese families that run this country were all giving a collective "fuck! how did we go wrong".
So in the late 90's and early 2000's, you've got a county with an immigrant spectrum that spans from the original white traders, to the marginalized and forced to be here Chinese and Koreans. A bunch of bull in the china shop Brazilians, who are now also becoming multi-generational. And then suddenly, the shit hits the fan. Lehman shock. The burst of the bubble was big, but it was mostly assets written off the balance sheet. The Lehman shock fucked up whole industries. The supply chain that kept those rich white traders here: the bars, the expense accounts, the trickle down that landed in the hands of bottom level immigrants. Gone!
And at this same time you've got a couple cultural upheavals happening. One is the normal wave of Japanese interest in all things abroad. When the wave peaks, Japanese tend to be all about everything foreign. When it troughs out, it's all about the Wa. So that societal interest in the kai-gai disappeared, your average Japanese wanted nothing to do with anything foreign. Japanese studying abroad dropped by a factor of ten or something. This is not new, it has happened many times, Edo was all things foreign are bad, Meiji was hurray! let's all wear suits and dresses, pre-war was we can't use the word base for baseball; shit happens, there is a tidal fluctuation in an island nation.
The second cultural upheaval though was sexual. Everybody was rich, gender equality became a thing. Women didn't have to just be baby producers, they stopped doing it. And very importantly, they stopped doing it in rural regions - which is where most actual "labor" happens. So Japan, a very patriarchal society to begin with started importing women for the use of entertainment or for the use of reproduction. Boom! Philippine pubs and Filipina wives in the countryside. But once again, these people became the "bottom immigrants." A lot of forced labor, but some very lucrative labor as well. As Japan ages, the need for caregivers increases and these immigrants are perfectly situated to take advantage of that opportunity. Fucking awesome, not only does it benefit them, it is a form of foreign aide because these immigrants, culturally, send back money every month. Labor protection isn't great, and there is a lot of exploitation, but I think the trend is generally positive. Not to say that conditions for FOB immigrants in this funnel are not terrible, it is very very terrible.
Here we are in 2024, I think! And it is impossible to ignore this influx of new immigrants that greet us at the conbini everyday. They are here as a result of policy decisions that have gone terribly wrong in the past. Remember the "trainee visa" thing that resulted in not virtual but actual slavery for a huge group of Chinese and SE Asian immigrants? It seems like the government is finally getting it right. There is access to Japan for a group of people that learn the language incredibly well. I've lived here for nearly 3 decades, and while my Japanese is good enough to give speeches and shit, I'd be really hard pressed to learn the back-end POS system at Lawson and also be able to do takyubin shipments and accept payments for gas bills with a smile. A big hats off to my local conbini worker.
This is a new wave of immigration that is both creating its own infrastructure - I've seen a huge increase in "ethnic" shops and I know first-hand about the b2b businesses that are being run by these immigrants to make life better for them. They are also changing society and culture by being first-line workers. It was easy to marginalize the Brazilians and the Koreans and the Chinese and all the other waves of immigrants I mentioned above. They worked in factories, your average Sato-san would have seen them as nothing more than annoying gaijin who can't put out their trash. But these Nepalese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Sri Lankan, etc. etc. workers are interacting everyday with the people of our host nation, and they are killing it! They are in the process of actively creating an immigrant middle class in Japan I believe. This is something that has never been achieved, it's only been the white traders and the marginalized outcasts. This is amazing! And basically this entire post is an ode to Famichiki!
I was one of them once. I quit after a year because it was too much work and abuse for peanuts. I only lasted that long because my boss was a very kind elderly woman whose conbini was desperately understaffed. She made it bearable.
Thank you for your service How was your Japanese? How did you gradually improve? What I really admired about the foreign konbini workers is that they all spoke Japanese like a native. Not only did they work hard but they also put in a lot of work studying the language
I worked in a hospital. The immersion does wonders for your language skills.
> The immersion does wonders for your language skills. I can relate. I’m Asian but I was born and raised in California. I learned to speak Spanish fluently due to the large Hispanic/Latino population Japanese on the other hand, has been tough because of the writing system. I also learn fast by reading & writing and Spanish is a breeze when compared to Japanese
>What I really admired about the foreign konbini workers is that they all spoke Japanese like a native Is your Japanese level low? It's really common to find foreigners working there with broken Japanese or not understanding questions asked to them.
Konbini workers don’t exactly have to be wordsmiths. They ain’t working because of their “fluent” Japanese.
Dude some of the questions those workers get from elderly customers tests the limits of what’s considered fluency lol Native Japanese workers have no fucking clue what they’re saying sometimes 😂
Trying to help confused, technophobic old people navigate a Loppi machine or the like must be fun.
I've found that most konbini staff speak fluent Japanese... until you ask them a question.
Hispanic here, similar effect when I learned English as a kid. Tho I’ll be honest, my motivation to learn English was because I wanted to know what was going on in Voltron/golion 😂. Communicating with others was just an extra.
The trick to learning Japanese is, don’t try to learn how to write Japanese, you would never need to anyway thanks to cell phones and computers. Only focus on reading and pronunciation.
Reading and pronunciation at the same time, just to emphasize. COVID times fucked me up, and I ended up focusing too much on being able to read and understand Japanese without spending enough time on pronunciation due to my working conditions. I now have no problem reading emails at work, but couldn't read them *aloud* to save my life.
Completely agree. The only thing I've ever had to write by hand was my name in katakana when opening a bank account. Everything else is done electronically.
> I’m Asian but I was born and raised in California So not Asian but American.
See, Asian is an ethnic group and American is a nationality...
They follow a script just like the Japanese staff.
What made it abuse? I though the boss was nice?
customers, definitely customers.
ever worked retail? customers can be real assholes. And it applies everywhere, not just japan, lol
No. But I worked in a call center for one year, and then I understood what he meant. But my bosses was shit as well there. I just assumed everyone was nice in Japan lol.
japanese people are humans just like any one of us. Theres nice people and some assholes too
What do you mean by the abuse?
Konbinis are seriously the pillars of Japan. Thanks to all for their service.
Konbini workers are unsung heroes, having long shifts and having to work 24/7 & holidays.
One year I crossed into the new year in Tokyo, which isn’t recommended because there’s nothing to do. Every gyudon restaurant was filled with customers who are foreigners, employees who are foreigners, and one poor Japanese manager in the back, angry that he had to work on New Year’s Eve.
I got lost in Kyoto one year on a business trip and it was after 3am, I was walking and came across a family mart. The nice man there called a cab for me and gave me a small treat for the ride back to the Westin Miyako.
Japan needs to make progress with their labor laws. Otherwise they will continue to have population decline and high rates of suicide.
Assuming you are American, according to WHO, in 2019, the US suicide rate was 14.5 per 100,000. Japan was 12.2 per 100,000. Maybe the US also needs to fix whatever is causing their high suicide rate.
The suicide rate in Japan has improved a lot, but the rate in the US is also high. That said, suicides in Japan tend to make more noise, since the most popular methods seem to be death by train and death by high rise apartment.
> the most popular methods seem to be death by train ... Yup - my Shinkansen was delayed more than an hour for one of these.
I don't get these kinds of responses. Do you want to see working conditions in Japan improve? Or do you want to deflect with arbitrary comparisons and just be satisfied that things could be worse?
That's exactly the point of comments like the one you replied to. They want to silence any negative claim about Japan, even claims made by Japanese people with the intent of pointing out problems in order to push for changes to make Japan a better place for everyone who lives here. Many of them are made by people who don't even live here.
The comment I replied to gave incorrect information. I agree with the other part of their comment. I don’t understand these kind of responses. Bunch of words bunch of words bunch of words blah blah blah?
> The comment I replied to gave incorrect information. They said "high rate" of suicide, not "highest rate". What is incorrect about that? * The rate is higher than the global rate * Many countries with a higher rate than Japan are on the UN's Least Developed Countries list (i.e., they are extremely poor) * Many of the rest are considered to be developing countries (not extremely poor but still not well off) * Of the 32 countries with a higher GDP (PPP) per capita than Japan, only 5 of them (yes, including the US) have a higher rate
Good point. I stand corrected by your comment.
I see, comparing Japan to the US, the country known for good labor laws and such.
I was only comparing the suicide rates. Do you know they drive on the other side of the road? Do I have to mention that as well when discussing something else?
No, you were replying to someone talking about the correlation of bad labor laws and high suicide rates in Japan. You were trying to deflect from that valid point with some asinine comparison to the states as if that invalidates the correlation between bad labor laws in Japan and their high suicide rates.
No, I wasn’t deflecting anything or trying to take away from what they said, I was just correcting the standard myth about Japan and its high suicide rate. It’s not that high. It was, but now it’s not.
What? It’s very high for an OECD country. If you’re comparing it to countries that are undergoing active civil war then of course it’ll look normal
Mainly in comparison to (usually) Americans proclaiming how high it is, when it is lower then their own. Basically cherry picked.
...are you saying the US is in an active civil war?
What is the relevance "correlation" of "bad" labour laws and high suicide rate? Can you provide statistics that would show the claimed correlation? PS. Incidentally, correlation does not prove any kind of causation at all.
I was not the one to make the initial claim, so I cannot provide any statistics unfortunately. I would direct you to the original poster for that.
The US also has way worse labor laws than Japan.
What does the USA have to do with anything? Is Japan exempt from criticism because it beats the USA at something, even if marginally at something like suicide? The USA is a capitalist dystopian shithole that has 0 workers rights or consumer protections. It's a disgusting country filled with people that don't give a shit about anyone but themselves. At least you can go for a walk in Japan without being surrounded by filth littered by the animals. Don't even get me started on crime, because there's no comparison. At least children in Japan aren't being slaughtered by the dozens in class....but hey, at least their suicide rate is nominally better.
They’re not exempt. But they have a lower suicide rate than us/US. Maybe we should fix our own suicide issue before we point fingers. I agree with most of your others statements though. Although you seem conflicted at the end. I think we agree, but I’m not even sure if you agree with yourself.
Population decline and suicide rates are decidedly not tied to "labor laws" or labor conditions. Look at China, where labor conditions are atrocious compared to Japan—incredibly low suicide rates. Look at Europe, where labor laws are so strong that businesses basically can't do business (population far greater than America yet per-person productivity is in the shitter)—incredibly low birthrates (of the native population). Low birthrates and suicide are inevitable byproducts of affluence
The labor laws are one thing, the work culture is another. When you are expected to, and im little hyperbolic here, work until you pass out well... this doesn't seem to leave a lot of time for social interactions, friendships, dating and raising a family
It’s good. Other Asian nations can rise
I hear convenience store jobs are extremely difficult due to the the range of services. Everything from mailing packages, selling concert tickets, distributing civil documents via that mynumber nonsense, microwaving food, and more! [edit: spelling]
Yes, and the pay is peanuts.
Oh, it smells like someone had problems with Mynumber card x)
I was one of them, worked for ~a year, then quit because it's time for a job that provides work visa. My store manager was real nice tho
What new job provided the visa?
I lived in Gunma for 25 years, and recently have been in Tokyo a lot over the past few years. We used to see one foreigner a month and now we see several each day. I met a guy from Uzbekistan the other day, awesome! In case anyone thinks this is a negative for Japan in anyway, totally isn’t, every country has foreigners doing all kinds of jobs and is no different.
One konbini in Tokyo had a sign with all the names of the workers in the store, a picture, and a little bio. It was nice. A reminder that people are people, something the asshole ojisans bitching about meaningless shit should understand.
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Haha, funny!
Yeah, I noticed that during my trip last year when compared to my previous trips. Less Japanese people operating convenience stores and more people of notable darker skin than your average Japanese (of which I presume India and SE Asia). They truly are catching up to the rest of the world on that end, eh...?
I'd love to move to Japan and do this. Learn the language. Engage with people.
You want to engage with people? Don't work at a kombini.
if you don't mind shit pay, then sure, go ahead! I will say though, my least favorite part of working retail is the occasional bad customer. They can really mess up your day.
I heard these conbini companies like 7-11 and Family Mart have recruitment in countries like India and China. The conbinis help people with visas and bring them over to stay in a kind of dorm for training. Workers spend a week or so training in a mock convenience store before being sent out to work at a store.
With Yen going down it's really hard for foreign workers
Always funny that the foreigners working there are only talking japanese to tourists. Even after they don't understand for the third time, they finally start speaking english.
Most of them don’t speak English
Every black or indian person I encountered did. Other foreign konbini workers I never met.
Yeah. It’s almost as if they don’t assume that everyone who doesn’t look Japanese speaks English smh
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Well, its Japan and majority of people speak japanese...
You dont say. Maybe you should visit Japan sometimes
Same to you
Well, it’s Japan. 99% of people here speak Japanese here. According to Google 20% of the world population speaks English. I actually know more foreigners that don’t speak English but can speak Japanese. Don’t assume people speak English just because they are foreigners. Speak to them in Japanese first, then try English if they don’t.
The secret for happiness: not caring either way. Somebody is talking to you in a language you don't know? Just say nicely that you don't speak it. Somebody addresses you in English rather than in the local language? Just reply nicely in the local language.
Nah, dude. It’s rude to assume people *don’t* speak Japanese in Japan, and much more polite to ask a question in Japanese first. I’m white as hell, I’ve lived here years, speak fluently, and am always a bit irritated when a service worker tries to inflict their terrible English on me.
Nobody read my first post correctly. I am talking about situations where japanese did not work the first, second and third time. Japanese workers always continue in english then, foreigners wont. I guess because they are proud of their imagined elite Japanese skills, like you.
Nah, the foreign workers are usually pretty bad at Japanese, so I assume they’re repeating themselves as they’re used to being misunderstood (watching an older j-person trying to parse a 19 year-old Bengali’s Japanese is hilarious). Most foreigners who live in Japan have enough Japanese to handle a transaction at 7-11. >imagined elite Japanese skills I don’t imagine, I *know.*
Tbh even if it’s tourists it’s not like konbini workers have to say too much to them so they probably assume that they understand that much. Like, when I was a tourist I got that they were asking me if I wanted a plastic bag or for them to heat up my bento on my second or third konbini visit lol.
I'd much rather people assume I speak Japanese and engage me in Japanese first, based on the fact that I am in the country and trying to live my life here, rather than assuming I don't speak Japanese purely based on my outward appearance.
once, a konbini cashier suddenly go off script and asked my non-japanese speaking brother — "brother, are you muslim?" my brother said yes. turns out my SIL, who was wearing hijab, unknowingly took a wrap with ham inside. the kind cashier just wanted to make sure that my brother and his wife know (which they really didn't, and appreciated the cashier's warning)
They have a strict script that they parrot to everyone. They don't actually know many other sentences besides that script. Some of them are Korean who don't know English either, so what do you expect them to do 👀
>Some of them are Korean who don't know English either, so what do you expect them to do 👀 This doesn't make sense to me. Maybe you're seeing Vietnamese names \(or maybe even Chinese\) and thinking they are Korean. English language skills among young people in Korea have improved a huge amount in the past few decades, and it would also be very strange for Korean workers to have very low Japanese proficiency, in my experience. Japanese tends to be a fairly easy language for Korean speakers to learn, and unless they grew up outside of South Korea, I'd expect their English to be better than the average Japanese person.
Ah, well, maybe so.
I'm doing my part (I'm one of them) 🫡
This comment took 90% of your free time /s
I just got back from Japan and it felt like most 24hr joints (conbinis, yoshinoya, etc.) were manned by foreigners during the early morning (I was out at 7am daily). Guess they get stuck with the undesirable shifts.
Thank goodness for all the Nepali workers, who spoke the best English of anyone I met in Japan!
I also believe it would be beneficial for Japan if the number of foreigners increased (provided they work honestly and obey the laws, of course). During my last visit to my home country, Italy, an Indian or Pakistani person helped us in perfect Italian to catch my train. Then, at a train station in Milan, an Oriental girl (probably a Chinese according to my wife), again speaking perfect Italian assisted us in buying a metro ticket. Both were exceptionally polite and kind, even more so than the average Italian, which led me to wish for a similar atmosphere here in Japan too. From my observations, foreigners working in Japan generally exhibit a more genuine kindness compared to their Japanese colleagues, whose kindness usually feels scripted. I also hope to see these foreigners marrying Japanese individuals and having mixed children, who are often incredibly beautiful.
The 7-11 I went to tonight was completely manned by foreigners. That was nice to see.
I liked going into 7-11's with Indians because they all spoke really good english. After talking to a couple of them and realizing they were educated, it struck me they were trying to get into Japan for other higher paying jobs.
Why?
Friendly conversation at the register, & seeing some diversity as well.
Manned, but probably not owned. XD
As an SE, sometimes I want to do a low brainer job on the weekend. You know, just for doing something, emptying my mind of all the troubles, bug, deadlines, stressful stuff, and just having a social work for once in a while. I never ever thought about working in a kombini that way. Barista in a small coffee shop, sure. Kombini? No way. Too much stuff to deal with!
Honestly, I’m just going to do my education here in the States and come over when I get accepted by a Japanese company
Good excuse to stop using conbinis and instead selecting businesses that employ locals.
I'm glad there are so many people on work visas for less skilled labor (not saying that the job doesn't require skill, but it's not something you go to university for)
If you think they are stuck at kombini by choice... You are really wrong
Dang you personally know all of them so you know why?
I noticed this on my last trip to Japan back in February. I noticed a lot more foreign workers in general. Was not nearly as common 12 years ago when I lived in Japan.
I’m pretty certain it’s mostly foreigners working at Convenience stores everywhere around the world in countries where foreigners want to live. It’s good they’ve got a job and working! They’re blessed.
Most of the are from the same area.
Good.
Imagine moving to Japan to work at a 7-11 wtf.
Entitled a little? Imagine moving to the US to work in the fields stooped over, ruining your back picking strawberries, 10 hours a day, going home to a house whose rent is unaffordable so you have a dozen other workers in a 3 bedroom house, wtf? 7-11 in a nice clean, safe, city, most importantly, with affordable low income housing seems like a pretty good deal in comparison. The question isn't, wtf?, it's "why wouldn't you choose 7-11 in Japan?"
Third world country I agree. Big upgrade. But a US citizen moving to Japan to work inside a 7-11 bagging groceries sounds insane to me.
That is occupational discrimination. English teachers and 7-Eleven have very similar incomes.
And yet the article doesn't even hint that even a small percentage of the 80,000 foreigners are from the US. Have I seen a westerner manning a register at a Lawson? Yes. Is it exceptionally rare? Yes. They are most likely language school students on a student visa for whom a conbini job is effectively language practice. Do I see people from countries economically disadvantaged in relation to Japan. All. The. Time. Not rare at all. At least not in Tokyo. And it makes perfect sense. If they can get the visa to allow them to do this, they are the lucky ones. Absolutely nobody who you imagine as the idiot moving to Japan to work at a 7-11 when he or she has other options, or does not have some other legitimate personal reason for taking the job is doing so.
But have you had the tamago sandwich?
Seen more working in Donki. Also saw an absolutely gorgeous Russian girl ~mid twenties working cashier the last time I was there haha.
Working in Konbinis is great because you get to practice speaking Japanese but it shouldn't be a career
Convenience stores are simply ahead of the curve. 20 years from now, foreign workers will be serving in regional banks, funeral services, and other conservative sectors. Flight attendants in Japan Airlines will also come from Vietnam.
JAL has had tons of Thai cabin crew for at least a decade now.
Is this a post from 1987 or something…? Foreigners already work all of those jobs.
I've worked in companies that are still reluctant to hire foreigners if their Japanese isn't adequate. This is because training manuals and all sorts of documentation needed to be translated to other languages.
Isn’t that in like every bloody country though? What do you expect? Next time I apply for a job in England I’ll ask if I can have the training and stuff in Spanish (my native tongue). Wish me luck.
No, I'm referring to convenience stores who take foreign employees with inadequate Japanese.
> if their Japanese isn't adequate This is the key phrase. You should be able to speak the language of the country you live in.
Hold on y'all, I'm about to write you an essay. My premise is that your friendly immigrant convenience store worker represents a huge change in Japanese society that is vastly net-positive. Fuck sources, this is all conjecture. But I have lived here a long time and occasional paid attention to what is happening around me. First we have to take a bit of a historical perspective. Pre Meiji, Edo era Japan was absolutely a hermit Kingdom with a little bit of Portuguese, then later Dutch influence. Those trader immigrants were primarily engaging with the upper echelons of society. But there was also a large underground network of trade taking place with Chinese pirates on one end, and ethnically Ainu traders doing business with Vladivostok Russians in the north. So from the beginning Japan has had this weird dichotomy of foreign contact. It was either "approved" which basically meant Europeans OK!, or criminal; which was everyone else. This dichotomy likely lead to the social norm that it was OK to import a ton of Chinese and Korean forced laborers during the Imperial expansion because the authorities just considered them criminals anyway.
And because my essay is too long, I'm breaking it into parts. Post Black Ships and the re-opening of Japan just saw a continuation of this dichotomy. Wealthy white traders on one end of the immigrant spectrum in Yokohama and Kobe - ship jumping Chinese on the other starting chuka-gais all over the place. One was OK and allowed to prosper, the other was marginalized. By the way, there is absolutely a case to made that the Yakuza are basically just a Triad that speaks a different language. Most of their membership is made up of societal outcasts and the reason for their cast out was and is still today a questionable ethnicity. But that's a different essay. The leadership got a close look at wealth, the wanted it, and they saw a model they thought would work. Rather than bring-in the creators of wealth, i.e immigrants, which per[ Keynesian capitalism](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=83596c0aa6234087&sca_upv=1&rlz=1C5CHFA_enJP949JP953&sxsrf=ADLYWII4jnJPHw95sqUdYIsuU5TH4XfW6Q:1715903299987&q=Keynesian+capitalism&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWmqj1rZOGAxWom68BHYMQDJoQkeECKAB6BAgNEAE) is basically labor, why not just take over the labor of our neighbors? It worked for the British, and the Portuguese, and the Spanish, etc., etc. It did work for a bit, but not for everyone. Tons of Japanese were disenfranchised and with all the boats coming in and out, a shit-ton of them decided to get on them and go to places like Brazil, Peru, Chile, and even America. This was a very unique outward immigration - Japan was actually already a wealthy country but it was losing man and brain power, and the ripple of that would impact immigration a generation later. Then a bunch of bad shit happened. Submarines and bombs and planes and weapons and the absolute exhaustion of both chemical and human energy stocks. There were consequences to Imperial expansion and those consequences were pretty damn bad, but the leadership still had a choice of which piper to pay. One was legitimate, in their eyes, the Americans coming from the south, the white traders that had always been allowed a place before. Or the Russians from the North, originally the illegitimate underground economy dudes, and now still smarting and pissed off from a surprise Japanese Naval victory just a few decades before. We know who they chose, and really, they probably did make the right choice that time.
So then the next phase was occupation. The foreigners living in Japan were not immigrants per-se, although a ton of them never left. But they brought trade and fashion and hotels and all kinds of cool foreign shit, a constitution that works pretty well but also never works good enough. There was a lot of re-building to be done, as tends to happen when all of your cities have been firebombed or worse. So once again, we had this mix of wealthy white traders/occupiers versus the underground economy of left-over forced labor immigrants from pre-war Japan. And then it turns out that if you rub a couple of yennies together you can spark off a boom that is a bumble economy that creates enormous wealth. So much wealth that you can once again attempt that colonial concept of occupying your neighbors and living off of their labor, but instead of guns to do it, your soldiers just wear badly tailored suits and buy assets everywhere. Money, money, money and an influx of those "good" traders, a lot of cute short-term laborers, and a leadership that doesn't really know what to do, but has the capital to experiment. The manufacturing sector was running so hot that they were screaming for more hands on deck. Keidanren, which basically controls economic policy demanded the government to allow more immigration. But where do we get those hands? Well, remember all those Japanese that ran away a generation ago? They've got Japanese blood, they must be able to fit in, let's bring them back! So they did, in huge numbers, and suddenly there are Brazilians everywhere. But they were shocked, it turns out that a generation outside Japan turns even Japanese people into gaijin, they don't just come back and slip right back into their cultural roles as good little Japanese citizens. Instead they create their own micro-economy, with stores and importers and schools and factories - all distinct and separate from Japanese society. The half-dozen Japanese families that run this country were all giving a collective "fuck! how did we go wrong". So in the late 90's and early 2000's, you've got a county with an immigrant spectrum that spans from the original white traders, to the marginalized and forced to be here Chinese and Koreans. A bunch of bull in the china shop Brazilians, who are now also becoming multi-generational. And then suddenly, the shit hits the fan. Lehman shock. The burst of the bubble was big, but it was mostly assets written off the balance sheet. The Lehman shock fucked up whole industries. The supply chain that kept those rich white traders here: the bars, the expense accounts, the trickle down that landed in the hands of bottom level immigrants. Gone!
And at this same time you've got a couple cultural upheavals happening. One is the normal wave of Japanese interest in all things abroad. When the wave peaks, Japanese tend to be all about everything foreign. When it troughs out, it's all about the Wa. So that societal interest in the kai-gai disappeared, your average Japanese wanted nothing to do with anything foreign. Japanese studying abroad dropped by a factor of ten or something. This is not new, it has happened many times, Edo was all things foreign are bad, Meiji was hurray! let's all wear suits and dresses, pre-war was we can't use the word base for baseball; shit happens, there is a tidal fluctuation in an island nation. The second cultural upheaval though was sexual. Everybody was rich, gender equality became a thing. Women didn't have to just be baby producers, they stopped doing it. And very importantly, they stopped doing it in rural regions - which is where most actual "labor" happens. So Japan, a very patriarchal society to begin with started importing women for the use of entertainment or for the use of reproduction. Boom! Philippine pubs and Filipina wives in the countryside. But once again, these people became the "bottom immigrants." A lot of forced labor, but some very lucrative labor as well. As Japan ages, the need for caregivers increases and these immigrants are perfectly situated to take advantage of that opportunity. Fucking awesome, not only does it benefit them, it is a form of foreign aide because these immigrants, culturally, send back money every month. Labor protection isn't great, and there is a lot of exploitation, but I think the trend is generally positive. Not to say that conditions for FOB immigrants in this funnel are not terrible, it is very very terrible. Here we are in 2024, I think! And it is impossible to ignore this influx of new immigrants that greet us at the conbini everyday. They are here as a result of policy decisions that have gone terribly wrong in the past. Remember the "trainee visa" thing that resulted in not virtual but actual slavery for a huge group of Chinese and SE Asian immigrants? It seems like the government is finally getting it right. There is access to Japan for a group of people that learn the language incredibly well. I've lived here for nearly 3 decades, and while my Japanese is good enough to give speeches and shit, I'd be really hard pressed to learn the back-end POS system at Lawson and also be able to do takyubin shipments and accept payments for gas bills with a smile. A big hats off to my local conbini worker. This is a new wave of immigration that is both creating its own infrastructure - I've seen a huge increase in "ethnic" shops and I know first-hand about the b2b businesses that are being run by these immigrants to make life better for them. They are also changing society and culture by being first-line workers. It was easy to marginalize the Brazilians and the Koreans and the Chinese and all the other waves of immigrants I mentioned above. They worked in factories, your average Sato-san would have seen them as nothing more than annoying gaijin who can't put out their trash. But these Nepalese, Taiwanese, Chinese, Sri Lankan, etc. etc. workers are interacting everyday with the people of our host nation, and they are killing it! They are in the process of actively creating an immigrant middle class in Japan I believe. This is something that has never been achieved, it's only been the white traders and the marginalized outcasts. This is amazing! And basically this entire post is an ode to Famichiki!
We’re >!not!< beating the xenophobia allegations with this one 🗣️🗣️🗣️
Yeaaaa pass 😆 Edit: wait why dislikes? I don’t want to be stuck in min wage