November 09, 2003
French in Japan
Way out of your territory...
Some things just weren't meant to be. And when they do happen, they're incredibly strange.
Unnatural.
I have worked in Japan for about one year, and spent about 5 months working in Prais up until a few months ago. I had heard it before, but one of the interesting things about France, is the relaxed work atmosphere, and the long vacations that employees are able to enjoy. It makes me seriously wonder how French people who work in Japan survive...
As anyone reading this probably knows, In Japan, company employees (salary men) typically commute an hour to work by train, spend long hours in the office, skip vacations they are entitled to, and take incredibly compressed speed vacations to recover from this hectic life. In the place I currently work, the men finish lunch in 30 minutes. I'm not joking.
If you have been in Japan for any amount of time I am sure you have heard of the ridiculous working hours that some people put in. I'm sure you have heard stories of unpaid overtime (service zangyo) and employees skipping their summer vacations because they are just "too busy". When people are finally able to escape from work to grab a few days off, the time is so short they are forced to plan their vacations to be ultra efficient so that none of their precious break time is wasted.
In France however... I didn't even -see- my boss for the entire month of August. In France employees are required by law to have 30 days of paid vacation, plus something like 10 days of national holidays. This adds up to be quite a bit. In Japan it is hard for employees to find time to take their 3 day summer vacations, in France people have to plan ahead to see what they will do with their 30 days off. That's not even double, that's 10! times the vacation days. It's almost difficult to imagine.
Most people in the company I worked at in France took off for an entire month at a time, usually in July or August. I believe in Japan this would be called "tensyoku". I literally mean, start vacation August 1st. Return to work in September. Employees have so much vacation time they can spend a long time on a beach in the south of France... learn to play a musical instrument... or visit a French speaking colony in Africa.
I had a friend in the office in France from New Zealand. He had been in France for a few years, and learned to speak French, and become very familiar with French culture. When I asked him why he decided to stay so long, one of the first things he mentioned was the vacation time.
Once you have lived in a country with a month of vacation regularly available, it is extremely hard to go back to anything less. Could you imagine going from 30 days of vacation a year, to 10? Or less? For the same pay? Similar benefits? It almost doesn't make sense at all.
This makes me wonder. It makes me really wonder WHY there are French people working in Japan, and how they feel about their new working life once they arrive. Are they able to adjust to the hour long commutes, 40 minute lunches, and expected overtime? What makes them stay?
I imagine some of the reasons for staying are similar to the reasons why I am here. However, I am from a country with an equally -low- amount of vacation time. I didn't have to make such a large social adjustment.
To each his own huh?
If you're crazy. Read this.
http://www.jasmec.go.jp/ck/kokusai/kokurepo/me0203inose.htm
Posted by Harvey at November 09, 2003 08:04 AM
So, with 30 days vacation, would that actually amount to 6 weeks? If you only work 5 days a week, 5 * 6 = 30
There's some French people at my school and the language sounds impossible to emulate. French makes Chinese pronunciation look easy. How fluent have you become in French since being there? I was considering learning French after Japanese/Chinese.
Hi, I'm french and I'm a newbie in japan I arrived here in september, I'm in chiba, and I would like to meet some other foreigner over here and get some information about living and job and whatever.
feel free to contact me, malex@japan.com
merci.
Good point Mavurik. I studied French at a language school in Paris for 2 months while I was there. I was in France for like 4.5 months, but I was skipping town a lot to travel and things, and summer hit, blah blah, so only took classes for the 2 :-)
Anyway, the prounounciation was mother hard. Much harder than Japanese by anyones standards, but not sure if it's harder than Chinese...
Spelling in French is also very tough in my opinion. I could never remember how to spell an ything. Japanese is easy. How do you spell 'ongaku'? o-n-ga-ku, that's it. Phonetic. French is crazy hard.
Also, the grammer was really tough. All the feminine masculine stuff... on every freakin noun... that's madness.
Personally, I want to learn Chinese or Arabic before I learn French. Though, I'm -sure- I could learn French faster. It took me like 6 years to get to conversational Japanese, but I could hack it in French after only 4 months.
Language is fun.
Hey Malex, so... why are you here? Having fun?
Hi! My name is Mihoko, I am a Japanese.
I experienced "reverse culture shock" after 1-year-stay in the North America. If I would live in French like for a year it may be quite tough to adjust myself into Japanese culture again!
I donft think French suit for France,
There is dog's poo every 15 meters on the street, they are so lazy, I live in France and I lived in Japan. It took me 1 month to rent an apartment because of the French banks bureaucrats.
Offices are usually closed at noon, and open from 9 to 4, the immigration office is by far the worst public office I have ever been in my entire life. Rude!! the people in general smells horrible, in the mornings in the trains is like you are smelling direct in to a bag containing a ton of garlic and onions.
How about Sundays? If you want to commit suicide there is not even a place to buy poison open on Sundays, everything is closed and boooring!!!
People are often unfriendly and snobbish, they laugh at others poor French aptitudes (especially girls) and in the place I live (LYON) they tend to stare at Asian people like monkeys in a zoo.
Not to mention also they have to be spoken in the stores... you seldom hear... can I help you? You always have to go and interrupt them in order to be heard.
They will never suit in a beautiful gentle clean hard working place like Japan.
Every year we have a tough time finding airfare good seasonal help, we are hoping that with credit card more folks looking for work we will find ski vacation more high quality employees this year. We car rental always have at least 30% of our temporary dating staff return year after year. We are looking plane ticket to have a very strong year with new products hotel coming to the market place. They also working vacation package
any century.--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., airfare Ithaca, NY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Is credit card it verse or is it fiction? What a question. The ski vacation most essential fact is that this is a story, a car rental love story told by poet and novelist Carson (Men plane ticket in the Off Hours, 2000, etc.) in 29 brief, lyrical hotel "tangos" (which are kind of like stanzas, only vacation package a lot more romantic) that have little quotations
Hi,
I am a french who has not ben living in France for more than 8 years (living in Ireland for 3 years and Australia for 5 years). Unfortunately for now I must leave Oz to make money. I am a shiatsu massage practitioner and would like to work in Japan. Any ideas, tips would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to go there by end of May.
ARIGATO.