Three Years in Japan: Commuting, Parenting, and Work

Many years ago, I saw reports saying that most people in Japan live in the Tokyo area, while other regions keep losing population, giving the government a headache. Back then, I knew almost nothing about Japan, so I only glanced at such reports without much feeling. Now I have lived in Japan for three years, and I know that the Tokyo area usually refers to one metropolis and three prefectures: Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Chiba. After all these years, it seems even more people have gathered in the Tokyo area. The government does not seem to have promoted balanced regional development very effectively. But that is understandable: life here is convenient, job opportunities are abundant, and other places can be completely different.

Japan is often divided into Kanto and Kansai. Tokyo is in Kanto, while Osaka, Japan’s second-largest city, is in Kansai and is another major population center. Although the Keihanshin area is similar in size to the Tokyo area, its population and economic scale are not on the same level. About half of Japan’s people live in these two regions. Many other parts of Japan have very few people.

Riding Trains

Although I am in Japan, and Japan is truly a major tourist destination, I have not visited many places because daily life takes so much energy. If you ask me where Japan’s population density is highest, my answer is the tiny space between two train doors in each carriage during commuting hours.

Japan’s public order is almost beyond criticism worldwide. So why does everyone crowd there? Here are my observations:

• Most people rely on trains when going out, so during commuting hours, there are many passengers.
• Japan is a train country, and stations are everywhere. On the way to work, at ordinary small stations, most people are getting on while very few get off.
• People accumulate in the carriage. If you stand in the middle and your stop is one where few people get off, squeezing out can be troublesome. To make getting off easier, people want to stay near the doors. This also means later passengers cannot move toward the middle. From what I have seen, even when people are packed tightly against the doors, the aisle in the middle of the carriage may still not be very crowded.

In Japan, people and trains are inseparable. Based on the situation above, here are a few practical tips:

• Board through the door next to the connection between train cars. Even when crowded, it is relatively easier to get off from there.
• The small standing space beside each door near the seats is extremely valuable when the train is crowded. The four spots at each doorway are highly contested. They are less affected by swaying, less likely to be squeezed, and you do not need to get off temporarily to let others pass. When it is your stop, you can get off immediately.

Observations on Japanese Learning

As before, I still do not have much time to study Japanese, but I have observed some things through my child.

During the first three months after starting school in Japan, even though three months had passed, my child could not say simple sentences, could not understand what the teacher taught in class, and relied on translation software to communicate with teachers and classmates.

After half a year, things were a little better. My child could say some simple sentences, but that was all. Communication with teachers and classmates still relied on translation software.

But after eight or nine months, we noticed a clear improvement. My child could communicate with teachers and classmates in Japanese quite smoothly, and could speak very fast. Not only that, my child could tell simple stories in Japanese and even help teach younger students, since the school often arranges activities where older students guide younger ones. Some younger Japanese students could not even tell that my child was a foreigner.

My child does not especially love studying and did not deliberately study Japanese. At home, it is mostly play, though often watching Doraemon and Detective Conan, plus attending lessons at a cram school three times a week. Why did Japanese improve so quickly? I think there are several reasons:

1. Immersion: everyone in the class is Japanese, so the child lives in a Japanese-language environment every day, with many chances to hear, see, and use Japanese.
2. Practice: daily communication and classroom learning at school require Japanese, so language-use experience accumulates through constant practice.
3. Social interaction: interaction with classmates, including younger students and sometimes kindergarten children, creates more opportunities for output. In games and activities, language use becomes more natural.
4. Motivation: although the child does not love studying, wanting to play with Japanese classmates after school creates subconscious motivation to make more friends.

Although my child now speaks Japanese much more fluently than I do, even some basic grammar remains only half-understood, such as the use of particles like wa, ga, and no. My feeling is that children are like good recorders, with good magnetic heads and good tapes. In a Japanese environment, they unconsciously capture a lot of language information and can output it at the right moment. Adults, especially those already middle-aged, can no longer record as much information even in the same environment. Learning Japanese often requires more deliberate practice and systematic study. This is why I know more grammar than my child and know it more precisely, and have a somewhat larger vocabulary, but still speak less fluently.

Working in Japan

Although information is now highly developed, I find that information gaps still exist everywhere. In the past, people had limited access to information, which created gaps between people. Today there is more information, and everyone can freely access a lot of it, but its quality and reliability vary greatly. Most people also prefer pleasant words or information they already want to hear. This creates a new kind of information gap.

Below are some things many Chinese people assume before coming to work in Japan:

• There is no age limit for working in Japan, and work is relatively easier.
• Japan has many holidays: weekends, national holidays, summer holidays, annual leave, and strong labor-law protections.
• Salary, bonuses, social insurance, and benefits are all good.

Yes, all of the above are true, but not everyone can enjoy those benefits. Here are my observations:

• First, age. For foreigners coming to work in Japan, the older you are, the harder it is to find suitable work. In the IT industry where I work, many projects set requirements such as up to age 35 or up to age 45. Yes, there are many older programmers still working, but you first need to understand their status and background.
• Relatively easy work is also hard to obtain. If you want work to be easier, you generally need to be at least a small team leader, do higher-level work, or speak Japanese very fluently. Do not assume that having an N1 certificate means your Japanese is excellent. If you only have the certificate, work can still be difficult.
• As for holidays, if you are dispatched and not especially outstanding, simply avoiding bench time for a full year may already be good. How many people in that position can really fight for all those holidays? Without a visa, those things become clouds.
• When looking at other people’s income, do not focus on monthly salary. Look at annual income and bonuses. Some companies may pay 600,000 to 700,000 yen per month when there is work, but only a little over 100,000 yen when there is no work. In that case, do you still believe the monthly salary is 600,000 to 700,000 yen?

Japan’s Strengths

Japan has many strengths. Here are some of my personal impressions:

• Japan is genuinely good to children. The government provides subsidies until adulthood. If parents pay social insurance, children’s medical costs can be fully covered. Public elementary schools combine learning and play, provide free lunch and milk in some places, have few exams and little homework, and make family life much less stressful. Parents do not need to pick up and drop off children, worry about after-school care, join endless parent-school chat groups, or be forced into homework tutoring, signatures, videos, check-ins, reply chains, involuntary volunteering, or product promotions. There is the PTA, but not the badly distorted parent committees common in some places.
• Japan’s public order is well known worldwide. When taking transport, handling administrative matters, or shopping, you generally do not worry about people cutting in line. It is rare to see people making loud noise in public, and people rarely make phone calls on trains and subways.
• There are no street cleaners everywhere, roadside trash cans are uncommon, and greenery maintenance may be counted by the year, yet the overall environment is very clean and orderly.
• Administrative services and consumer services are very friendly. For us, face-to-face administrative service is especially impressive.

Overall, based on what I know, if I compare Japan only with my hometown, the first point alone would make me choose Japan. The other points are not as strong an attraction. Although administrative work back home can involve buck-passing or bad attitudes, most situations in our area are already acceptable. Also, many services can now be handled online or through machines, which makes the difference feel less obvious.

Many young people coming to Japan today do not feel Japanese administrative services are that good. I think there is a reason: if they do not handle things face to face and choose other channels instead, Japan’s software systems are indeed frustrating. If they judge only by efficiency, they may feel some Chinese cities do better.

As for work, protections are indeed much better for blue-collar workers. But for people coming to do white-collar work, many may not feel much difference, and some may even feel income is worse than in China.