Name: Day in the Life of a Typical Japanese Office Worker in Tokyo
Uploaded: 2019-11-07T03:19:38.000Z
Duration: 13 min 44 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Future simple

So in this video I'm going to show you guys what it's like to work in a Japanese office.

Present continuous

This is Emi, a 24 year old Japanese woman working in Tokyo, and she's just waking up.

she doesn't take a shower to get ready for work, as some may assume.

Like many Japanese, she prefers taking a bath in the evening before she goes to bed instead.

How long does it take to put on your makeup?

Nice spread, but who made breakfast for you?

Well, Emi completely bailed on breakfast.

It's okay, though, she's trying to be on time.

In fact, many Japanese just grab a small breakfast like an onigiri from the convenience store on their way to work.

So if you didn't notice already, Emi still lives with a family, which is a fairly common thing in Japan -

Emi commutes to work by train, but the closest train station from her house is about a 10 minute walk.

The average commute time in Tokyo is about 45 minutes to an hour.

Sounds a bit long but Emi is quite lucky as she doesn't need to transfer trains in the morning like others.

So this is the train. Right now, it's arriving.

So Emi's office is located in the Otemachi area, which is considered Tokyo's premier business district.

She works for a company called Pasona, one of the largest staffing service companies in Japan.

There's about 4000 staff in her office alone,

And this is Emi's office - as you can see, very open and colorful compared to most Japanese offices.

Since Emi works in the PR department, her first task of the day is to read all the newspapers,

so she's up to speed with what's going on in Japan and the rest of the world.

And today's Monday, so she has to catch up on all the news over the weekend,

Check out this view outside, it's pretty dope.

So check this out - this happens often in Japanese offices.

This lady is passing out souvenir sweets from her vacation.

It's customary in Japan to bring something back from your vacation for people in the office.

It's kind of a way to show gratitude to others for letting you take a break from work

and for them covering you while you're away.

In my 15+ years in Japan, I've never seen anyone forget to do this.

So one thing I'm really noticing is just how quiet this office is.

which I guess when working in a workspace like this, where it's all open,

Literally it's like actually fairly respectable.

you can actually get work done here because no one's too loud.

In my previous office, I used to wear headphones.

But I've actually noticed something interesting.

I don't know if it's something worldwide.

There was a desk with a little humidifier on it.

Is that something that's just Japan, or does the rest of the world where like people have humidifiers on their desk because the air is too dry?

So what I'm showing you right now is the company's morning assembly meeting.

In Japanese, it's called "chourei", and it takes place every morning.

I'm kind of surprised that Emi's company still does this, being as progressive as they are,

as you see this more commonly practiced in old traditional Japanese companies.

Basically during the meeting, they share important company news from different departments.

I suppose it's equivalent to today's company email newsletter blast.

Then after the company-wide meeting finishes, each department gets together and they do the same thing.

Okay, since Emi's busy with her work, let's play Curious George and explore the office.

So let's just go down here and see what they have...

So she fills all the water heating pots up in the morning.

It's then literally used to make tea, which is served during client meetings throughout the day.

So this is quite interesting because this is one of the executive offices here.

And you can see that there's no wall here - it's an open space,

So I just found out the CEO has a whole stack of blank birthday cards to give out to people.

What he uses it for is like, he knows a lot of people apparently, and whenever there's a birthday,

he just grabs a card he likes and then writes on the birthday card and sends it.

It's crazy she's actually going to work out in the middle of the day, at 10 o'clock right now.

It's quite progressive, in my opinion, that a company allows employees to work out during the day.

Let alone having a full gym built inside of the office.

You do need to pay a monthly fee, though,

and if you want, they have personal trainers to customize your workout.

It's pretty neat that they can, like, work out in the middle of the day.

If you do want to come here and like get a full workout on, then you can do that as well.

Check that out - slippers on top of my shoes.

Pretty cool, so you can like, come here, wear your regular shoes with the slippers on.

So Emi, you have an hour until lunch break.

So now, she's making phone calls and doing your standard computer work -

checking emails, drafting documents, filling out reports etc. -

you know the deal if you've ever worked in an office.

So another interesting thing is that the CEO actually just sits right here in the center of the office.

I think it's pretty impressive that he just sits right around everyone.

Anyone can just like talk to him when he's here.

Do you guys prefer having like blocked-off cubicles? Or do you like this open office style?

One thing though, he does have the nicest seat in the office.

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Day in the Life of a Typical Japanese Office Worker in Tokyo

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