Hello blog!
Where do I begin! I believe my last post was a bit fire and brimstone, because I was not really feeling great here on my internship experience, honestly.
There were many expected challenges interning abroad alone, such as cultural and language barriers, but it was isolating in a way I’d never experienced before, and I was only there a few months! I learned about Japanese business culture, different expectations that I was not used to at all, and of course about various industries and skills. I learned about digital marketing, the advertising industry, social media marketing, video and photo shooting and editing, and how to conduct research. I made SNS posts for the company’s social media channels, some video editing, and lots of research! I’m glad I got to try various things, and it will definitely look good on my resume. But, overall, I don’t think working at a Japanese company and living in Japan alone is something I want to repeat. I didn’t mesh well with Japanese business culture or the normalized expectations of overtime work, I felt I was going crazy without any of my American friends or family to talk to. In this way, I’m rethinking my dream of living and working in Japan someday entirely. As of this moment, my future is uncertain and I have a lot to consider moving forward.
As I mentioned a bit in my last blog, I couldn’t really talk about my queerness or queer interests, or being neurodivergent, or really any of my hobbies or interests, because they’re considered kind of weird. I don’t think that is Japan-specific really, but it was new for me to adjust to after having only worked part-time jobs where no one really cared anyway and I only had to go a few times a week, and a huge contrast to the comparably egalitarian college campus environment. I mean, as I was there, what I learned about working in Japan only put me off more and more, in that there are no anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ people, so your boss can fire you for being gay or genderqueer without it being definitely illegal (which definitely happens in the U.S. as well, but at least there is a law making it possible to sue). Of course, I knew this, along with same-sex marriage not being allowed in Japan. But in general, much beyond legality, being different in any way is widely known to be difficult in a collectivist culture like Japan, so I felt all the time like every aspect of me stuck out like a sore thumb in the workplace. Foreigners often make the mistake of trying to be friendly with everyone in the workplace, but being friendly to a person can be seen as disrespectful if they believe they are above you or are your superior, which I experienced first-hand. A multitude of these kind of mismatches with my identity and values makes me hesitant to work particularly at a Japanese company in the future, but I still am considering my future goals and what life in Japan would be like if I managed to move there someday. But overall, I’m glad to have done this internship, despite it being very challenging, even if just to learn much more about myself and what my values are. Honestly, I was so busy it was hard to do anything really fun, but here are some pictures of interesting things I just managed to do!
Elizabeth Grieve, GlobalWorks Internship in Kansai