XV. Future

The last days before Golden Week were not easy, as I was trying to keep focused at work but my mind was wandering elsewhere. Outside, the sun was shining. At home, travel guides and bag pack were ready to go. At work, Golden Week was The Lunchtime Topic. It struck me that whilst most managers had to go on business trip during Golden Week and had only a few days off, many Office Ladies were using Hitachi’s long Golden Week to go on trips to far and exotic destinations, ranging from Italy to Trinidad. I guess the combination of having fewer responsibilities than their male co-workers and being able to save up more money living with their parents enables many young Office Ladies to make trips many salarymen can only dream of. It made me wonder: should Japanese career women really aspire to careers similar to those of their male colleagues? Or had Japanese salarymen better follow the example of their female counterparts and invest more in free time and having fun? I wonder if emancipated Japanese women will want to adopt a salaryman lifestyle or if they will be able to change Japanese corporate lifestyle as they rise in the company’s ranks.

All this Golden Week talk made me eager to get out and travel. Luckily the working week ended early as I got Friday afternoon off to go to the Dutch embassy’s Queen’s Day reception. Although I am not too fond of expat culture in general, it was quite nice to chat to other Dutch people and find out how they are experiencing life in Tokyo. The Dutch cheese was also wonderful, although I did miss the dropjes.

The first days of Golden Week I spent relaxing, catching up on sleep, e-mails and enjoying the gorgeous weather. I discovered Hamarikyu Teien which is now officially one of my absolute favourite parks in Tokyo, and sipped matcha in the tea pavilion in the middle of the park’s salt water pond. I also explored Odaiba, which sometimes feels like a city from the future. There are dancing robots at the Toyota Universal Design Showcase, there are the Fuji Building and Tokyo Big Sight which seem like spacecrafts carelessly left behind by aliens, there is even a Tokyo Teleport Station. It doesn’t get much more SciFi than that. I read somewhere that Tokyo is the place the rest of the world goes to in order to see what the future looks like- looking back at the island’s futuristic skyline from the deck of the water bus, I myself felt a bit like a tourist back from the future. It was a strange sensation, yet at the same time “just another day in Tokyo.” Be it a miniature Statue of Liberty, a trumpet playing robot or an indoors recreation of Venice: if you can’t find it in Tokyo, it probably doesn’t exist- or you’ll have to wait at least another decade before it does.

XII. Ghibli

The blossoms have all but gone now and in the office, last month’s frantic activity has been replaced by calmer planning and introduction meetings. Last week, a group of employees was introduced that came to work with us, having previously worked in another part of the company. This morning, I went to a meeting where all Global Business divisions introduced their plans for the coming financial year. Unfortunately, the presentations were rather difficult to follow. Not because of the speakers’ speed or unclear pronunciation, but because of what my colleague termed “Hitachi-go”: too much company lingo. And finally, this afternoon, our new colleague (a real nyuushain, fresh out of university) joined us. After an extensive briefing about the team’s work, we are going out for his welcome party. Although I have been under the weather since Tuesday (flu-like symptoms), I will of course come along- but no sake tonight.

Apart from these new developments, we’ve also begun working on The Caring Tree, Hitachi’s CSR newsletter. Thanks to my colleague who has devised a system of forms people reporting their CSR activities can fill in, only two topics required much back-and-forth e-mailing to get sufficient data for the article. It’s a nice change from the research to be able to write straightforward pieces again- thanks to all the concise article-writing training I received in Brussels, I was able to write the bulk of the articles in one day.

Of course, I had some free time as well, this week. Last weekend I went to the Studio Ghibli museum in Mitaka. I have seen some of the anime studio’s films before (Spirited Away, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) but even though I like them, I am not a hardcore fan. Many others are, however, and we had to book our tickets a month in advance. But it was worth it: the museum was built in typical Ghibli-style, with pastel-coloured walls, winding staircases, odd turrets and stained glass windows depicting scenes from some of the studio’s most famous anime films. On the ground floor there was an exhibition of various animation techniques, including a carrousel similar to those used in 18th century Europe. But this one, lit by a stroboscope lamp, showed 3-D animation. This room, as well as the quaint study/library/drawing studio upstairs, with countless Miyazaki sketches tacked to the walls, was my favourite part of the museum. There was a special animated film as well (one that can only be viewed in the museum). The best thing about the film was not the plot, which was a little simple, nor even the animations, but watching it surrounded by Japanese children who really got into the story, holding their breath, laughing uncontrollably and reading aloud all the hiragana that featured in the film. The museum’s motto “Let’s lose our way together” doesn’t really apply to the museum itself, as it is a little small and not quite the Disney-like overwhelming fantasy experience one expects, but I liked it very much. Standing on the roof, taking pictures of (and with) a Laputian robot statue, it struck me once again that Japanese have an imagination and a fairytale-world of their own, less sugary-sweet than Disney, but perhaps even more imaginative.