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

so in this video I'm gonna show you guys what it's like to work in a Japanese office this is Emmy a 24 year old Japanese woman working in Tokyo and she is just waking up this is her morning routine 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 [Music] Emme how long does it take to put on your makeup dummies [Music] nice spread but who made breakfast for you well and we 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 Amy still lives with her family which is a fairly common thing in Japan even after graduating from University Amy commutes to work by train but the closest translation from her house is about a 10 minute walk the average commute time in Tokyo is about 45 minutes to an hour an hour train ride in the morning sounds a bit long but Emily is quite lucky as she doesn't need to transfer trains in the morning like others this is the train right now it's a writing such a long ride so Emma's office is located in the Otemachi area which is considered Tokyo's premier business district she works for a company called persona one of the largest staffing service companies in Japan there's about 4,000 staff in her office alone and about 9,000 in total worldwide is this building only persona people [Music] [Music] you don't have a monitor and that's him is vas super-friendly and this is Emmys office as you can see very open and colorful compared to most Japanese offices since Emmy works in the PR department her first task of the day is to read all the newspapers but she's up to speed with what's going on in Japan and the rest of the world and today's Monday because she has to catch up on all the news over the weekend so she's in a bit of a rush check out this view outside it's real is everyone here doing the same job how are people seated in the office so check this out this happens often in Japanese offices this lady is passing out souvenirs sweets from her vacation it's called a yoga in Japanese 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 oh and there's another person doing it in my 15 plus years in Japan I've never seen anyone forget to do this so one thing I'm really noticing it's just how quiet this office is there's not a lot of loud voices which I guess that when working in a workspace like this where it's all open it's a very very helpful literally it's actually fairly respectable not a lot of people talking at a cabin but you can actually get work done here because I'm like no one's too loud people actually don't wear headphones and I've my previous office I used to wear headphones but that was probably just me 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 today and it takes place every morning I'm kind of surprised at the enemy's company still does this being as progressive as they are as you see this more commonly practice in old traditional Japanese companies basically during the meeting they share important company news from different departments I suppose its 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 Emmys busy with their work let's play Curious George and explore the office of it let's just go down here and see what they have so you can see this is the pan here yeah so she fills all the water he teapots up in the morning it's then later used to make tea which is served during client meetings throughout the day so this is quite interesting because this is one of the things that get in offices here and you can see that there's no wall here it's an open space just like this entire office ism so I just found out the CEO has a whole stack of blank and birthday cards to give out to people what he uses it for it's like he knows a lot of people apparently and we know her birthday just grabs a card he likes here and then it writes out the birthday card and sends it but I'm really liking his style it's pretty dope Amy where are you going it's crazy she's actually gonna work out in the middle of the day at 10 o'clock right now it's quite progressive in my opinion that accompany 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 you know of the day but she's actually still wearing her suit if you do want to come here and like to get a full workout on then you can do that as well check out slippers on top of my shoes cool so you can like come here or your regular shoes wear the slippers on so Amy you have an hour until lunch break what are you working on now how do you like your job yeah almost música shake it off almost you don't think so now she's making phone calls and doing a standard computer work checking emails drafting documents civilian reports etc you know the deal if you've ever worked in an office so another interesting thing is the CEO I only just sits right here in the center of the office his chair is just right here I think it's pretty impressive that he just insists right around everyone and anyone can just like talk to him when he's here but do you guys prefer do you guys prefer having like blocked off cubicles or do you like this open up a style one thing though he does have a nice to see the office that's one difference so I'm in your seminar room right now Amy's downstairs doing a work so let's explore the office I heard there might be a combini on the third floor so let's go check it out [Music] why no it's a proper convenient I was like everything you at one and it adds drinks and I was like bakery stuff even as some Vento's it's kind of cool just like walking around this place here's a quick peek into the little boy's room not much different than the rest of the world oh wait maybe except the sound button built into the bidet it's helped match noses when using the toilet never really heard anyone use it in the men's office toilet but apparently it's almost always using the women's toilet I guess women are more embarrassed to let others hear their noises oh I heard about this this is a global salon let's go inside and check it out oh well it's nice to see the employees working on their English skills and so apparently they even have this open space here for everyone to use which is nice look man amy has a sweet office they shouldn't have let me just walk around by myself this whole entire time finally lunchtime she's asking co-workers if they want to go to lunch together you probably don't notice but she's using video which is a polite form of Japanese so I'm guessing that name is talking to her co-workers that are more senior than her called senpai which makes her the kohai and it's probably one of the more difficult things to master than non Japanese working in a Japanese office Oh in Japan it's not only polite to hold the open elevator button for everyone to get out but sometimes people will go back and forth on who'll hold the elevator open as it's another way to earn those office respect points so the first part has is bakery and they have salads over there and if you're an employee here you get a discount and so I guess we get to just choose all the black bread that they want so I found out that all the food so that this bakery is made in the building by the company's subsidiary caught caught persona heartful they employ workers and artists with disabilities and their philosophy as talent knows no handicap which i think is pretty cool they even create a lot of the art scene throughout the office including the Olympic designs we sought the hell of a tour earlier today and what's wonderful is that the first floor cafeteria area is open to the public so if any of you decide to visit an office I definitely recommend getting the show butter pond it's amazing they mop up bitch nothing less you're punished something else you may not know if you've never seen him before the wet towels provided their food is to wipe your hands before you eat just wanted to mention it as many countries don't offer wet towels another thing that might surprise you is that everyone's eating their salads chopsticks and when you finish you've got to clean up your garbage and put away your trays or plates if they have any this is also common in Japanese fast food joints like McDonald's or Silva shops anyway I've gotten use all these since I've been in Japan for so long but what do you think about the wet towels salad chopsticks or even cleaning up after yourself I have a farm up here and I'm gonna check out so we have a few more minutes before Emmy has to go back to the office let me ask me if I wanted to check out the farm yeah you heard me a real-deal farm in the office I was pretty surprised myself apparently it's open to the public so if you want to take your kids and pet the animals it's all good I personally prefer to see animals in their natural habitat but to each their own you can actually come up here during a break time and feed animals I mean she's like pretty lucky to be here working for this company because you don't get a lot of Japanese companies like this progressive or thank you that pop like so many services but I do have allergies so I got to keep my mask on oh and they even have fierce-looking owls oh and just in case you're wondering what the animals well being I'm told the facility provides 24-hour ventilation the animals are returned to an outside farm every few months and owls are allowed to fly around the entire floor in the evenings I was actually pretty cool so in the afternoon she has several meetings packed into her schedule she has a health check there's a difference in ginkgo and Hinkle ginkgo check not hella Jackie so basically her senpai reviews the documents she made and provides feedback to finalize it a [Music] yg Island is an island in the southwestern part of Japan Emmys currently working on a project there so she has regular video conferences with that office 552 right now it's not even six and people are already starting to head out I mean if you look around there's still people that are working obviously but I think we're heading out now I guess she's done [Music] in old-school Japanese companies it would have been death to leave the office before your superiors in fact I have several friends working those type of offices and they're always working late seems like Emmys office is way more flexible and let you leave when you finish a work for the day makes sense right apparently the restaurant in the basement floor is free for employees that's amazing isn't it and you guys know I love free I don't think the beer is free though so all four women work at the same company but two of them work in sales on a completely different floor they all met a few years back during company training see when new grads enter a company for the first time they're required to go through formal company training called Ken shooting Japanese it's different with each company but in their case they actually had an induction ceremony spent one week off-site together and had an additional two and a half months of training at the office this is like how it's supposed to be right regular Northbay in Japan let me know what you guys think in the comments if you thought there's anything that like stood out to you that was weird or that you thought was just like pretty much standard in the rest of the world let me know in the comments if you guys want to see what I was doing on the daily then definitely check out my Instagram account and if you want to help support the channel check out my Tokyo March the link is always in the description and now I can finally have a beer with them

Channel: Paolo fromTOKYO

Views: 5,421,806

Rating: 4.8672338 out of 5

Keywords: Paolo, Japan, Tokyo, Day in the life, day in the life japan, day in the life tokyo, office worker, working in japan, working in tokyo, working in japanese office, japanese office, tokyo office, how to work in japan, working hours in japan, a day in the life, japanese salarymen, Japanese office tour, jobs in japan, typical japanese office, average japanese office, tokyo life, living in japan, life in tokyo, japan life, パソナ, 人材会社, 会社員 一日, living in tokyo, work in japan, average

Id: YdiWTYkY1uY

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/bem13]

Typical office

Has an indoor petting zoo

Choose one LMAO. Otherwise, pretty good video.

[u/TbanksIV]

This is like an SF office. Something tells me this is far from the norm.

[u/zombie_physician]

6:30 AM

girl stops an alarm reading 11:23

lies!

[u/Jeelp]

This looks way less stressful than this guy's experience: A week in the life of a Tokyo salary man

[u/lsaz]

Click here for a more common japanese white collar worker experience

[u/FireEmblemIsMyJam]

I would rather just chug through and work for a straight 8 hours, instead of staying at the office for 12 hours and working out and going to the petting zoo for 4 hours

[u/Futabtw]

Oh dude. That workers with handicaps doing baking part is such a great fucking idea.

[u/Badstaring]

This all seems pretty normal to me (except the petting zoo lmao). I'm not from the US and it seems he is trying to compare to the US, but things like cleaning up after yourself during lunch and open offices must be normal things almost everywhere right?

[u/Half_Time_Show]

Jeez, I'd like to think I'm one of the more considerate/respectful people in my office, but I'd probably considered rude by their standards in more ways than one.