The International Writers Magazine: Japan

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Unprofessional Professional • Phil Kaberry I got in on the ground floor of the lunch box racket. The ground floor is a warehouse where a small group of people work 12 hours a day carrying heavy boxes.

We go from point A to point B, and back again, for no readily apparent reason. A smaller group of mature ladies sit in front of noisy machines stamping the lids of the lunch boxes with personalized messages. Today, between two of them, they accomplished more than 5000 plastic lunch box lids, which doesn't sound like all that much until you the stand in the shadows of the boxes containing the lids, or you sit in front of the machines and stamp a hundred or so. You start to feel the pain biting into the middle of your back and the terrifying, paralyzing boredom of the job unfurls itself before your mind's eye.

Yes, I scored myself a sweet gig indeed, and one that probably sounds like heaven to local foreign language teachers. I mean, you might slip a disc or two and have sore legs at the end of the day, but it's unlikely your co-workers will sneak up and punch you in the balls when you're trying to find the Hello! How Are You? Song on the CD player, or poke each others' eyes out with crayons and have their mothers point the finger of blame at you after you knock-off. I enjoy the company of kids, or those I've encountered once a year at Christmas for five or so minutes, as long as they are supervised by their parents, and it follows a sumptuous meal and three bottles of mulled wine.

So what's it like being a storeman in Japan, as opposed to being an English teacher? Well, the working day, like in any self-respecting English school, begins at 8.30am with a bracing 15-minute bout of shouting. Vogons love it. So, apparently, do the bosses of Japanese lunch box companies. Staff from Administration gather in the lunchroom and stand in a circle with the warehouse workers. The boss stands at the front of the room closest to the door, perhaps for tactical reasons.
'Hello!', he screams.
'Good Morning! Good Morning! Hello! Thank You Very Much! Good Morning! Hello!' So it goes, for several minutes, worker and boss screaming back and forth at each other. Perhaps the stamping machine has made the entire contingent hard of hearing.

Then, with barely enough time to calm your jangled nerves and for them to catch their breath, it's time to turn to the wall and recite -- in the sort of voice that a ten-foot Scottish shepherd might use to summon an errant dog in a gale -- the 13 guiding principals of the company, which are helpfully posted to the wall in 20cm intervals. God knows what they are, I don't speak Japanese. Which makes it significantly more difficult to do a pretty mindless job.

Ninety per cent of being a warehouse roustabout is the ability to lift 35kg cardboard boxes and place them on top of other 35kg boxes with the same serial number, and not get your hand caught in the stamping machine. After all, if you're lifting half your body weight above your head trying to stuff the box into a hole half a centimeter too small, there's not much time for chit-chat, is there? True. But it does help to be able read the small Japanese Texta symbols on the box, just below the deceptively friendly 'FW-100', particularly when you've just moved two and a half ton of F-100s to the special area for pink FW-100s, not yellow FW-100s. Silly! You'll have to stay back after work. No time now, 20 more pallets have just arrived, creating an exciting new Lego-style mountain range to dismantle on the concrete apron outside.

Yes, I possess the exact qualifications for work in a warehouse. A muscular frame chiseled by the cruel, inhospitable conditions of my lounge room in front to the TV, and the backbreaking years spent in my office job coasting about on a gas-assisted chair. Sometimes, in moments of quiet reflection, I like to marvel at the awesome ability of my arm to ferry a weighty pint of beer to my mouth and back to the bar, spilling hardly any. My neck muscles, too, are rock-hard from carrying about a giant brain, which contains a basic knowledge of the English language, the lyrics to an iPod worth of songs, and the ability to navigate around the Golden Triangle, video shop, bottle shop and pizza place.

However, with a willingness to deal with the exasperation at having to locate and summon an English-speaker to explain how to do each task, a willingness to work for very little money; a laissez faire attitude to accepted levels of workplace Health and Safety; a high tolerance for J-pop on the radio; and a determination to do a job nearly everyone insists a foreigner can't (just be an English teacher, they're hiring drug-addicted bums at the moment and they pay in gold bullion) -- warehouse work could well be the answer for the loitering tourist.

Even your grandparents could do it. Or, someone's grandparents. Not mine, they're dead, wrong diet, ha ha, too much meat and not enough rice and fish.
One of my co-workers looks about 60, which in Japanese years is 85, and he wears an expression I can't quite describe, as he casually slings a lumbering box onto a mezzanine like it was a plastic bag full of women's underpants. It's the sort of expression you see on a soldier's face, one who's seen a fair bit of heavy action, but doesn't like to talk about it. An expressionless expression, but one with a suggestion of wryness in the wrinkles -- like he knows that putting boxes on top of each other, twelve hours a day, six days a week is the most obscenely ludicrous idea in the world, but has dedicated his life to perfecting the art just for the irony in it.

Everyone works with deliberate and unrelenting speed, moving as a speed walker rather than a sprinter, but minus the hilarious gait. I was a fool not to recognize this. On my first day, I wanted to feel worthy of my new company windcheater, Stanley knife and Day-Glo box-handling gloves, and leapt to every task like I'd been hit with a Taser. Rushing from one side of the warehouse to the other pushing a gay little trolley, with an expression I'd aimed at optimistic enthusiasm, but was probably closer to fear. Or, falling over myself at the exciting opportunity to stick a sticker on the side of a box. (Incidentally, I still have no idea what the sticker says, although I have stuck many thousands of them now. Perhaps: Apologies. Box packed by foreigner.)

Instead of the slow, lingering death of an office job in Australia, each day at Lunchbox HQ is separated into strict time-blocks. After shouting comes half an hour of cleaning (everyone, including the boss, cleans the offices and warehouse. He takes the toilet, fucking martyr), then five minute smoko at 10am, lunch at 12pm in a bath of cigarette smoke and side serving of soap opera on TV, smoko at 3pm for five minutes, then it's time to go to a Happy Place until 7pm. Normally at this point, people finally show outward signs of fatigue and sort of push a broom around or fiddle with papers till 8pm, knock-off time.

The first day I nearly quit at four, that horrific hour when it's been an hour since your last cigarette, at least three till your next, it's snowing outside (bitter little dots that refuse to lie down and look pretty on the ground) and I'd just stuck my hand into the super-pressurized heat press, thrown the lunchbox in the bin and the lunchbox wrapping plastic in the order box, all because I'd been admiring the snow for a split second. I was aching all over. I was terrified another delivery would come in and I'd have to sling boxes again. During the last lot I asked my arms to move and they just wouldn't. Somehow I got that motherfucker on the stack without Grandpa noticing my arms shaking uncontrollably and the pathetic whimper of helplessness escape my lips.

Two weeks in, and I suspect I'm starting to get used to it. Today, the old boy even gave me a candy because he heard me cough after loading the sixth pallet into the back of a truck. He's definitely going soft. It doesn't stop the dread about going to work though, but what does? Fuck those people that say airily, 'Oh, I just love my job. I love waking up and going to my job. The trick is to find the job that you want to do for your hobby.'
Well, I'm still sorry I haven't found a job that pays me a fortune to sleep, drink, and watch movies. So keep your advice to yourself.
After working with the smiling, friendly, and unbowed women who operate those machines day in, day out, I've reached a zenith of respect, a weird kind of Zen. Tonight, 12 hours into a hellish day, I really did think I was going to collapse and die. But damned if I'd give Grandpa the satisfaction. I soldiered through, a wretched box at a time, and when the truck was filled, I was punch-drunk next to my coworkers staring at the full truck with a weird sense of pride.

If you've got one bright student who actually wants to learn, and you can teach them, then I guess you might get the same feeling as I got, when the three guys I'd been loading with all evening came up and patted me on the shoulder, shook my hand and said, in broken English, that I did okay for a lazy-assed foreigner.

If I ever hear of a job that requires you to eat, drink to pleasant, anesthetic excess, watch three movies in a row and arise at 3pm every day, I'll let you know. Until then, I guess we'll all heft boxes and dream of office chairs, or get stabbed with crayons and dream of hefting boxes.
 
© Phil Kaberry January 2006
phil-shizuka@snow.ocn.ne.jp

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