Japan. A country very familiar to Australians but still so very alien … so weird. A country so synonymous with technology, which, in fact, is still run on paper trails, ink seals, fax machines and ledgers. Internet banking anybody? Online government services? Are you kidding?

Since we moved here, the meandering no-one-really-cares bureaucratic machine that runs Norway, where the person you need to talk to is always on sick-leave the day you go to see them, now seems to us to be a trail-blazing, world-leading example in simplicity, efficiency and convenience. Here in Japan, every department has a sub-department, another desk in another cranny of another level possibly in another building. In Norway, I have one number for my tax, my health care, my registered life — both government and private — and I like it. It makes life easier. And the system has existed for decades. Japan has just started exploring the possibility for establishing some kind of national registry database to possibly be used for taxes, or social benefits, or health-care or all of the above — they haven´t really decided yet. It will no doubt take some years to legislate. Then we can all wish this bastion of technology a belated welcome to the 21st century!

Now I was born in the late ’70s, but the government offices and corporate structures of Japan somehow take me back to the ’60s. And I think I understand why. In Japan, you don’t get promoted to any upper levels of management until you are closer to 50. By the time you get there, you have been bowing to your superiors and sharpening pencils for so long that you just want to sit at your desk and do as little as possible to alter the status quo. All the ways of doing business you learnt 20 years ago, from an older generation. Hell, you just waited 30 years for your dues — why would anyone want to reform anything that may cost them their own job?

Just keep that paper work turning over, and everything will be sweet until you retire and can start traveling like you always wanted to. Because in Japan no one ever gets fired, at least not from the older generation. I heard from a fellow Norwegian who was involved with a Japanese car-maker on a project, that old men litter the offices, sleeping at their computers, drawing circles with a mouse on the computer screen while sleeping, trying to look busy. They have nothing to do any more, but can’t bring themselves to go anywhere else. Their job is their world. And nobody goes home until everyone is finished working, even if there is nothing to do. Holidays? One week a year — if you´re lucky.

But there is enormous change taking place, however slowly, which makes it a very interesting place to live. The status quo is kind of crumbling of its own accord. Japan is finally maturing into a democracy — at least more like one that we would recognise as a democracy. It is a transition that can be attributed in no small part to Ichiro Ozawa, the puppet master of the Democratic Party of Japan, who, together with the PM Hatoyama, just got shown the door. After having masterminded the first change in government since WWII, Ozawa seems to be guilty of doing exactly what every other politician has done since WWII — bowing to the interests of the major corporations that really run the joint. After 20 years of building up a genuine opposition that finally ended five decades of a one-party system, Ozawa sat back at his desk and collected his dues, in the form of dodgy financing contributions and property deals and all that other underhandedness that politicians do so well.

Or he was on the receiving end of a deliberate and calculated character assassination by the country’s establishment who considered him such a threat. But anyway, in his and Hatoyama’s place comes Japan’s first working-class-bred, ex-student activist Prime Minister, who even seems to be a straight talker. Welcome PM Naoto Kan. “Yes we Kan.” Straight talking in most Asian cultures seems to be difficult. Especially saying “no”. It’s considered uncultured. You can say, “well … that may be … a little difficult …” by which time the listener should have understood that they are not going to get what they want. But us simple Gaijins never really learn, and just want to hear a clear “no” and when we don’t get it we just end up confused. But that lack of straight talking inherent in Japanese culture doesn’t bode well for quickly enacting desperately needed reform. Maybe Kan will bring that much needed directness.

This is the ultimate irony in Japan. You work till you drop, and everyone is raised to respect the work ethic, but in working so hard more and more people sacrifice starting a family because they have to work so much. This in itself means that there aren’t enough workers to care for the oldies who will soon make up 35% of the population. So by respecting the postwar Japanese way of life, the Japanese have kind of guaranteed the demise of that same Japanese way of life. And possibly screwed themselves in the process — with a present debt at 200% of GDP. Hope the excesses of the ’80s were worth it guys!

I always understood that low birthrates and an ageing population supposedly means a need for more workers. It should have been easy to find a job by now, but no. Arriving a year after the GFC, the mood among Westerners living here is not so much pessimistic, as in a state of disbelief. All the guys I have met who moved here in the ’80s and survived the first recession and then also survived the lost decade of the ’90s, just saw it happen all over again. All of them have told me that now is the worst they have ever known it. Many of them lost their jobs over the past two years.

As a result there has been a huge amount of grassroots activity going on among Westerners based here. Networking events take place every week, and through social media it has been easy to get out there and meet people who know and love the city. But no one seems to be hiring. Middle management fired all the temporary workers, and are desperately hanging on to their own jobs, as is the way in a culture of over management. Entrepreneurs are nowhere to be found. The Richard Bransons or Bill Gates of Japan simply don’t exist. Established corporations own and run everything. Any other start-ups seem to originate overseas. So jobs are scarce. And for a Gaijin with no Japanese skills to speak of, most of the jobs going are out of reach — foreigners need not apply.

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