Read the original article in Japanese
English adaptation of the original Japanese 2023 serialized diary. These are short first-person vignettes with occasional conversational asides. They should be read as the author's serialized storytelling, not independent verification about a particular employer or nationality.
An engineer joins a foreign-affiliated IT company in Japan and discovers that the onboarding reality is much less tidy than the job description. Here are the first ten daily snapshots, preserving the structure and humor of the Japanese original.
Day 1 — The manager has already gone
On my very first day at work, I discovered that the manager who had hired me was already no longer there.
Aside: “Apparently, someone responsible for new-employee training had seen exactly this happen before!”
Day 2 — I cannot follow the conversation
I could barely understand the English spoken by my Indian colleague. The rest of my teammates seemed to be answering without difficulty, which made me panic.
Aside: “It sounds like I'm not the only one who has struggled with unfamiliar accents.”
This is a story about the narrator's listening difficulty; it is not a judgment about a nationality or how people from that country speak.
Day 3 — No email yet
My corporate email account still had not been configured. I could neither send nor receive email.
Day 4 — The access request I could not follow
I tried to open an internal portal, but the firewall blocked me.
An Indian colleague kindly explained how to create an access-request ticket. Unfortunately, I still struggled to follow the explanation in English.
Day 5 — A manager across the ocean
A new boss was assigned to me.
The problem? He was in the United States, and I had never met or even spoken with him.
Day 6 — A meeting on a Japanese holiday
A meeting with my US-based boss was scheduled for a Japanese public holiday.
Aside: “This kind of scheduling problem happens more often than you'd hope.”
Day 7 — The workaholic joke
I asked for the meeting to be moved.
My American boss jokingly remarked on the number of public holidays in Japan:
“Wait, aren't Japanese people supposed to be workaholics?”
I had only wanted the meeting rescheduled.
Day 8 — A printer problem
I needed to print materials for an internal meeting, but the printer driver had not yet been set up on my computer.
No printout.
Day 9 — Helpful people, but no overall picture
When I asked questions, my teammates were happy to help. But no one explained the whole system and how its parts fit together.
I was collecting answers without getting a map.
Day 10 — Only the old documents are in Japanese
The Japanese translations of the internal manuals were three or four years out of date.
Everything current was available only in English.
Aside: “That is painful. Painful, painful, painful!”
The thread connecting these ten days
The mini-stories move from organizational surprises to practical access and communication issues. A missing manager, incomplete account setup, time-zone friction and outdated localized documentation can make onboarding feel like a sequence of avoidable surprises.
The original diary presents these incidents through humor and frustration, not a formal analysis of HR policy.
The next part continues the story with training, team meetings and a visit from the US-based boss.
Continue: Days 11–20.