first blog

Hello, my name is Dong and I'm from China. In June of this year, I joined Okura Shoji, an apparel materials trading company.

This time, I would like to introduce myself and share my impressions as a new foreign employee.

I studied finance at a university in China, graduated in June 2018, and moved to Japan in October of the same year.

One day in my second year of university, I saw a flyer being distributed about a foreign language cram school, and I was intrigued and decided that I wanted to study a foreign language in parallel with my university curriculum, so I started studying Japanese. I did.

I am often asked, "Why did I choose Japanese?" It's because I love Japanese fashion, cosmetics, idols, etc. I was hoping to get better at it before I graduated from university.

Reason for coming to Japan

In Chinese, there is a vocabulary called "舒适圈". In Japanese, it refers to the range of daily activities that you are accustomed to and do not feel anxious or worried about, the so-called comfort zone. When I graduated from university, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and came to Japan because I wanted to try new things while I was still young.

This is my first job!

After coming to Japan, I attended ABK Japanese Language School in Sengoku, and finally got a job after a year and a half. I joined an apparel-related company that I had always admired.

It's my first job in my life, and it's overseas, so to be honest, before I joined the company, I was worried about my boss getting mad at me when I couldn't understand Japanese, or what if there was power harassment like in the drama! ? I was worried about a lot of things... The result was an unnecessary worry. Everyone is kinder than I expected!

Regarding my work, no matter what kind of work I was doing, my seniors taught me carefully. I am impressed by the fact that nurturing new employees from scratch is unique to Japan. The first thing that surprised me was the greeting. Our company uses the greeting "every time!", but I had never heard that word before. For the first week, I was worried that people would think I had bad manners because I couldn't greet everyone at the same time.

Also, since it is not my native language, I am often slow to respond. Sometimes when I'm having a conversation, I suddenly become quiet, but at times like this, it's not because I don't want to speak, but because I try to explain what I've heard in my head and what I want to say, like Japanese → Chinese → Japanese. Converting. Foreigners living in Japan may be able to empathize with this.

summary

Thank you for reading to the end.

The last thing I want to say in this sentence is that although we are currently in difficult times and life may be difficult due to the new coronavirus, you are not burdened with hardships alone. . We hope everyone is safe and healthy.

I will continue to regularly update apparel-related articles and my interesting career, so please read them. I apologize for the long text, but thank you very much.