Yen for Living

Cleaning crew (in pink) waiting with the hordes at Tokyo Station for the train to arrive (photos: Jason Jenkins)

If, like thousands of others, you took the shinkansen (super express) during the recent New Year’s holiday break, when you arrived at a line terminal you likely saw uniformed cleaning crews waiting at attention for the train to stop. They would have bowed as you left the car and then scurried on board to clean it up before the passengers waiting on the platform were allowed to board. During this time of year, in particular, express trains are packed 24/7, and keeping arrivals and departures on time is the number one priority. These cleaners, on average, have only seven minutes to make the cars spic-and-span, and their methodical efficiency in getting that job done has made them heroes in the media, the newest symbols of Japan’s storied work ethic.

At least one book has been written about these train cleaners, CNN produced a special report on them and dozens of magazine articles have covered them in detail. A recent issue of Shukan Post concentrated on one of the companies, Techno Heart Tessei, which is a subsidiary of JR East. Right at the beginning of the article, the Post offers the opinion that these workers provide a positive example for any business in Japan. It then goes on to describe in detail the “shinkansen gekijo,” (bullet train theater): how the cleaners, both men and women, accomplish their “miraculous” task, which is methodical and reducible to the second. There is one cleaner per non-reserved car, two or three per reserved car.

Overhead racks are checked on the initial round while seats are reset to their original orientation and underfoot trash is quickly swept to the middle aisle. On the return round, window ledges, blinds and panes as well as folding tables are wiped; headrest covers are replaced if dirty. Then someone comes through with a broom to collect the trash. Separate staff handles toilets. All operations are checked by the supervising cleaner and cleared. Usually, these teams complete their jobs with more than a minute to spare. On the average, they clean 20 trains a shift.

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Private high school students boarding a private high school bus

The Asahi Shimbun and NHK recently ran features about the changing job situation for high school teachers, specifically those who work for private institutions. According to education ministry figures, there are about 90,000 teachers working at private high schools nationwide, a number that has stayed about the same since 2001.

About 34,000 of these teachers were considered “non-regular” in 2011, meaning they were either hired directly by the schools on a yearly contract basis or obtained through temporary human resources companies. That number represents 36.8 percent of all private high school teachers, whereas the portion of public school teachers who are non-regular is 19.7 percent.

Furthermore, since 2001, the number of regular teachers in private high schools has decreased by more than 4,000, mainly the result of attrition through retirement, while the number of non-regular teachers has increased by 2,800. During the same period, the number of students attending private high schools has dropped by about 15 percent, while the number of private high schools hasn’t changed.

Private high schools are under pressure to maintain enrollment just to stay solvent, and one of their main incentives to attract students is student-teacher ratios, the smaller the better. So even as the number of students declines, these schools have to maintain staff numbers, a situation that puts more strain on their budgets. They have to cut expenses wherever they can, and since 70 percent of a private school’s expenditures goes to personnel, teacher pay is the obvious target for rationalization.

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Let’s nurture: Daycare center in northern Chiba Prefecture

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry just released the results of a survey on quitting. Among the various categories of employment studied, education proved to be the field with the highest percentage of turnover: 48.8 percent of first-time teachers quit their jobs within three years of being hired. Though the study didn’t give reasons for the high turnover rate it isn’t difficult to figure out: Teaching children is a high-stress occupation with little monetary reward.

The same goes for a subset of education, daycare, which continues to pose a very real problem. The lack of daycare facilities for children not old enough to attend school is one of the main reasons young couples are not having more children. According to a recent feature in Tokyo Shimbun, the main reason there are not more daycare centers is that, while demand is increasing as more women remain in the workforce after giving birth, there aren’t enough hoikushi (nursery school teachers). And the reason there aren’t enough hoikushi is that wages are bad and getting worse.

The average monthly pay for a hoikushi, regardless of age or experience, is about ¥200,000, which is almost 40 percent lower than the average monthly pay across the board. But hoikushi tend to work longer hours than the average worker, especially since the Child Welfare Law was revised in 2001, thus allowing more private companies to set up for-profit daycare centers. Average pay for daycare workers dropped after 2001, and private centers tend to hire staff on a non-regular basis, meaning no benefits. According to HLW Ministry statistics, there were 1.12 million licensed daycare workers in Japan in April 2012. However, Tokyo Shimbun reports that few of these people actually work in daycare.

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Demand what you deserve: NHK’s On Demand home page

The good news first. Starting Oct. 1, NHK will be charging slightly less for subscriptions. If your account is only for regular terrestrial broadcasts (NHK-G and NHK-E), the price drops from ¥1,345 a month to ¥1,225, and if your account also includes satellite (NHK BS1 and NHK BS Premium) it goes from ¥2,290 a month to ¥2,170. The bad news, at least for corporate or institutional subscribers, is that the public broadcaster is cracking down on what it believes are scofflaws, particularly multiple-set users who don’t pay for every single TV they have.

On Sept. 10, the Tokyo District Court started hearing a case involving a lawsuit that NHK brought against the hotel chain Toyoko Inn. NHK is demanding the company pay ¥550 million for the period of January to July of this year. The money represents subscription fees for TVs in 236 hotels comprising some 34,000 rooms, which NHK claims Toyoko Inn has not paid in full. Toyoko’s defense is that it has for years had a contract with NHK to pay an annual subscription fee of ¥230 million, representing one-fourth of all the TVs in its possession.

The hotel chain says that it is unfair for NHK to demand fees for all the TV sets since rooms are not always occupied and even when they are guests don’t necessarily watch TV. Toyoko Inn’s lawyers told the Asahi Shimbun that NHK just “suddenly” demanded full subscription fees for all the rooms. He added that if NHK acknowledged the reality of the occupancy rate then the company would negotiate a new blanket subscription fee in good faith.

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While you’re out, drop by the post office to pick up some stamps . . . and a mortgage

On Oct. 1, two divisions of the Nihon Yusei Group, in English known as Japan Post Holdings, or JP, will consolidate. If you were never aware that four separate companies make up the post office service — Yubin Kyoku, Nihon Yubin Jigyo, Yucho Ginko and Kampo Seimei — then you shouldn’t feel embarrassed. The vast majority of Japanese don’t know about it either, so the merger of the two postal-related services, Yubin Kyoku, which manages the post office system, and Nihon Yubin Jigyo, which manages mail delivery, into one entity called Nihon Yubin may hardly qualify as news to most people.

In fact, most people will wonder what actually distinguishes these two entities. Aren’t the business of managing post offices and the business of delivering mail part and parcel of the same general enterprise? Apparently not, though you’d have to actually work in either of those companies to understand why. Perhaps the best way to explain this conundrum is to look at one of the new services that will be offered after the consolidation takes place, something called tsucho azukari.

With this service, a person who has a savings account at Yucho Ginko (Japan Post Bank) can entrust (azukari) his or her passbook (tsucho) to a regular delivery person, who brings it to the bank so that an employee can carry out a desired transaction on the person’s behalf. Logic would say this sounds like a cooperative service between Nihon Yubin Jigyo, the delivery arm of JP, and Yucho Ginko, the banking arm of JP, but all Yucho Ginko are located in JP post offices, which means it’s really a cooperative service betweeh Nihon Yubin and Yubin Kyoku.

Tsucho azukari is actually a traditional service, especially for the elderly in rural areas where it is sometimes difficult to make it to the post office. But in the past, it was an informal service, simply something that a delivery person did for someone on his route as a personal favor. The new service will be implemented initially on a trial basis at only 52 of JP’s 24,000 post offices. The service itself is less important than what it represents, a reversal of the postal decentralization that former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made his life’s work and which started in 2007.

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Earlier this month a panel of experts recommended to the health ministry that it relax standards restricting imports of beef from the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands for animals that are more than 20 months old. The panel suggests that cattle up to 30 months old be allowed for import and sale in Japan.

Get it while it’s cheap: Yoshinoya outlet in Roppongi, Tokyo

The restrictions were implemented in 2005 after BSE, or “mad cow disease,” was discovered in some livestock in the U.S. in 2003. Between 2003 and 2005 beef imports from the U.S. were banned. When the restriction went into effect, the U.S. objected, saying there was no conclusive proof that the age of the animal has anything to do with whether or not it can get BSE, and in any case, the incidence of the disease was extremely small and statistically insignificant. The government panel seems to have agreed with this opinion by saying that the age of the cow has no relationship “to people’s health.” They will give their official evaluation to the health ministry some time this fall, and the regulations should be relaxed by early next year.

Retailers and restaurateurs, especially fast food chains, are happy with the panel’s decision since it means they can start selling more U.S. beef, which is very popular among consumers here because of its higher fat content. More than 60 percent of the beef sold in supermarkets now is Australian, with 20 percent coming from the U.S. and the remainder from domestic producers. Though the American dollar is, for the moment at least, worth less in Japan than the Australian dollar, U.S. beef is more expensive than Australian beef due to the restrictions. In fact, the high yen is the only reason U.S. beef is at all affordable in Japan right now. By limiting U.S. beef to animals less than 21 months old, imports are seasonal and thus more expensive. Only about 20 percent of all cattle in the U.S. is slaughtered at less than 21 months, while 90 percent is less than 31 months. Consequently, almost all the animals slaughtered in the U.S. can be exported to Japan after the new year.

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Your ride’s here

The Tokyo metropolitan government  has launched a jumokuso service for individuals. Jumokuso means “tree funeral.” For a fee, a person can have his or her ashes buried at the foot of a tree planted in a special park in Kodaira. The financial advantage of this particular burial model is that the person pays only once. Most remains are interred in family graves located in graveyards that are managed by either local governments or religious entities. Graveyards require kanriryo (administration fees) in perpetuity.

In principle, a jumokuso customer will have his ashes mixed with other customers. It costs ¥134,000 for roughly cremated remains and ¥44,000 for remains that have already been reduced to ash (a more involved and thus more expensive process). Enough space for 10,700 people is being planned for the park, and the first group of 500 “plots” was recently sold via lottery. There were 8,169 applicants.

Obviously, many people are not attached to the traditional Japanese style of burial any more, and it probably has a lot to do with the traditional funerals that go with it, which can be extremely expensive. A recent Asahi Shimbun article described a woman in her 60s who was shocked when she received the bill for her husband’s funeral. The funeral service company had quoted ¥1.7 million for the whole thing, but the invoice came to ¥2.6 million.

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