Traversing through Tokyo

Written by Maryam Mokhtar

I spent the last two months of this year as a freelance writer in the neon city of Tokyo on a journalism programme, and to say it was an unforgettable experience would be putting it mildly.

I had been chosen to be a part of a team of foreign writers to chronicle events, topics and people I found interesting in the country’s capital. Organised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government alongside the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, it was an eye-opening opportunity, and one I was very grateful to be given as a young freelance writer.

The assignment spanned six weeks – and it was up to us to pursue our own stories, though we would be given the support we needed from the project’s organisers.

As the youngest in the team, I was a little nervous about having to perform alongside esteemed journalists from America, Canada, India and Hong Kong, but I was very lucky to have a group of colleagues who not only treated me as their equals, but also shared with me their varied experiences and imparted useful advice.

Tokyo is a fascinating place - the lights never go off, the trains never run late and the food is never mediocre. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before and it was amazing to be able to experience it beyond what the tourist typically sees of the city.

While there, I was the average “salaryman” – the Japanese term for office worker - in my formal pants and collared shirts. I had to go through the necessarily Tokyo experience of getting squeezed on the notoriously packed trains and having my face within inches of a complete stranger on Monday mornings, as I made my way to work, and having dinner in side alley restaurants beneath the railway tracks with my colleagues.

Though there were definitely bouts of homesickness from time to time, there was also a great sense of independence and liberation – I had my own room with a small kitchen in a nice apartment and worked, explored the city and ate on my own frequently.

Still, working abroad had its fair share of challenges. For one, I was operating in an environment where English was not the main medium of instruction. Often, interviews that I conduced would take twice as long because of the need for a translator, and many things got lost in translation.

To complicate that, the Japanese have an endless list of social norms that are expected to be adhered to, in addition to several faux pas to be avoided at all costs, and learning to navigate through this was both tough but enriching at the same time. I was of, course, bound to make mistakes. A small thing like not bringing a namecard is a major no-no in a formal work setting, as is not wearing socks when seated on tatami mats – these were both errors I committed unknowingly within the first two weeks of my arrival in Tokyo, though I was often met with kind smiles from the Japanese in response – a hallmark of their world-known etiquette.

Culturally, too, the Japanese work ethic is a highly efficient and detailed-focused, albeit nuanced one, and I had to train myself to adapt to this careful manner of speaking and conversing in the course of my work.

But these were all challenges I was more than glad to be able to undergo and learn from. The scope of my work allowed me to meet a vast number of Japanese who had inspiring stories to share.

Among the most memorable was an interview I had with Olympic two-time gold winner Yoshinobu Miyake, who at the age of 76 looked decades younger. He shared an unforgettable anecdote about doing his best at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for the sake of uplifting the morale of his fellow countrymen following the country’s defeat in the second world war.

“In my mind, there was no option but gold,” he told me matter-of-factly.

It was in priceless moments like these that I truly cherished this opportunity to immerse myself in a foreign culture and deeply understand individuals who came from vastly different backgrounds and had refreshingly different mindsets.

Though it was a very short stint, coming out of the programme has made me realise how much there is to learn from operating in a foreign environment. It was not just the job scope, but the varied and independent experiences abroad that have truly allowed me to grow.

With no one else to depend on overseas, I was pushed out of my comfort zone and had to adapt or let this precious trip just slip past me. So I networked, travelled and most importantly, had a lot of fun. Working in an international environment also spurred me to perform to the utmost of my abilities, as I was ever conscious of the fact that I was, in a very small way, still a representative of my home country.

On hindsight, I gained more from the sheer experience of living and working overseas than from the actual work, and for that I am thankful. Tokyo will always have a special place in my heart.