The company I work for is generally pretty good. For the most part I don't have to deal with them at all. They have a main office in Tokyo, which is where I was hired and trained (if you can call it training), and branch offices scattered throughout Japan. My brach office is in Yokohama, 25 minutes south of Tokyo. Generally, the only interaction I have with my branch office is when I send in my transportation claim sheet on the 25th, so I can get a refund on the $150 to $200 I spend on transportation every month, and my trip of the office on the last day of the month to drop off my time sheet so I can get paid.
I don't have the problems that a lot of people have. I never see my coworkers except on that one day of the month when I go to the office, and even then, the chance of seeing anyone I know is slim. This means I don't have to see people I don't like, but I also don't see the people I made friends with during training either. My real coworkers are the Japanese teachers at the elementary schools. If I don't like one of them, It doesn't really matter, because I will only see them 2 to 5 more time the entire time I am working there.
I have had only two problems with working here. The first is pay dates. They've never missed a pay date or anything, but the pay day is once a month, on the last day of the month, which would be okay, except that if there is a holiday, rather than paying the first day before the holiday like every other company I have ever heard of (in the US or Japan) the pay the day after. This means that if you don't have any savings (like me since I've just started working) you can't pay rent when it's due.
My other problem is trying to figure out insurance. With every other problem I've had, I just email someone at my office, and they'd have an answer for me within a day. But when I was concerned about the insurance plan that they had for us not including optical coverage, I got no response. Their plan which they say was subsidized by the company, cost me something like $65 a month and is from this company offering insurance to foreign teachers. But Japan also has an excellent national health care plan which I had last time I was in Japan. I remember that it only cost me $85 for the year when I was here as a college student. I asked my company about doing this rather than the plan they provided but got no reply. (When I say provided, I mean they gave me a form and said "Fill this out". I would then receive the bill for the whole thing.) Finally I decided to just get national health insurance. It's only going to cost $15 a month, which I can use anywhere, and any doctor or specialist without having to get a referral, and I don't have to pay up front and wait for a reimbursement like I would with the other plan. I will have to pay a deductible of 20%, but with as little as I'm paying, and the amount I expect to have to use it, it will be much cheaper. There is also a cap on how much you pay in deductible costs, so if you become seriously ill, you will not be stuck it thousands or even hundreds of dollars in medical bills.
When most people hear the words "National Health Insurance" they will inevitably thing of the horror stories they hear of Canada's system and think it never works, but Japan's system actually works, as do plenty of other countries systems.
So I'm finally getting some new contacts today. My glasses are old and bent out of shape, and now that I have insurance that will cover it, I will be able to see again.
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