I have moved from the Technical Centre to the Quality Control Section (a scheduled move, i didn't get "restructured"), and now have a boss (Oe Kachou, Section Chief Oe) who deems me fit for more than just brainless, manual labour. One major benefit which he sees in my presence is the opportunity to practice his english, which is quite good in pronunciation and grammar, but...........sooooo..........ssssslllllloooooooooowwwwwwww. A conversation which would take 5 minutes in japanese is dragged out over two hours, often into the lunch break, while Oe searches for the right word. Aside from this, though, things are good.
The atmosphere in the office is completely different. Although the cigarette smoke is three times as thick here due to the "cosy" office size, the people there are actually warm, making the effort to actually converse with me, which no one in the Technical Centre ever did. They are ("Tubby") Takahashi (who was transferred from the Technical Centre), Suzuki (who bears a startling physical resemblance to Chief Wiggum), (Mrs) Morii and (Mrs) Hatta (the ladies are supposedly equal team members but work outside the main office and only come in to serve tea (vegetable juice to health man) at 3pm). Anyway, they're all really nice people.
Also, i actually have something to do now. I help with the quality tests, which is like being back in high school physics class, translate the test reports and other documents, and am also writing a guide to the basics of Excel for the other people in rather poor Japanese. I can't believe no one can use the program, but it would save them so much time, so hopefully this will help.
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