The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! If you’re thinking about construction work in Japan, there’s one question you want answered before any of the others, and most articles about working here skate past it. What does it pay? This article is about construction wages in Japan, and Japan has an unusual answer to that […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! Most days on a construction site can be recovered. You can re-sequence, you can work late, you can move a trade to tomorrow. A concrete pour in Japan is the exception. Once the first truck discharges, the day runs to the end on its own terms, and nothing […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! There’s a particular kind of helplessness that comes from being handed a Japanese construction drawing you can almost read. The geometry is fine. A wall is a wall, a column is a column, a section is a section — drawing is close to a universal language and it […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! Here’s a question I’ve never been asked by a Japanese colleague and have been asked several times by people from outside Japan: who writes the construction schedule? In Japan, nobody on the site writes it. By the time a construction company has the job, the length of the […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! If you stand close to certain buildings in Tokyo and look down at the ground, you’ll see a gap running all the way around them. It’s usually covered with a loose metal plate, and it looks like a mistake — as if the building and the pavement were […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! If you dropped onto a Japanese construction site tomorrow morning, the first thing you’d notice isn’t the equipment or the scaffolding. It’s the clock. The day has a shape here, and almost everyone follows it. Work starts at the same time, stops at the same time, breaks at […]
The short version Hi there, I’m Shirokuma! Early in my career, I dropped a tool into wet concrete. It went in without much of a sound, which somehow made it worse. It wasn’t attached to anything, because I hadn’t bothered with a lanyard, because nothing had ever fallen before. That’s the day I started taking […]
