First week

Monday March 8th was my first day at Hitachi Chemicals. Maybe it was jetlag, or excitement to start working but I woke up especially early, around 5am. I showered and ate my complimentary breakfast (miso soup, rice, probably something fried, and something else pickled) and then I met up with a fellow coworker at 7:30 am in the dormitory lobby to walk to the bus stop together. All the bus goers lined up on the side of the street, actually in line, so I also joined them. My guide and I chit chatted some as we tried to get to know each other better, but for the most part everyone else was quiet, either staring at their phone, listening to music, or just thinking about the day I suppose. I met the other intern at Hitachi Chemicals who had been there for a week already. He is Filipino and his name is Bryan. So when the bus arrived we all boarded from the back of the bus while taking our little ticket from a machine which determines the distance traveled and thus the price of the bus fare. So we all stood, since it was crowded, and we rode for 15 minutes or so before arriving at the company. I paid the fare of ¥370 (around $4, hella expensive for a short bus ride, but it’s the only form of public transport to the science company area place where I work, so they can basically charge whatever they want) and went to the HR offices to settle paperwork stuff, have my orientation, and meet my coworkers.

The first order of business after waiting alone in a room for 30 minutes with a cup of coffee and listening to the radio aerobics on the intercom was my uniform. We all have to wear uniforms, probably as an effort of unification for the coworkers. The Hitachi Chemical uniform colors are light blue with some darker blue on the sides. After trying several sizes and a special order on shoes I finally received two sets of LL jackets/shirts and W88 pants, and size 28 shoes (which pinch, but its bearable). Next I did the contract thing and agreed to the rules and was given my safety training. “Safety is the most important” I was told many times, that is why we are absolutely not allowed to have our hands in our pockets. Makes sense, right…false. After my look of bafflement my boss explained that if you have your hands in your pocket and you fall you cannot break your fall with your hands, and safety is very important. Are these people clumsy and falling left and right? Did they get sued by somebody who was terribly injured due to the pesky hand-in-pocket problem that is destroying our planet as we know it? It’s not that big of a deal, except that I do it all the time since it is quite comfortable and it makes me happy and happy people make happy interns at chemical companies and happy interns make happy…well never mind I’ll just have to be more conscious of my hands. I think it’s more of a courtesy thing instead of a safety thing; otherwise we would be wearing helmets in case the sky falls down and well we wouldn’t be working with chemicals in the first place.

Next I was shown my desk, the changing room, the bathrooms, the break room, and finally the lab where I will spend most of my time. After an introduction to my project(s) I was given papers to read and on the first day I found some important references and some information they hadn’t seen which basically solved the problem they were having. But we still had to reproduce the experiments and that will take some time. (yeah it’s vague but company confidentiality and stuff, all you have to know is that I am doing R&D in their Advanced Materials group and that I like what I’m doing). At the end of the day my boss told me that this isn’t MIT and that I could slow down (he did a research fellowship a couple years ago at MIT in Materials Science for two years so he knows MIT) as if I were on steroids or Powerthirst (I knew my hours of youtube would pay off one day).

My contract states that my work hours are 8:30am to 5:00pm with a 45min lunch break. Not too shabby, except the bus gets in 30mins early and I still have only left on time once. Yeah lab work takes a long time sometimes.

I leave you with an introduction conversation in English with one of my coworkers:
“Hello. My name is [insert Japanese surname]. I like Dragonball Z. Do you?”
“I don’t know”
“…” leaves the room