The Happiness of the Supposedly "Incompetent"
The older generation of Japanese often lament that the youth in the country are not aggressive or ambitious enough. They are easily satisfied by the status quo and seem to be quite narrow-minded and short-sighted on how they see the changing world around them, much unlike the older generation that has experienced so much of sudden changes in their lifetimes. The elders say want the youth to go out there to the big cities and outside Japan, so that they can become global citizens capable of changing not just their country but be a much more active force in global affairs than Japanese have ever been.
Unfortunately the truth cannot be further from the expectations of the older generation. And the author today has met exactly the type of youth that the older generation would detest, in a little hot spring (butt-naked) in the town of Aso, underneath western Japan's foremost active volcano. The 22-year-old young man, a high school graduate who did not proceed to college, is a short-distance truck driver by day and a waiter in izakaya by night. He lives with his parents in his birth town of Aso, and expresses no strong desire to move to a big city, even nearby, for work.
Yet, upon hearing the author's previous experience working for Rakuten in Tokyo, he was curious enough about living in the Big City to continue firing questions at the author during the 20-some minutes he was bathing with the author in the outdoor communal hot spring. He asked everything from the salaries to work-life balance, drawing honest answers from the author that, in retrospect, makes his life here in Aso as a menial worker comparatively much more enviable to the casual observer than something who works in one of the country's foremost IT firm.
Sure, Tokyoites feel good about having the highest income in the country, but the amount of rent paid can be easily 1/3 to 1/2 of the monthly income. Compulsory drinking with colleagues and bosses take away both sleep time (leading to lower productivity) and further lower income to a point that saving for a rainy day in itself becomes extremely difficult. This is certainly not the case here for the young man in Aso, where leaving at home and lack of expensive chain izakayas take away two of the biggest sources of expenses a young man of his age can possibly experience.
Tokyoites can also feel good about the number of high quality jobs out there. Indeed, most of Japan's large companies have now shifted their headquarters to Tokyo from other parts of the country, making Tokyo a primate city in the same way Seoul has been for South Korea in the past decades. But the concentration of opportunities in Tokyo meant not just an abundance of opportunities but also a constant stream of young people from across the country going to Tokyo just to get a piece of those opportunities and launch themselves into the "good life."
Aso does not have much outside the service industry. Odd jobs in tourism and everything that revolve around the burgeoning tourist industry are the pillars of the economy outside traditional rice farming that is becoming more and more difficult for the aging local population. While lush rice paddies still continuously fill the rural landscape as the trains slowly pass by the outskirts of the town, a declining youth population with little interests in farming will kill the entire production within decades. But the young man sitting in the hot spring is completely stoic on this particular topic.
"Yeah, farming can be quite lucrative work, cuz there is so much subsidies coming from the government, but unless your family has plots and have been doing it before, it is not particularly easy to set up." Being back-breaking and tiresome aside, farming seems to incur heavy initial investment, an economic calculation that he is neither ready or willing to make. "So what would you like to do instead?" The author asked. "Well, don't know, can't find what I want to" was the answer given. He did not seem to mind the ambiguity in his career though. His joy in enjoying the now is something the author has not seen since his grad school days.
Happiness, at the end of the day, is about living in the joyful moment. This is not something large cities, around the world, can offer, amidst the pressures of fulfilling those everyday job-related tasks. The job-related stress that can mentally deviate a person is something a menial worker in a small local town will never understand. That is good, in all aspects of the word. For the moment, the author has to be disagree with the older generation that force the youth into the world. Ambition may not lead to happiness, but peace in a beautiful little town might. Being here in itself is possible to accept this creed in life.
Unfortunately the truth cannot be further from the expectations of the older generation. And the author today has met exactly the type of youth that the older generation would detest, in a little hot spring (butt-naked) in the town of Aso, underneath western Japan's foremost active volcano. The 22-year-old young man, a high school graduate who did not proceed to college, is a short-distance truck driver by day and a waiter in izakaya by night. He lives with his parents in his birth town of Aso, and expresses no strong desire to move to a big city, even nearby, for work.
Yet, upon hearing the author's previous experience working for Rakuten in Tokyo, he was curious enough about living in the Big City to continue firing questions at the author during the 20-some minutes he was bathing with the author in the outdoor communal hot spring. He asked everything from the salaries to work-life balance, drawing honest answers from the author that, in retrospect, makes his life here in Aso as a menial worker comparatively much more enviable to the casual observer than something who works in one of the country's foremost IT firm.
Sure, Tokyoites feel good about having the highest income in the country, but the amount of rent paid can be easily 1/3 to 1/2 of the monthly income. Compulsory drinking with colleagues and bosses take away both sleep time (leading to lower productivity) and further lower income to a point that saving for a rainy day in itself becomes extremely difficult. This is certainly not the case here for the young man in Aso, where leaving at home and lack of expensive chain izakayas take away two of the biggest sources of expenses a young man of his age can possibly experience.
Tokyoites can also feel good about the number of high quality jobs out there. Indeed, most of Japan's large companies have now shifted their headquarters to Tokyo from other parts of the country, making Tokyo a primate city in the same way Seoul has been for South Korea in the past decades. But the concentration of opportunities in Tokyo meant not just an abundance of opportunities but also a constant stream of young people from across the country going to Tokyo just to get a piece of those opportunities and launch themselves into the "good life."
Aso does not have much outside the service industry. Odd jobs in tourism and everything that revolve around the burgeoning tourist industry are the pillars of the economy outside traditional rice farming that is becoming more and more difficult for the aging local population. While lush rice paddies still continuously fill the rural landscape as the trains slowly pass by the outskirts of the town, a declining youth population with little interests in farming will kill the entire production within decades. But the young man sitting in the hot spring is completely stoic on this particular topic.
"Yeah, farming can be quite lucrative work, cuz there is so much subsidies coming from the government, but unless your family has plots and have been doing it before, it is not particularly easy to set up." Being back-breaking and tiresome aside, farming seems to incur heavy initial investment, an economic calculation that he is neither ready or willing to make. "So what would you like to do instead?" The author asked. "Well, don't know, can't find what I want to" was the answer given. He did not seem to mind the ambiguity in his career though. His joy in enjoying the now is something the author has not seen since his grad school days.
Happiness, at the end of the day, is about living in the joyful moment. This is not something large cities, around the world, can offer, amidst the pressures of fulfilling those everyday job-related tasks. The job-related stress that can mentally deviate a person is something a menial worker in a small local town will never understand. That is good, in all aspects of the word. For the moment, the author has to be disagree with the older generation that force the youth into the world. Ambition may not lead to happiness, but peace in a beautiful little town might. Being here in itself is possible to accept this creed in life.
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