Week 3

May 22 – 26, 2006
Like I expected, there was nothing really to report about this week. Mostly, it was doing the same things over and over. I made spacers for couplings that run $40-50 a pop. If I actually made the kind of money I’m making for the company, I’d have thousands already. On average, I make about 10-15 of these an hour, depending on the type, for 8 hours a day all week. So if your following with a calculator or in your head, that’s roughly about $4000 a day and $20,000 for the whole week. That’s just this week alone too. Who knows how much money I’ve made these past three weeks? Maybe that’s why they had me do this experience stuff, so just in case I’m not profitable at one point in time or another, it doesn’t really cost them much to keep me here for the specified times. So, in a sense I’m in exactly what my wife feared I was in; a sweat shop. It’s actually not so bad, at least I get paid, which won’t happen till the 9th of June. And in some twisted way I feel a sense of accomplishment at making these things all day.
I didn’t realize that I’ve basically been here on my own expenses since I got to Japan. Not to forget though, (Company name) does give me three meals a day M-F and I stay in their dormitory and they gave me clothes to work in said sweat shops. Even though they’re not the best in quality I at least don’t have to pay for them… at least until I see how much they siphoned from my labor stipend. Then we’ll see whether or not this company is actually generous or not. Either way, if they extend a job offer to me, unless I’m getting paid a real salary, I’d have to be completely insane to say yes.
I’m happy that I won’t have to keep doing this for the entire time I’m here. At least I hope not… I’m scheduled to be in the office next week and my schedule isn’t set after that. I expect to do more translation when I get there. We’ll see how it turns out.