Читать книгу Accidental Office Lady - Laura Kriska - Страница 10

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Office Ladies

FIVE HIGH-PITCHED, cheerful voices rang out simultaneously, “Hishoshitsu de gozaimasu. Hello, this is the executive secretariat.” Each secretary had a phone on her desk, and when the red light flickered and the bell rang, every available hand immediately reached for a receiver. They were like television gameshow contestants racing to push the buzzer first.

At first I assumed that the secretaries were competing with one another; then I realized that no one kept track of who answered telephone calls. It was a group responsibility. The group made sure that the phone didn’t ring more than once.

This new team was unlike any group I had ever experienced. For one thing, in matching uniforms, all ten of them looked alike. Each one was under five feet tall and weighed less than a hundred pounds. They had straight, shoulder-length dark hair and fair complexions; coral-colored lipstick painted their interminable smiles.

The executive secretaries looked like more studious versions of the Welcome Ladies. They too were in their twenties and greeted me with smiles even though their polite introductions were interrupted by self-conscious giggling.

From the beginning they treated me with gentle uncertainty, as though at any moment I might explode into unintelligible, blithering English. Although I was one of the youngest, and clearly the most inexperienced, I felt as though my native language threatened them—that if I spoke in English they would feel obligated to converse with me. I made an effort to speak only Japanese.

The only English speaker in the group was a man who was the president’s personal assistant.

“My name is Tsutomu Umeno, but you can call me Tom,” he said with a cheeky grin when we met. The women tittered with approval. His voice was hearty and friendly. Tom looked to be in his early thirties and wore an elegant white suit coat, gold cuff links, and an expensive watch. When I commented on his English skills he told me he had spent a year at Stanford and later had worked in the Philippines.

Tom explained that he was the only male secretary in the group, but unlike the female secretaries, it was his job to attend the president wherever he went, whether it was the Tokyo Auto Show or a factory in Brazil. Tom acted as translator, public-relations man, and gofer.

He pulled out a Cross pen and drew an organizational chart of the “executive secretariat,” as he called it, on a piece of notebook paper. There were eleven women, including me, and five men. In addition to the manager of the department, two of the men were responsible directly to the entire executive board of directors for special projects. The other man was the assistant manager, Mr. Higuchi, whom I already knew was responsible for the daily activities of the secretariat.

Before coming to Japan I had been told by Mr. Yoshida that the executive office was a special group within Honda. It had its own floor in the headquarters, unlike any sales or administration department. Our group was directly responsible to the thirty-seven men who made up the Board of Directors of Honda Motor Company.

During the first weeks of work I tried to get to know my colleagues by joining them for lunch. The women usually split into small groups according to age. One of my first lunches was with the youngest group, women in their early twenties.

I placed my tray next to my colleague Ms. Kodama. Two other women from our office sat across the beige Formica table in the company cafeteria. Several women from other departments wearing the same blue polyester uniforms were seated next to them with trays or box lunches from home. Over five hundred employees filled the room.

“Oh, you’re having fish today?” Ms. Kodama exclaimed within hearing of everyone at the table. “Are you sure fish is all right?” she asked with a concerned smile.

I assured her I liked fish. Then she commented on my selection of rice and miso soup even though it was the same meal she had selected.

“Do you like bread or rice better?” she asked me, deliberately emphasizing each syllable.

“I like them both,” I told her. I had been through this conversation many times as an exchange student with people who had never met or conversed with a non-Japanese person. As a student I had felt obligated to answer the questions I knew would come next. Did I eat bread or rice for breakfast? Did I eat with chopsticks or a fork? What Japanese foods did I hate? I knew the routine so well that I could answer without having to pause to think. I wanted to remind Ms. Kodama that I had lived in Japan for a year, but instead I kept quiet and tried to enjoy my meal like the rest of the group. I cracked open my wooden chopsticks and began to eat.

“Oh, Rora-san, you use chopsticks so well!” she praised me. Then she wished me good luck in eating the fish. Ms. Kodama reminded me of my host mother as an exchange student who would reward even my smallest effort with exaggerated praise. When I had finally learned enough Japanese to write her notes she would return them to me, corrected with red check marks and smiley faces. The continual approval made me feel like a dim child.

Another day two senior members, Ms. Ogiwara and Ms. Shoji, invited me to go out to lunch. They were older than most of the secretaries and were in their late twenties. In the office both of them showed a level of self-confidence and maturity that I would later recognize as common to Japanese women who remained single beyond the traditional marriage deadline of twenty-five. They were both good-humored but decidedly un-silly, another characteristic I found appealing.

They took me to a small noodle shop called Ezokko across the street from headquarters. As at many restaurants in Japan, the main dishes were displayed as plastic replicas in a glass case, so making a selection was simple. Both Ms. Ogiwara and Ms. Shoji immediately put me at ease by not trying to help me order a meal, and just asked me what I was going to have. We ordered, paid at the door, and then edged inside to find three seats together. Small wooden tables packed the narrow shop. Waiters in white aprons yelled orders across the customers’ heads to the cooks wearing white hats behind a long counter.

Everything about Ms. Ogiwara seemed small except her personality. “You can call me Ogi,” she had said when we first met. A wide, cherubic grin lit up her heart-shaped face when she laughed; she giggled heartily, sometimes using her hand to cover her mouth. But when she couldn’t contain her amusement her whole body would react; she would bend over at the waist and swing her thick mane of hair.

Ms. Shoji had a more formal presence. Neat bangs and straight hair sharply framed her strong triangular face. When she smiled she exposed what the Japanese called yaeba, a single cuspid tooth that jutted out slightly in the opposite direction of her other teeth. The minor irregularity was considered appealing, like a beauty mark, and not something to be corrected by the orthodontist. Ms. Shoji was poised and dependable, the kind of person who had probably been a straight-A student since first grade.

Three steaming bowls of noodles arrived at our table.

“One corn ramen, one gyōza ramen, and one pork ramen,” the waiter said, placing the jumbo-sized bowls in front of us. The lip of the bowl was the size of my whole face.

“Would you like some garlic?” Ms. Shoji asked, lifting the lid of a small ceramic dish. The aroma of freshly minced garlic made my mouth water and I added a heaping spoonful to my broth. With garlicky steam covering our faces we dug into the noodles, slurping loudly to let the air cool the hot broth as we ate.

Neither Ms. Ogi nor Ms. Shoji commented on my skill with chopsticks or marveled at my noodle-slurping ability. We talked about work and the directors. I told them that I felt my Japanese was improving already and that I had recently been dreaming about work in Japanese.

“Sometimes I dream about work too,” said Ms. Ogi. “That’s when I know I am working too hard!”

Ms. Shoji nodded in agreement. “When one of my directors shows up in my dream and then I see him the next day at work I want to say, ‘Hey you—I have to see you all day long so stay out of my dreams!’”

We continued to talk about work, which led to something I had been wanting to ask.

“What did you hear about me before I arrived?”

“Mr. Higuchi told us that a young American woman would come to work with us. He didn’t give us many details, but everyone was very curious,” Ms. Shoji said.

“Since we had never worked with someone from America we were all a little nervous,” admitted Ms. Ogi. “Mr. Higuchi said you could speak Japanese but we didn’t know how much. Since we don’t speak English well we were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to communicate.”

“Also, some people thought that maybe you would be a big, pushy American career woman who would take over!” Ms. Shoji said and laughed.

“When we saw you for the first time and you smiled and greeted us in Japanese, we thought ‘She’s so nice, just like an American OL,’” Ms. Ogi said.

“An OL?” I asked. “An office lady.”

I remembered the term from college. Office Lady was the Japanese version of a Kelly Girl—young and semi-educated, lacking specific skills. OLs usually joined a company after graduating from high school, and worked for three to five years before retiring to get married and have children.

For many women in Japan, this stage of life was the high point of financial freedom. Since most women live at home until marriage they have few expenses. Most of an OL’s income is saved for her wedding day, but a regular portion is used for her own enjoyment—expensive restaurants, stylish clothing, and overseas trips.

I looked across the table at Ms. Ogi and Ms. Shoji and noticed their designer leather wallets sitting on the table. They fit the OL description, as did the others in our group—they were all unmarried, most of them lived at home, and they had disposable income to buy nice things like expensive jewelry and designer handbags.

I had imagined myself as something very different. I carried a backpack, my wallet was made of nylon and Velcro, and I had no plans for early retirement. Even though before coming to Japan I’d had very little idea of what kind of work I would be doing, I expected to be more than an OL. But since I had never been hired for a full-time job before, I hadn’t questioned it when Mr. Yoshida was vague about my job.

Asking too many specific questions had seemed unnecessary and even petty. I wanted to act like a professional. I had high expectations of myself, and I thought Mr. Yoshida did too. Why else would he have sent me to work on the assembly line in Ohio for a month and on a two-month tour of the North American offices with a company car and an expense account?

Only a few months earlier I had been asked by the dean of my college to give the commencement speech at graduation. In her introduction to my speech, the dean had proudly told my peers that I had been hired by Honda to study various methods of production in Japan. I’m sure no one in the audience that day, including myself, pictured me with a group of office ladies who wore polyester uniforms and served tea to Japanese executives.

The OLs’ workday began and ended in the same place—the pantry. It was hidden behind a one-way window that looked out onto the tenth floor. It was a place for women only—a place to drink coffee, reapply lipstick, and look at fashion magazines. In the mornings the pantry had a relaxed atmosphere, but once work started, the pantry functioned like a factory, with workers assembling teacups and saucers, washing utensils, and generating refreshments.

The rectangular pantry was the size of a suburban American kitchen, with cabinets above and below a counter that circled the room. On one side of the room there were two sinks and two smooth-top stoves. The opposite counter held coffee makers, thermoses, shelves for wooden saucers, and a heating appliance for hand towels. In the corner was a full-sized refrigerator, something I had never seen in a Japanese kitchen. The cabinets were filled with cups and pots for Japanese and English tea. There were stockpiles of tea and coffee, and cans of low-calorie Coke Light and Florida orange juice. In the center of the room was a narrow table with two stools.

In the morning the women arrived on the tenth floor already dressed in their uniforms. Carrying petite designer purses, they would walk into the pantry and chime, “Good morning.” Greetings and gentle nods were passed around the room like neighborly handshakes at church.

Even though work didn’t officially begin until 8:40 A.M., the women immediately started to organize the pantry. They filled large thermoses with mugicha (barley tea) that would be used throughout the day. Others put away dishes and got cleaning rags ready in a bucket.

Through the darkened one-way window I could see our work area, the hishoshitsu, which literally means “room of secrets.” “Executive secretariat” was Tom’s translation. He told me he thought it sounded more impressive than “secretarial office.”

Our workspace was set behind a beige reception counter. Desks were clustered in groups of four to six desks, pushed together to form shima, or islands. The desktops were completely clear, with the exception of a phone on each desk. There was a rule at Honda that everyone had to clean off his or her desk before going home every night, so all desk supplies and paperwork were stored away in cabinets and on chair seats.

I watched the secretaries retrieve their supplies from hiding places. Each woman had some type of pastel-colored box filled with pencils, glue, heart-shaped note paper, scissors, erasers shaped like animal crackers, and sometimes a pen that had lemon-scented ink or an automatic pencil with a pink charm dangling from the end. Each island shared common supplies, usually in a cigar box covered with stickers. There were no personal items: no family pictures, no mugs or flower vases. The desks were devoid of character; if a secretary wasn’t sitting at her desk I couldn’t identify whose it was.

For ten or twenty minutes the chores in the office were attended to. The women used white cleaning rags to wipe the desktops and clean the receivers of each of the two-dozen telephones. They sharpened pencils from the desks in the executive office and made sure that all the cabinets were unlocked. After each OL had organized her desk and taken care of her chores, she would return to the pantry for a communal cup of coffee or tea. Because there were more than two people, the two stools would remain unused. Instead, everyone stood or squatted next to the table while they talked until 8:35, when the jingly morning exercise music started playing over the public-address system.

“All right, everybody, let’s begin by swinging our arms over our head,” instructed the peppy recording in Japanese. The secretaries ignored the directions but hurriedly emptied their cups and washed them. “Touch your toes, one, two, three, four!” The women scurried from the pantry to the executive office and back to their desks, aware only of the minutes remaining until the music stopped.

By this time the buchō, or manager, would be sitting at his island in a cloud of his own smoke. The other men usually arrived later in the morning because of late-night responsibilities to the executives. Tom and the other men took turns staying late until all the directors had gone home. Because some of the directors had responsibilities in countries halfway around the world in different time zones, it wasn’t unusual for at least one of them to stay at the office until after midnight.

At 8:40 A.M., when the official work bell sounded, all eleven secretaries were obediently sitting in their assigned seats, hair freshly combed, vests buttoned up, and smiles caffeinated for the day.

“Ohayō gozaimasu,” said the buchō.

“Ohayō gozaimasu,” a chorus of sopranos replied.

The morning meeting began with a recitation of each executive’s schedule. The chairman’s secretary Ms. Mori, started. “Today the chairman will have a meeting with the Belgian ambassador at 2:00 P.M. At 4:00 P.M. he has an appointment with the accounting manager. This evening he has a dinner meeting with the president at the Advisor’s Building.” Down the line, each secretary read her schedules aloud so everyone would be aware of the day’s events. The buchō often made administrative announcements and then concluded the meeting.

The directors started arriving after 9:30. One by one they filed off the elevator and passed the reception desk to get to the executive office. They were quiet, slight figures in dark suits. Sometimes they acted as though they didn’t want to be noticed, but that was impossible. As soon as one was spotted by a secretary she would ring out a greeting in a loud, cheerful voice to alert all the secretaries. The others, from whatever position they were in, conversation or work, would immediately follow her greeting with an even louder, more cheerful “Ohayō gozaimasu!” The executive would keep walking, maybe nod his head and utter a barely audible “Ohayō.”

For a week I observed my fellow OLs at work, rushing to answer the phone and patiently analyzing the piles of mail that were delivered six times a day. They served tea and cleaned ashtrays, they washed cups and then started all over again.

I had not been asked to serve tea, but I knew there was no way to avoid it. Every morning I watched as Ms. Ogi prepared to meet with each of her directors and review his schedule for the day. She balanced a jade-colored teacup on a red lacquer tray in one hand and held the schedule book in the other. All the secretaries repeated this routine for each executive. Tea was served mid-morning to whoever was at his desk, and again in the afternoon. If an executive had a meeting or returned from an outside event, tea welcomed him back.

I already knew that green tea in Japan was more than a beverage. It was a hobby, a culture, a way of life. My host mother, like many Japanese women, had practiced the art of tea ceremony. Every week, for years, she went to class and rehearsed the delicate, meditative movements of tea preparation.

Once, my host mother had invited me to accompany her to a formal tea ceremony. She spent two hours wrapping me up in a three-layered kimono. Magnificent purple and red flowers embroidered the outer garment. I also wore tabi, white cotton socks, and geta, wooden clogs, and an elaborately tied obi around my waist so I could move only in short, shuffling steps. My host mother had to show me how to walk with my toes pointed in, heels apart. The obi prevented me from leaning back. All I could do was sit with my back straight. I felt like an exquisitely packaged Japanese doll that couldn’t play; I could only watch.

But even knowing the historical and cultural importance of tea, I felt about serving it like I did about the uniforms. Why was it restricted only to women?

In high school I’d had a teacher who would routinely ask only the girls in the class to fetch him a daily cup of water. Some girls felt honored by his attention. I felt sickened. On one occasion he asked me and a friend of mine to get his drink. We went to the drinking fountain, spit in his cup, filled it with water, and then served him.

The executive office was adjacent to our office. From the double doorway I could see the entire room, which was about the size of two tennis courts. A long row of windows spanned one wall. There were no walls or room dividers interrupting the open space because all thirty-seven directors of Honda Motor Company shared one office.

The chairman, president, vice presidents, and senior managing directors, a total of eight men, sat in a row furthest from the entrance with their desks facing the window, the most prestigious location. Their plain wooden desks had no distinguishing features. Each one had a beige telephone and a flimsy corporate phone directory hanging on a yellow plastic adhesive hook. The desks were so close together that it would be easy to pass things back and forth without even standing up. The only difference I noticed was that the chairman’s and president’s desk-chairs had high backs.

Anyone below the level of senior managing director had to share space at one of three oblong tables in the front of the room where each director had an assigned seat. Their names had been taped to their places at the table so the secretaries wouldn’t get confused. Each director kept his work in one of the wooden cabinets that surrounded the perimeter of the room, but lower-level directors had to share.

On the otherwise anonymous tenth floor, there was one highly privileged space—the Mr. Honda Room. It was a utility closet-sized room located off the executive office. The room was reserved for Mr. Honda’s visits. Paintings and photos of him drinking beer with other retired executives decorated the sparse walls. Even though the founder had retired, he maintained an almost sacred status within the company.

In the lectures about Honda I had learned that its founder, Soichiro Honda, was one of the few living legends in postwar Japanese history. At the age of eighty-one he was still the flamboyant maverick who had created Honda Motor Company in 1948, contrary to the wishes of the Japanese government, with little more than war-surplus engines.

Born in 1906, Soichiro Honda grew up with a fascination for mechanical things. In his youth he had worked as an apprentice in an automobile repair shop and later established his own piston ring manufacturing company. He had little formal education, but a great passion for learning. After World War II he met Takeo Fujisawa, a businessman looking for a promising investment opportunity, and together they built Honda Motor Company into a twentieth-century industrial player in the international motorcycle, power equipment, and automobile market. In 1973 both Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa retired and were named Supreme Advisors to the company.

Sometimes during the morning rush I would go into the executive office pretending to check something because I wanted to see what it was like. I watched the secretaries interacting with the executives, noting that their body language often conveyed what kind of relationship they shared. Some directors barely paid attention to secretaries and just barked orders. Others treated the secretaries almost as equals. No matter how casual or serious the interaction, I noticed a particular similarity in the way all the women treated the men—as though they were mother and son.

In the pantry after work the women would complain or worry out loud about a director, and the others would console her. “He’s so impatient. He’s always making his own appointments and then doesn’t tell me. And why doesn’t he ever call when he’s out of the office?” they would say. The secretaries knew the directors’ schedules as intimately as the feeding schedule of a baby. They knew if a director was taking medication, and worried if he didn’t eat his lunch or if he seemed tired.

When a director went on a business trip in Japan or overseas, he usually brought back some kind of gift—cookies, rice crackers, or candy—for all the secretaries to share. Boxes of treats filled the table in the pantry, and our tea breaks included anything from traditional seaweed-wrapped rice crackers to Godiva chocolates wrapped in gold foil. Later I learned about the private gifts that certain directors brought back—scarves, leather wallets, and perfume. Although the gifts were not entirely a secret, no one wanted to flaunt special attention.

After three weeks of general observation, the office manager Mr. Higuchi called me into the executive conference room to talk about my assignment. He handed me a one-page document in Japanese with my name written in Roman letters at the top.

“I’ve made up a list of your job responsibilities,” he said.

It was the first job description I had seen since accepting the job. He had divided the tasks into four categories. First, I would be Mr. Chino’s secretary, starting out as an assistant secretary and moving up to a main secretary. Second, I would be in charge of all English-language correspondence. Third, I would work as a receptionist as I learned other skills, and fourth, I would provide English language advice to all the directors.

“I want you to focus on the job of receptionist and take care of the English correspondence,” Mr. Higuchi advised. “Then later, when you are ready, we will start training you for the secretarial job.” He didn’t mention anything about when that would start.

I remembered that I had been so excited about joining Honda that I had accepted the original job offer in Ohio without even knowing the salary. But the prospect of working as a receptionist with the hope of becoming a main secretary did not sound promising. There was no mention of what the secretarial job actually entailed, but I had observed enough to know that it didn’t mean delving into special project research or attending meetings with executives. I felt as though Mr. Higuchi wanted me to prove my ability at monitoring the front desk so that maybe one day I could serve tea too.

I had to admit that even receptionist skills were challenging because they were all in Japanese. I couldn’t even answer the phone properly. But I was disenchanted with the thought that these tasks made up the core of my job. Was this why I had been sent to Japan in the first place? At least Mr. Higuchi’s written list inspired in me a sense of purpose, but the overarching goal of becoming a good tea-serving secretary was discouraging.

His list also included five goals to keep in mind throughout the training. One, learn the operations of the executive secretariat; two, learn Japanese; three, learn the way Honda operates in Japan; four, study the approach to public relations; and five, study Honda’s philosophy. These basic ideas appealed to my hopes for a higher purpose, and I embraced the Zen-like quality of his direction. It gave me hope that some day I would be given more sophisticated assignments. I desperately wanted to believe that I had a significant role, that I was good for something more than monitoring attendance.

Immeasurable as the goals were, I earnestly went about pursuing them. I started to keep daily lists of all the new Japanese words I learned and asked my colleagues to explain unfamiliar phrases. Every few days I sent Mr. Yoshida a fax describing my duties and reporting on events. He responded promptly, which gave me a feeling of importance that I didn’t get from doing the tasks themselves.

I threw myself into organizing all the English mail. Part of the job was to filter junk mail from legitimate mail, but I had to do more than just filter it. If an envelope was addressed to a specific director, his secretary felt personally responsible for it even if it was a computer-generated invitation to buy millions of dollars of personal life insurance from a guy named Buddy. As a result, I first had to weed out the junk and then I had to persuade each secretary to throw it away.

One of the first letters I read was from an American woman. She wrote to the president of the company warning him of a plot to use gamma rays in conjunction with Sputnik to destroy the Japanese. The letter went on for twelve pages detailing, among other things, what pop astrologer Jeanne Dixon had predicted for the year.

I usually knew a letter would be interesting when I saw that it was simply addressed to: Mr. Honda, Main Post Office, Tokyo, Japan. One letter came written on rumpled paper in elementary-school script. It was from an American man saying that he had written Honda about an engineering idea. He had since moved, but had heard from a friend in his old neighborhood that a Japanese-looking person had been in the area. The man figured that it was Mr. Honda looking for him and so he wanted us to have his new address.

Another amusing letter came from a young Californian woman who sent a set of holistic, psychedelic love poems to the president. She wrote of her special mission to serve him in any way possible and kindly included nude photos of herself posed next to a waterfall. Although the president and other executives might have been entertained by these scandalous letters, they never even heard about them because it was my job to throw them away.

Some of the English correspondence demanded serious attention. Mixed in with the junk and freak mail were letters from international government agencies and legitimate customer comments. During the first week I came across a letter that had been set aside by one of the secretaries because she didn’t understand it. The letter came from a United States federal agency inviting Honda’s president to a meeting in America with other guests including the President of the United States. By the time I got to the letter, however, the event had already passed.

Although I had successfully avoided having to serve tea, I received special tea-brewing training from the president’s secretary, Ms. Onoguchi.

“You make sure the teapot is completely dry,” she said, giving the inside of the pot an extra wipe with a towel. “Then sprinkle in the tea leaves so that they cover the bottom of the pot.” I watched as she visually measured the dry flakes, which had a fresh, earthy aroma.

“Then, pour in the hot water and let it steep. If you don’t let it steep long enough the tea will be too weak, kind of a light yellow color. If you let it steep too long it will be too dark and bitter.” While the tea brewed, she selected a cup from the cupboard.

“This is a special tea cup with a lid,” she explained. “Usually only the president uses this cup. It keeps the tea extra hot.” The cup had no handles and sat on a wooden saucer.

“The special secret for delicious tea,” she said, taking the cup in her palm, “is to heat the cup before the tea is poured in.” She poured plain hot water into the cup, swished it around for a moment, and dumped it out into the sink.

“When the tea is ready, you pour it into the warm cup and place the lid on top. That’s all there is to it.” She poured the clear yellowish liquid. It smelled sharper than the caramel-colored Lipton tea I drank with milk.

Ms. Onoguchi, like the other women, had been making and serving tea for years, and every time she prepared a new cup for the president she followed the same detailed procedure.

As the weeks passed, sounds in the office began to make sense. I got great satisfaction from figuring out Japanese words, recognizing faces, and practicing how to write everyone’s name. Even the daily routine gave me comfort.

At home I had started to develop my own routine. I broke in the new leased furniture, spread brightly colored cushions on the floor, and tacked family photos to my tiny refrigerator. The housing allowance helped me acquire appliances, but I needed a Japanese-English dictionary to learn how to use them.

Every night I wrote down questions about the appliances and consulted my colleagues in the pantry the next morning. I figured out how to record a message on the answering machine, but I didn’t know how to retrieve one. My new rice cooker had only one switch, but the rice still turned out hard. I even drew a diagram of the washing machine settings so my colleagues could teach me which one was the delicate cycle.

The most challenging appliance was the one I had bought on a whim, an electric bread maker. After struggling to read the directions, translating the recipe and converting metric measuring units in order to use my American measuring tools, the first few tries were disastrous.

Instead of bread, the maker produced hard, mealy clumps of dough. I took my problem to the pantry for consultation. I learned where to find yeast in the supermarket, and Ms. Ogi bought me a measuring cup that correctly converted everything to metric.

One Monday night I decided that I finally understood how to do it. I carefully measured the flour directly into the machine and sprinkled the dry yeast in a little pool of milk and melted butter. The entire cooking process would take four hours. My goal was to wake up to a fresh loaf of warm bread, so I set the timer to start at 2:00 A.M. I was almost afraid to go to sleep, worried that maybe I had miscalculated the amount of yeast or programmed the timer incorrectly. When I went into the tatami room to sleep, I closed the sliding door that separated the two rooms wondering what I would find the next day.

I woke up at 5:30 A.M. on Tuesday feeling the excitement of a Christmas morning. Cautiously, I slid open the door as though expecting the entire living room to be filled with an enormous loaf of bread. Instead, the room was filled with a sweet aroma. I ran over to the bread maker and popped open the lid. Inside was a benign, square loaf with a toasty brown crust waiting patiently in its warm home. I was so excited that I ate a piece right away and went back to bed.

I took the loaf to work. By then the crust had sunk a little, but the secretaries praised my efforts. After my initial excitement, I decided that it tasted like homemade bread made by a robot. There were two odd holes in the square loaf, one in the base and one on the side, where the cooking devices had been lodged. But we ate the goofy-looking mass anyway and talked about how to cure hiccups.

Ms. Ogi spent time explaining some of the general secretarial duties. We went into the pantry where the women made tea and took breaks. On the wall were various schedules and lists written in some kind of code. Ms. Ogi pointed to one of the papers. “This is the morning chore list. Every morning two people arrive before work to do these jobs. We rotate each week so we only have to do it about once a month.”

She explained that “A” chores included unlocking doors, turning on the computers and video monitors, checking the meeting rooms, and making sure that the cologne bottle in the men’s bathroom was full. The “B” job was to file the eight daily papers into the newspaper rack.

“Each person in the office has a single letter code name that we use to simplify the lists. My code is the letter M because my first name is Mieko.” She showed me all the code names, most of them Roman letters, each encased in a small circle. “This one is Ms. Shoji’s name,” she said, pointing to the letter Y with a circle around it. “The Y is from her first name Yumi.” Another list showed the codes for all thirty-seven directors. Ms. Ogi explained that the secretaries used the codes for all interoffice memos because writing the full names took too long.

“Of course, you need to have a code name too,” Ms. Ogi said. I wondered if I should tell her I already had a code name in Japanese—Kiki. But this was the professional world, and Kiki sounded silly to me. The uniform alone took away much of the professional image I had hoped to present. I was already resigned to being called Rora, so I agreed when Ms. Ogi suggested using the phonetic symbol for “RO,” which was one of the easiest in the language, a simple square. In Japanese kanji characters the square symbolized mouth. She pulled out a scrap of paper and handed me a pencil. I drew a small square and circled it.

“That’s it,” Ms. Ogi said. “I’ll make a memo and pass it around the office to tell everyone that you are ” I was in the club.

I decided to host a Halloween party for the group, thinking that it would help me get to know more about my colleagues than just their names. When I passed out invitations everyone immediately accepted. My dilemma of what to cook was solved by El Paso taco supplies from the international grocery store, which were twice the price of the same thing in America, but worth it because I wanted to prepare something unusual. I used every dish and plate and maneuvered my few furniture items to make sitting room for eleven on the floor.

All the secretaries, except for Ms. Mori, arrived together on a Friday after work. I was shocked to see how sophisticated the women looked wearing dresses and skirts—an improvement over the juvenile uniforms. Everyone brought a mask or hat as a costume, except for Ms. Shoji who was in full costume with a frilly white maid’s apron and hat. Ms. Ogi wore a cone-shaped orange paper hat and a gold mask.

Everyone was curious about my apartment, especially since most of them lived with their parents. Even though the space was so small that a full tour could be given by standing in one place, it was roomy by Tokyo standards. The kitchen area was against the wall of the entryway, but space was so limited that the mini refrigerator was in the living room right next to the television. As in most Japanese homes, the toilet was located in its own closet-sized space, and the shower and ofuro bathtub were next to it in a small, tiled room.

Someone made the suggestion of removing the sliding door that separated the two main rooms. Sitting on cushions around two low tables, we drank wine out of paper cups and tried to eat tacos with chopsticks. We took turns trying on each other’s masks and hats. I passed around a pair of glasses with an enormous nose and bushy eyebrows and mustache attached. My prim colleagues were transformed into something that resembled Groucho Marx in Japanese drag.

We talked about Halloween in Japan. Although everyone had heard of it, they didn’t really understand its significance. I explained the custom of dressing up and trick-or-treating; it was a practice completely foreign to Japan. Halloween had been imported via Hallmark in the recent past and was aggressively marketed with jack-o-lanterns and skeleton costumes hanging in shop windows.

After about an hour, Ms. Mori showed up.

“I’m sorry; I had to work late,” she said with contrived fatigue. Everyone rushed to greet her and offer pity, but something bothered me about her. I had noticed something different about her compared to the other women, but I couldn’t name it. It seemed rather cynical of me, but I sensed that she had created the overtime excuse as a way to get attention.

As part of the trick-or-treat theme each woman brought a treat to share. We settled in the tatami room with tea and a table full of desserts—an Oreo cookie pie, gourmet chocolates, sweet potato cakes, and rice crackers. I lit candles and put on some James Taylor music. Our festive mood mellowed, and soon we were talking about men and who we thought was good-looking at the headquarters building.

“Rora-san, who do you think is handsome?” Ms. Ogi asked me.

“I haven’t seen too many men under fifty years old,” I joked. “You’re right. The only men we get to meet on the tenth floor are the senior citizens in the company who come to see the executives,” Ms. Shoji replied.

“That’s why we’re all still single,” Ms. Ogi added, and everyone laughed.

Someone suggested the name of a man in the Overseas Service Department and everyone agreed he was handsome.

“And he’s not married,” another woman offered, and they all giggled. I got the impression that they didn’t often talk about things like this with one another.

Questions about boyfriends were bounced around the circle. No one had a boyfriend, or admitted to having one. The atmosphere was so warm and intimate I almost wanted to make up some romantic long-distance love affair to share.

Finally the question came around to one of the senior members, Sashi. She was in her late twenties and as petite as a twelveyear-old girl. Even in high heels she wasn’t five feet tall.

“Hmm, well . . . ,” Sashi said to the group. Everyone became very quiet. “To tell you the truth, I do have a boyfriend.” Squeals of discovery and delight exploded from the group. “Really? Who is it? Does he work at Honda?” The questions poured forth and Sashi put her head down, covering her face with both hands in embarrassment. “Come on, tell us! How serious is it?” The enthusiasm was palpable. I sensed that her confession was unplanned.

“Well,” she continued, as if in pain, “actually, we’ve recently decided to get married.” The room again exploded with mirthful glee, and I thought Sashi would jump out the window to escape. “Tell us how you met him. Who is he?” the group demanded.

“Well, we met picking strawberries.”

“How romantic. How sweet!” chorused her envious colleagues. “It was a company event last year. He works in Research and Development. His name is Nakata.” A few women nodded in recognition.

I noticed that she wasn’t wearing an engagement ring and asked if she had one.

“Oh, yes, I have one, but I’m much too embarrassed to wear it,” she told me. “What would the directors say?”

It was after eleven when I saw Ms. Ogi reach for Ms. Shoji’s maid hat. She put it on her head and started to gather dishes. Without a word, the other women stood up and began cleaning. An assembly line formed in the kitchen to wash, dry, and put away the dishes. Others wiped tables, shook out floor pillows, and put the leftover food in plastic containers. I moved around answering polite questions. “Rora-san, where do you put the bowls? Do you have any empty grocery bags?”

Two women replaced the sliding doors; another found the vacuum cleaner and swept the tatami floor just like my host mother used to do each night before rolling out the futon sleeping mats. I looked at the small entryway that had been filled with a pile of shoes and saw that all eleven pairs had been reorganized in pairs and reversed so that the toes pointed toward the door. Three white bags of garbage were lined up neatly against the washing machine, tied with exacting knots, waiting to be taken out on trash day. My apartment looked better than before the women had arrived. Even outside the tenth floor the group proved they worked well as a team, but it was odd to me that they seemed to know little about each other’s lives.

The Halloween party helped me understand more about the organizing principle of our office—hierarchy. It was evident in the way people treated the symbolic leader of the secretaries, Ms. Mori. At the age of twenty-nine, she had worked for Honda for eight years and had the most seniority in the secretariat. She was as thin as a bird. Her shiny black hair hung straight to her shoulders and feathered bangs crowned her forehead. With traditional Japanese beauty traits—almond-shaped eyes and a smallish mouth—she was considered one of the most beautiful women at headquarters. Like all the other secretaries, Ms. Mori was single, but unlike the others, she lived alone.

Sitting at the reception desk with my back to the group, I could hear Ms. Mori’s shrill voice above all the others. When she called to the other secretaries for information it came across as a demand rather than a request. Her use of polite language sounded sarcastic. She didn’t speak rudely or make directly condescending remarks; rather, her disdainful tone seemed to say, “I have the most seniority here and everyone will acknowledge it.”

As secretary to the chairman, Ms. Mori held one of the most prestigious positions for a woman in the company. In fact, her role was unprecedented. Ms. Shoji told me that no woman had ever before directly assisted a chairman. When the current chairman had been promoted he had specifically requested that Ms. Mori continue as his secretary. Tom Umeno accompanied him to events and out of the country, but Ms. Mori was his main support.

To the directors Ms. Mori always offered a pleasing smile and graceful compliance, but among the secretaries she maintained an air of superiority. She didn’t easily give away favors to her colleagues. She was clever and bright, and I admired the way she dealt with many of the management-level men in our company who could be boorish and sometimes treated the secretaries poorly. She had an amazing knack for disguising her demands in polite language, as if to subtly remind them that she was their link to power.

A secretary could make things difficult for middle managers who needed access to the executives. A secretary could also do helpful things—like making a phone call to warn a department manager that an executive was on his way down for an impromptu visit. The smarter managers gave Ms. Mori regular attention and often complimented her when they visited our office.

According to Mr. Higuchi’s plan, I would eventually take over Ms. Mori’s position as Mr. Chino’s secretary. Even though she would still be managing three other directors, I guessed that she might not want to give up Mr. Chino. I admired the control Ms. Mori maintained, but resisted getting too close. I didn’t want to become part of her secretarial hierarchy. Having no place in the hierarchy made me feel exempt from the rules that defined work and relationships. No one asked me to come in early to prepare cleaning rags. If I arrived early, I spent my time talking or reading the week-old Wall Street Journal. I didn’t mind taking my turn doing the “A” and “B” chores, but I wanted my work to be hierarchy-free. It was the same with my relationships: I liked being able to join the various groups for lunch. I didn’t want to be categorized simply by my age.

I wanted to be an honorary member the way I had been as an exchange student with the Welcome Ladies and on the Waseda judo team. My coaches and teammates treated me like a member of the group, but they’d had different expectations of me than they had of other members.

On my first day of judo practice I had noticed that all of the thirty men on the team had cauliflower ears. Their smooth earfolds were plump and puffy like a twisted bun. The ears are badges of courage in judo, I was told—proof of toughness. The initiation started in junior high school when upperclassmen boxed the ears of their juniors during grappling practice. As the initiation continued week after week, the ears would swell with liquid and the lobe would start to separate from the skull. Even if cold compresses were applied, the ears would throb and sounds would be muffled. By the time the boys were in their second year of junior high school, their lobes were hardened for life—hard as a knuckle with no loose flesh, just smooth, unmoving tissue.

My initiation into the judo team was much less painful. I had to fall—ukemi. My entire first week of practice was spent doing this. While the others practiced, I stood in the corner of the dojo flinging myself onto the green mat while the two white ends of my belt swung wildly with each ukemi.

After a year of being a member of the judo team my body reflected my earnestness and I earned my brown belt, even though I was without status and without cauliflower ears. I noticed that my blouses felt tighter around my shoulders and back. I had never measured my strength before, only my weight. I could do one hundred push-ups in a row and found immense satisfaction in throwing men twice my size. Judo gave me a physical thrill that I had never known playing basketball or running track. Judo also gave me a sense of belonging that I’d never had on the court or on the field.

I wondered if I would ever feel the same way about the executive secretaries. This was a new kind of team, but one that already demanded more conformity than I had ever been expected to give. What I had seen so far on the tenth floor made me think that my indifference to the hierarchy was going to have to change. I was going to have to play according to the rules of this corporate team, but I wasn’t sure what those rules would be. Where were the cauliflower ears on these dainty women?

Every day the secretaries attended to the same tasks: arranging meetings, writing in three schedule books, rescheduling meetings, erasing and rewriting in the schedule books, arranging transportation, procuring tickets, rearranging transportation, exchanging old tickets for new, tabulating expense reports, securing appropriate signatures for expense reports, preparing for guests, preparing guest rooms for guests, greeting guests, preparing tea, serving tea, cleaning up guest rooms, and washing tea cups. No matter how many times the task had been repeated or how seemingly unimportant it was, the secretaries treated each job as a significant duty.

A secretary entered the company as an assistant and would most likely continue to operate in that capacity until she left. The women didn’t complain about the mundane tasks or wish for promotions and more interesting work. Like a new mother of a child, each woman accepted her role and the obligations that went with it. Just as their diligent phone answering skills had impressed me, their overall attitude and approach to Office Lady work confounded me. I both admired their dedication and rejected their obedience.

I wanted to belong to this group, but I wasn’t sure about the sacrifices it might require, like treating Ms. Mori as a queen. I thought of myself as an individual before I thought of myself as part of any group. After working in the secretariat for two months I still didn’t get excited at the thought of making the perfect cup of tea. Simple tasks such as sharpening pencils and setting out paper seemed pointless. I didn’t seem to get the same sense of satisfaction as my colleagues.

My way of life was unusual to them. I wondered what they thought about the choices I had made. They seemed curious about me in the way one is curious about a contortionist. I felt sure that not one of them would have wanted to leave the comfort of the group and trade places with me. I felt the same way about them.