Vacation Time

When I first saw my employment contract, one of the things that I was very excited about was the 20 days vacation. Add this to the 3 weeks in Japan where all offices are closed (New Years, Golden Week, and Obon in August), and I was looking at enough vacation to visit the fam and still have time leftover for travelling through Asia...

Only - and I guess I should have realized this - no one takes their vacation time for vacation!! Several reasons exist for this craziness:

1. It seems that "vacation time" and "sick time" are the same thing. I.e. if you are sick you have to use vacation days to be at home. I.e. frigging everyone around me is sick right now and still at work. Wonder why I keep getting colds? I digress.
2. A person who takes vacation is considered to be a slacker. Yeah, good old Japanese hard working mentality. Must...continue...working...for 45 years....without ever taking a day off...Seriously, that is the goal of some people here.
3. NOT a reason - they are too busy. Seriously. They aren't.

Luckily for me, I have some gaijin smash power. Like the batting of the eyelashes to get my husband to do my bidding ;), it is something that should not be overused. Basically, the idea** is that Japanese people consider foreigners to be very different anyway, and will accept the things you do as the actions of a foreigner and allow you to do it.

Vacation is important though. So coworkers may not like it, and think I am a slacker, but I get my vacation time approved. I use my vacation days. As vacation. For example, I will be gone the ENTIRE WEEK next week. And I was gone THE ENTIRE WEEK in October when friends came to visit. Scandalous, でしょう？

By the way, getting vacation time approved is not a given! A friend of mine (who worked for the known most evil boss of the company - notice I said worked), asked for ONE DAY off after Golden Week to travel back to Japan since all the weekend flights were booked. ONE DAY. 1. He said no. Just 'cause. She had to cancel her entire vacation.

**I must acknowledge that the great Az came up with this term and explained it on his website in a much more humorous manner than I. Check out www.gaijinsmash.net.