Super Salary Man

I’m almost home. This trip is almost over. It’s not that I hate trips or that I have much to go home to. Just a goldfish, my small apartment, that’s all I’m coming home too. It’s fairly standard really, which I like for the most part. I’m not like a few of my classmates who insist that they are too good to go work at accompany. They look at me like there’s something wrong with me working for a company. Right now the only thing wrong with it is that I’m stuck wearing a jacket in 35 degree heat while my sempai wears short sleeves.
It’s really more that I’m hot than that my sempai* wears different clothes. I’m sure if I asked he’d let me take off my jacket. I’m really lucky to have such an understanding sempai. He’s certainly more understanding than my father was. Otosan*, always providing, working long hours. Only slithering out of the office for drinking parties, dinner, and special occasions. No, I don’t despise him, I get it. But he seems such a stark contrast to sempai. Sempai treats me more like a son on most days than a kohai*. He has a family, no sons but two daughters. I wonder if they feel the same way about him that I feel about my father? DO they think he’s a pathetic workaholic who they only see once in a while? I mena, I guess now that I’m older I understand, you know? I mean, I get it’s not how things are done in other places but working long hours is how he showed he cared. I’ve tried expaining it before to a few ryugakusee* at my college but they didn’t really try to get it. It’s the way it is. You fight it when you’re young but as you get older it makes sense. A lot of times the company, work, can be like a family. Your sempai can, if he’s good, become like a new father to you. Maybe that’s the issue with my generation. Our fathers aren’t our fathers in the sense that’s imported so instead our sempais become our fathers.
I don’t even know what I’m saying. I lost myself in thought again. At least talking to myself is good company. It’s always disheartening when you’re talking to yourself and you realize you don’t even know what you mean. But these thoughts are things I can’t imagine telling anyone, not sempai, not my parents, and certainly not a wife, if I had one. Maybe when I hit middle management I’ll get a wife, I wonder if it’s part of the promotion package. It’s not that I don’t like anyone. Yumi’s cute, really cute. She’s smart* and always dresses very well even in the company uniform. I’d talk to her, ask her out but you can’t sexually harass secretaries until you’re at least in middle management. Or they can’t sexually harass you until you’re in middle management. I always forget the order of when it’s no longer creepy to ask a girl at your office out.
But here, isn’t where I always pictured myself. Believe it or not until I was a 6th grader I firmly believed I was going to grow up and become Anpan-man*. Like, that was what I wanted to do. When mom would ask me what my plans for the future would be, I’d start singing the anpan man song. It was really funny until I was a 3rd grader. After that she’d admonish me and hastily tell all those assembled that I didn’t really mean it. Of course I wanted to work for the same company as my dad. And I mean, after a time I found I did. It’s a good company, I have a good fatherly sempai who doesn’t horribly abuse me. The secretaries are cute mostly, not that it’s important, but I know my father noticed them. No, I don’t know for certain that he had an affair, but it’s not uncommon that’s all I’ll say.
It’s time to go back to the goldfish. I see a little boy with an anpan-man t-shirt. It hurts, a little, to wonder about his super hero dreams, if they are the same as mine were. So clear and sharp, so easy to reach. I suppose now, as government literature says, I’m a super hero too. I’m the backbone of the Japanese economy. I’m a super salary man.
Or at least I will be.
Sempai- hard to convey the feeling behind it but it’s someone who has been doing something longer and is, ideally, supposed to be a mentor of sorts.
Kohai- like sempai hard to convey, it’s “junior”.
Otosan- Father
Ryugakusee- international students
Smart- usually refers to body, slender, svelt.
Anpan-man- A super hero made of red bean paste bread (anpan). It’s very old but an extremely popular children’s’ show. Even my high school students watch it.
I saw this guy in the Shinkansen terminal of Himeji. He was looking at the art display with an older man who wore short sleeves. He carried the bags and wore a full suit. That’s really all I went on, the rest of his story is just pure me going nuts after a ridiculously hot day.