Declan Murphy wrote:
> On Dec 3, 8:02 am, Jim Breen <jimbr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>I heard a story of a newly-married guy who decided [...]
> 
> Surely that "newly-married guy" wasn't a foreigner though? 

Not at all.

> A gaigin
> leaving work and going home at 5:30 would not be considered unusually
> odd, and the family would have been treated as an odd family in the
> first place.

Prexactly.

> When I first came to Japan I remember one bloke who joined the company
> at the same time as me and was going through the 6 week induction
> course. He was a newly married guy with a Masters in Economics (from a
> reasonably good Nth Meriken Uni) and fluent English. 

Ah, ruined for life. Could never become a proper salaryman.

> Naturally after
> the induction training the company HR department sent him to Niigata.
> He was allocated company accommodation, and requested permission for
> his wife to join him. Permission was denied of course, "maybe next
> year". He requested permission to move out of company accommodation
> into a privately rented apartment so that his wife could join him, and
> this was also denied. 

An example, not the first, of employment practices which would be plain
illegal in some other countries.

> He promptly resigned. Everyone the resignation
> was very odd and petulant.

Yes, the bastard just wasn't grateful enough for what they were doing
for him.

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学