picture of the day

Pep rally for graduates

44 Comments

A Japanese college graduate publicly promises that she will do her best in trying to find work during a job-hunting rally at an outdoor theater in Tokyo on Friday. Some 1,500 graduates from Japanese vocational schools attended a pep rally designed to boost their morale as they enter the job market this year.

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44 Comments
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That's quite a taxi queue.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Thank you... nothing like a funny one to start the day....

4 ( +5 / -1 )

As the singer said, "Get out while you're still young".

2 ( +3 / -1 )

She has a lot of fans.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Great photo. I wish these young people the best. This has contemporary Japan written all over it.

Not a single female face in the audience, and everyone is wearing their standard-issue job-hunting suit.

If you are not familiar with the acceptable dress for Japan's fresh graduates in the job recruitment phase, here is a link to a Google image search for that: http://goo.gl/w5R47c

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Pep rally? Japan sometimes seems so childish.

4 ( +9 / -5 )

Pep Rally for Graduates looks an awful like Idol Group Audience. A bunch a creepy dudes looking up at young girl in a skirt.

7 ( +10 / -3 )

Looks more like the beginning of a creepy Japanese porno, girl vows to break Japanese Bukkake record.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Sensato: Not a single female face in the audience

Zoom it. There's several in the crowd and more at top left. Did not see any in first two rows.

http://www.japantoday.com/images/size/x/2015/02/student.jpg

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Mini-version of North Korea: everybody has to be the same.

15 ( +18 / -3 )

Makes me wonder how Abenomics is working so far.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

"...that she will do her best..." Compared to what: her average, her typical, her usual, her slightly-better than-normal-but-a-smidgen-short-of-above-normal?

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Gambatte Japan!

-6 ( +1 / -7 )

Start off the job hunt with a Nazi Salute?? That'll do it!

Looking at this picture reminds of Star Trek and the Borg " You will be absorbed" What a mass of drones, but that's how corporate Japan likes it.

4 ( +10 / -6 )

We are the Borg, you will be assimilated.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

There's a good image of the innovation and individuality which will drive Japan forward into the Abenomic miracle.

10 ( +12 / -2 )

@HaraldBloodAxe

There's a good image of the innovation and individuality which will drive Japan forward into the Abenomic miracle.

Love it! Aha!

5 ( +6 / -1 )

DNALeriFEB. 21, 2015 - 08:59AM JST Mini-version of North Korea: everybody has to be the same.

umbrellaFEB. 21, 2015 - 10:11AM JST ... Looking at this picture reminds of Star Trek and the Borg " You will be absorbed" What a mass of drones, but that's how corporate Japan likes it.

dbsaiyaFEB. 21, 2015 - 10:12AM JST We are the Borg, you will be assimilated.

Seriously guys?

Have you ever worked a professional job in your own countries? Back in the US I wore an essentially identical suit every time I went job hunting for any position that required a degree. Job hunting is not the time to show employers your avant-garde sense of style- job seekers who actually want to get the job need to demonstrate their skills, talents, and ability to adapt to a workplace. You don't want your fashion to distract from that. The very first time I went suit-shopping (for my very first professional interview, as it happens), even the American guy working the store advised me to wear at a minimum a charcoal suit to a job interview.

Japan's business dress standards may be incrementally more rigid than business dress standards in our home countries, but broadly speaking they're quite similar. There are plenty of business practices in Japan that are legitimately worthy of criticism. Let's not descend into borderline racist name-calling over something that is really not all that different from our own countries.

-5 ( +10 / -15 )

"Only a few more years until I get married and never have to work again!"

17 ( +18 / -1 )

This is not exactly very encouraging.

I actually had to do a bit of training with the new recruits in my work place. They have been here since late-January 'preparing' to start work with us in April. Fair enough, but I didn't get any such training, when I started...

Anyway, they are a mixed bunch. And by that, I mean one of them is very good and a good guy to boot. The other 8 of them turn up stinking of GyuKaku and last nights alcohol every day, talk amongst themselves when the people training them are trying to speak (ie, they behave like school kids, when they are all at least 22 years old), and get this... two of them actually fell asleep in a meeting we were having. The meeting with me, three Japanese staff who I work with, and 3 of these new trainees. Absolutely ridiculous. The quality is horrifically low. But this is what you get when you favour drilling and conformity over any actual innovation or original design.

9 ( +13 / -4 )

Katsu 78 you are too serious mate! Posters are just having fun over what is an amusing picture.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

I wonder if she is an idol because the amount of guys in the picture.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

How mind numbingly typical, utterly bland, I guess that's how J-inc still wants them..............

I wish them luck they are going to NEED it!

7 ( +7 / -0 )

Why would someone (above) post a link for a dress code these graduates would need to adhere to?

If they've just graduated, they prob got common sense? It doesnt take a rocket scientist to know how to show up for the recruitment phase. Only in Japan, i guess.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

From behind everything looks good. Wait until she turns around.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

This is just insane. "Job-hunting" has become some kind of "game", many new graduates lie in the job interview in order to get a job offer. This kind of rally represents another weird aspect of Japan

2 ( +2 / -0 )

For all the performance of busy-ness, people don't seem to actually produce a great deal of results in order to justify their lifetime employment - once they get the job. It looks like all the stress comes in the HS examination period and the frantic scrabbling around trying to land a contract. Once you'e navigated those hurdles, you're sitting pretty until you retire.

4 ( +7 / -3 )

Star Trek and the Borg " You will be absorbed"* actually its "you will be assimilated, resistance is futile" reminds me of the battle gaijins face everyday in Japan, those that have already been assimilated and those that resist at all costs! you can pick them out very easily even on JT
5 ( +5 / -0 )

I guess the recruit suits will continue to be black jackets and pants/skirts and white shirts forever.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

@serrano LOL yeah, theres two type of gaijin in Japan, those that have been assimilated, those that refuse but have high tolerance levels to handle all the petty BS, the rest leave.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

JOB48

7 ( +7 / -0 )

A salute to the leaders who gave her a future of 3-month contacts with crap conditions? Turn the palm around and raise the middle finger.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

Take care it's a jungle out there, best of luck.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

This speaks of youthful promise and optimism - of people with their whole adult lives before them who have slaved through the tyranny of the Japanese high school system to get into good universities to get into good jobs. They have promotion, success, marriage, family joy to come. Some of these people may go on to do extraordinary things.

Good on ya kids!

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

After reading the posts here I really get a sense of the ignorance and childish attitudes of a number of posters.

Roughly 50% to 60% of these recent grads will find jobs, many will quit within the first year of getting hired because they have not been trained well enough in college to be effective in the work force.

Some have bright futures, many will end up in dead end positions wondering somewhere down the line why and how they got where they are today.

Japanese Universities do not train students nor educate students to be effective members of the work force. It's a systematical problem that is coming back to bite the country in the butt.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Some of these people may go on to do extraordinary things. yes some will but the majority will become mindless drones, living to work , not working to live, having little time to spend with there families/children. even if they have the time/money to even start one. also having a uni degree doesnt guarantee job satisfaction, a happy life and/or family.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Japan's business dress standards may be incrementally more rigid than business dress standards in our home countries, but broadly speaking they're quite similar. There are plenty of business practices in Japan that are legitimately worthy of criticism. Let's not descend into borderline racist name-calling over something that is really not all that different from our own countries.

Wow -- some serious defensiveness there about a relatively harmless topic. But, for the record, you must not have been to the states in at least a decade if you think "business dress standards...are quite similar".

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

'Take care it's a jungle out there, best of luck.'

It's a desert and luck has nothing to do with it. All these saccharine ganbattes are not going to save them. This generation needs to wake up shake up the cobwebbed, well connected empty suits at the LDP consigning them to a life of crap wages and temporary contracts. I shudder to think what the kids of these people in the photo will be grateful to accept.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Oh look, a crowd of ethnically homogeneous and zealous young people dressed in matching black outfits doing the Roman salute.

This can only lead to joy and success

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Some have bright futures, many will end up in dead end positions wondering somewhere down the line why and how they got where they are today.

Some of these people may go on to do extraordinary things. yes some will but the majority will become mindless drones, living to work , not working to live, having little time to spend with there families/children.

Oh, let's not pretend that is unique to Japan, gentlemen. Most people worldwide end up as cogs in the machine working a soulless job that offers little in the way of remarkable achievements and dreaming that winning the Lottery will release them from their banal lot in life. Whether it's IT in Rome, Corporate Law in Brasilia or Finance in Tokyo.

What you are unable to see, or recall, is the wonderful experience of being that age and not knowing any of that that yet, and laughing flippantly at those who do. Let them enjoy it.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Let's not descend into borderline racist name-calling over something that is really not all that different from our own countries.

No, those comments were not 'borderline racist name-calling'. People have their own opinions about the Japanese work world. There are a lot of Japanese that share these same opinions. They have nothing to do with the race of those in the picture.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The heartening thing here is that these are vocational college graduates. These graduates are entering the labour market hopefully with the skills required to perform knowledge work or professional services. The biggest blight on the labour market anywhere is the masses of unskilled workers, it's time to force them out

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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