Aoi Umi

Our workplace is Sky Town in the Odakyu Department Store, which commands a panoramic view of Shinjuku, an a part of Tokyo filled with youth. It takes about an hour by train from the dormitory to work. During the early shift, we commute through the relentless rush hour, hardly able to find a place to place our feet. We don't know much about Tokyo, as we are just going back and forth between the dormitory and work. However, because our workplace is in Shinjuku, on the 14th floor of a department store, we can see Tokyo’s city scape right in front of us. Moreover, live bands play in the evenings, so every day feels like a concert.

It has been a month since we started working at New Tokyo. Our biggest job right now is memorizing the numerous items of the inventory. We compare the samples with the menu items to remember them, but this is extremely difficult. Our job is to provide a pleasant service for our customers -- we must always be able to provide a pleasant experience. This requires careful attention to detail, so we are constantly working to improve ourselves.  We believe that by interacting with a variety of people, we can grow as people. When we first joined the company, everything we saw was new and we didn't know what was what, but we’re finally starting to get used to it. Moving forward, we are going to study a little at a time in our spare time.

Fortunately, we are allowed to commute to school during the day from work, so starting next spring, Yamashiro will be attending junior college, and Yasufuso will be attending culinary school. We plan to deposit our salary each month for tuition. We are more determined and stubborn than we appear, so we think we can balance work and study, but we have been away from studying, so we are hoping to pass the entrance exams.

 Though we are very worried about whether we can accomplish these goals we want to encourage each other, compete with each other, and work hard towards the future. We would be happy to study on my days off, but after doing the cleaning and laundry the day has already ended.

This year, New Tokyo hired its first employees from Okinawa Prefecture. Currently, four or five employees are working enthusiastically…In July, we will have our first company recreational trip. We are already looking forward to it and are excited, discussing things like what we should wear. We would like to continue to work hard for the sake of my juniors, so that we as the first people to make venture first do not bring shame to the name of someone from Okinawa.