> my boss assumed that it would be sourcing the bride
Are you sure you understood him correctly? That would be highly irregular, to say the least. More likely it was an offer to pay for a matching agency. Arranged marriages between specific people are pretty rare these days, and unheard of outside of family. Unless your boss literally adopted you, he would never take on that responsibility!
I think people are reading rather too much into the phrase "sourcing". Read it as "assumed he'd probably wind up marrying a coworker" and the boss in question is just observing the obvious - workplace marriages are quite common in Japan, especially considering that company employees around that age tend to socialize a lot within the company.
One can think of such things as non-pecuniary benefits of a job but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a boss who's ever considered it in those terms. More likely they're just acting on the "truth universally acknowledged" that young single employees must be in want of a spouse.
(Of course, the reverse of this is one of the ways Japanese companies are rough on women - if you're 23 and single people will tend to assume you're going to marry someone and quit in a few years, and treat you accordingly.)
especially considering that company employees around that age tend to socialize a lot within the company.
Yes. This is by design. You're not just joining a company, you're getting social belonging and a built-in set of drinking buddies. That is such a critical part of the deal, and such a universally acknowledged part of the deal, that it is not routinely described as part of the deal.
Sure, but to some extent this is Japan in a nutshell - joining anything from a university circle to the neighborhood adult volleyball team does tend to come with new drinking buddies, albeit at varying scales.
(And having said that, if you're single you can of course expect the volleyball coach to paternally try and set you up with that nice 24 year-old on the team...)
kinda related, how easy for a foreigners to play in the local volleyball team in Japan? I'm considering to move in Tokyo for a year or more, and would love to find some vball buddies
I see teams practicing now and then but I don't know how one goes about joining. But if you're eligible and the team has space, I wouldn't think being a foreigner will matter too much.
I work for a global / English-speaking company in Japan. We don't have futsal and basketball instead of vball, but it's pretty easy to get started. PM me if you're interested.
>I think people are reading rather too much into the phrase "sourcing". Read it as "assumed he'd probably wind up marrying a coworker" and the boss in question is just observing the obvious - workplace marriages are quite common in Japan, especially considering that company employees around that age tend to socialize a lot within the company.
Right, but I also envisioned that they'd be in the awkward position of "hm, but Japanese women won't want a gaijin, obviously ..." and then debating whether they need to call up the "mail order bride" services.
I doubt he would phrase it the same way I did, but I am absolutely not materially misremembering the conversation in which he said, and this is a verbatim quote translated from Japanese, "[24 year old coworker], this is Patrick. He just joined, graduated from a good school in America, and has a bright future with the company. Have you ever considered an international marriage?"
Oh I'm not doubting you. But that's slightly different. Putting in a good word for you and making introductions to eligible young co-workers isn't quite the same as "here's your bride!", which is what it sounded like.
I can absolutely imagine a 50s-ish japanese boss saying exactly the contents of your quote.
Exactly. If you hire a recruiter to source employees for you, they aren't going to come back and say "Here's your employee. Hope things work out for you." they are going to say "Here's someone who seems like a good fit. Do you want to interview them?".
I guess you and I and everyone else have a lot of different interpretations for what the original text might mean. The fact that it is ambiguous is demonstrated. It was simply a poor choice of words and I'm sorry to have made too big a deal about it.
Still. In my company, if a division is going to source a component for us, it means they deliver that component. They don't provide a bunch of google options for manufacturers we might want to look at, or make introductions, or whatever. They get the damn thing and make it available to us. As such, sourcing has a specific meaning to me and perhaps I went overboard applying it to the ultra-great-grandparent comment.
I had no idea and he didn't link to it and the explanation there is much longer and clearer than the one line remark about Japanese boss "sourcing the bride" in the comment was. People are taking the comment to mean some medieval style arranged forced marriage.
Are you sure you understood him correctly? That would be highly irregular, to say the least. More likely it was an offer to pay for a matching agency. Arranged marriages between specific people are pretty rare these days, and unheard of outside of family. Unless your boss literally adopted you, he would never take on that responsibility!