The Accidental Office Lady

First jobs straight out of college are never what one expects. With new degree in hand, Kriska accepted what sounded like a plum assignment as the first American woman trainee at Honda Motor Company's headquarters in Tokyo. Perhaps not surprisingly, her idealistic expectations of fulfilling work, engaging colleagues and authority to make contributions are chilled by standoffish co-workers who view her with confused suspicion and a day-to-day drudgery that starts with donning an ugly polyester uniform that is worn only by the women. Though as a ""trainee"" she is not on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder (and never holds the title ""Office Lady""), this uniform symbolizes for her the very different levels of power that men and women hold at Honda's headquarters. It's not accidental that her occidental background leads to more than the usual trauma of being the newest kid on the block. As Kriska matures and gains the language and cultural skills necessary to begin to understand her work environment, she convinces her Japanese mentor that the work she can do best will take her into the nitty gritty of a company factory in Sayama. Although the precise time of her experiences is unclear, a wealth of details, recaptured from journal notes, make this an entertaining cross-cultural memoir: ""I looked at the small entryway that had been filled with a pile of shoes and saw that all eleven pairs had been reorganized in pairs and reversed so that the toes pointed toward the door."" (June)