Photo/Illutration Chinese instructor Jiyu Chen teaches a new Nepalese staffer, center, and a new Vietnamese employee, at a Lawson’s Shinonome store in Tokyo’s Koto Ward on Dec. 9. (Hiroshi Nakano)

Convenience store trainer Jiyu Chen understood the difficulties facing two foreign female part-time workers who listened as he explained taking payments from customers for motorbike insurance.

“Payments can only be made in cash," Chen, 35, said at a Lawson’s Shinonome store in Tokyo’s Koto Ward in early December. "A piece of paper comes out at the back of the register, so you accept the payment with this.”

The staff are studying Japanese at a language school in Japan. One is a 20-year-old Nepalese and the other is a 19-year-old Vietnamese.

They came to Japan from two to six months ago and started to work at the Japanese convenience chain store. They are still only allowed to do tasks at the cash register.

A cashier’s job sounds easy, but the employees have many things to remember. Their tasks are diverse, ranging from using a microwave oven to handling lost and found items.

Even using the cash register varies from issuing receipts to procedures to follow when a customer wins a stick of ice candy or other snacks in a store lottery.

Although factory work is one of the most popular part-time jobs for international students, Chen said that working at a convenience store, where one has to communicate with Japanese, is “the best way to learn about Japan.”

Convenience store employees are becoming increasingly multinational. Against the backdrop of labor shortages, each company is working to retain workers, but there remain barriers in addition to the language.

WHAT DOES 'IIDESU' MEAN?

Both new Lawson employees attend a Japanese language school. Even so, they say that working in the Japanese language is difficult.

When they ask customers if they would like a plastic bag, and when hearing the reply “iidesu,” meaning “I’m fine,” they don’t understand whether this means one is needed or not needed. 

When the Nepalese staffer decided it was unnecessary and did not give a customer a plastic bag, “I was scolded and shouted at,” she said.

“The cashier’s tasks are the most difficult,” the Vietnamese staffer, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, added because most of the input screens are not multilingual.

Their trainer has sympathy for the two employees who must grapple with the nuances of the Japanese language. 

“Even things that are too obvious for Japanese can be difficult for foreigners to understand,” said Chen, a Chinese national.

Chen is an employee of a company that franchises about 30 Lawson stores in the Shinonome and other areas.

He came to Japan 17 years ago as an international student and worked part time at a Lawson store. Compared to those days, he said his role has continued to increase, including home delivery service and deterring bank transfer fraud.

While working as a store manager at another store, he is also responsible for training part-time workers as a “store consultant” like he was doing at the Shinonome location.

Of the approximately 50 part-time workers at the four stores he is in charge of, 90 percent are foreign nationals.

BEST WAY TO LEARN ABOUT JAPAN

Chen said that working at a convenience store has long been popular for foreign students living in Japan.

According to the Japan Franchise Association, based in Tokyo, foreigners accounted for 10.7 percent of all employees at the four major convenience store chains (Seven-Eleven Japan Co., Lawson Inc., FamilyMart Co. and Ministop Co.) as of February 2024, up from 7.9 percent in 2018.

By country of origin, China and Vietnam were the top countries for Seven-Eleven and Lawson employees 10 years ago. However, Nepal overtook both to become the top nation of origin in 2024.

At FamilyMart, about 80 percent of foreign employees are from five countries, including Myanmar and Bangladesh, in addition to these three countries.

Each company is taking measures to address the language barrier between customers and employees.

Seven-Eleven has installed a “pointing sheet” at its cash registers with an illustration in English so that customers can communicate with employees without having to speak to them.

Lawson introduced a multilingual badge to show which language each staff can communicate in with customers. FamilyMart has adopted a learning system for workers using virtual reality in which 19 languages are available.

In addition to the language, another issue that is causing a headache for all companies is Japanese culture, which is said to be unique in the world.

The dictum that “the customer is God” remains strong in Japanese culture. If some foreign employees do not adhere to the concept, they may run into trouble with customers who think staff are being disrespectful to them.

TEACHING 'OMOTENASHI'

FamilyMart is holding an online training program for foreign part-time workers. Chinese and Vietnamese employees serve as instructors and give lectures on “omotenashi” hospitality unique to Japan. The training is held at each store, with a frequency of more than 100 times a year.

According to one of the instructors, Jiaqian Zhou, 39, some foreign employees are unaware that it is common Japanese etiquette for store employees to greet customers with a bow and to hold the items in both hands when handing them their purchases.  

In the training, instructors even teach them how to smile.

Ayako Tsutsui, a 43-year-old manager at FamilyMart Co.’s sales promotion department, said that retaining employees is an urgent issue for convenience stores amid the nation's labor shortage.

Convenience stores want to avoid conflicts between store staff and customers caused by cultural differences so that their employees will stay at their jobs as long as possible.

“Many foreign employees come to Japan with the dream of studying Japanese,” Tsutsui said. “I hope convenience stores can be a place for such people to actively participate in Japanese society.”