Le destin fabuleux d`Amelie Nothomb

Amelie Nothomb is a well-known and acclaimed French author who has mostly written crime fiction. Less known at least to here suspense fan base is maybe the fact that she has written two authobiographical books about her experiences in Japan, one appeared already in 1999, the second only in 2007, despite both covering her 2-year stay in Japan in the late `80s.
Being a Belgian citizen, Amelie Nothomb spent the first 5 years of here life in Japan already, in the Kansai (Osaka-Kyoto) region, due to her fathers job and lived in China as well. Still retaining some memories of Japan, she returned there 15 years later for her final year of studies and her first year at work, this time to Tokyo.
In "Stupeur et tremblements" (fear and trembling) the counts of her year in a major Japanese company, she recounts the horrors of the Japanese working world. She is hired fresh out of University, in the state obviously many companies prefer to hire their employees, preferably with no higher degree and no work experience or special skills. Makes them more moldable, that is the common thinking. Amelie starts off as a translater at the company that in the book is called "Yumimoto" which is of course not its real name. She mentions though that it`s one of the 7 giantesque company imperiums in Japan, so one of the Misubishi, Sony etc. type. Starting as a fresh graduate full of hopes she quickly gets degraded to archiving tasks due to her "unability to cope with work" as one of her superiors puts it. Despite the fact that other managers do not see her as inadequate and secretly apologize for the treatment she receives, they are obviously unable to address this with her opponent. So she fights a lonely fight, trying to show off at least with her superb execution of distributing the mail. This however is not appreciated either because the superior claims that a foreigner can not possibly be able to read the name signs and there must be something fishy about this. In the end she is demoted to the position of a cleaning lady. The people she encounters during this work are again obviously embarassed about what happened to her, but not able to react and address it with the responsible person.
I remember distinctly that I was quite shocked when I read the book for the first time a few years ago, but it also supported common stereotypes about the Japanese working environment. And certainly I thought I would never want to work in this country... I still had the book in mind when my career counselor asked me last summer whether I would consider working in Japan as well after doing the language training and I answered with a very heartfelt "no". And now what am I doing?... I have since at least heard a lot more direct accounts of working here and see things more differentiated. But we will see if I actually manage to find a job here whether I will have my own portion of "fear and trembling".
The second novel "Ni d`Eve ni d`Adam" recounts her private life during her time in Japan. Amelie Nothomb first came to Tokyo as a student and was looking to make some extra money through teaching French. Her first (and it seems only) student is the student Rinri, a year younger than her and despite majoring in French unable to say anything comprehensible in that language (well, I would judge that very credible after staying here for a while). Her attempt to make him feel more comfortable by giving a little speech in Japanese is greeted with a lot of amusement, he tells her it is the Japanese of a small child. And she confirms it is, the Japanese she learned while spending her early childhood in Kansai.
Soon they skip the language lessons and start going out together and become lovers. She meets his rich and rather peculiar family, none of whose members is too glad to see the son with a foreigner. She is scheduled to meet his friends as well and left alone with them. She starts talking about beer and soon notices that nobody deems it necessary to say anything in return which makes her going silent as well. Being furious about her boyfriends retreat to the kitchen and left alone with his mute friends, she learns later that the guests were not supposed to interrupt her due to rules of politeness and Rinri wanted to leave them alone to make sure they could properly get to know each other. Over and over again she is startled by the seemingly strange behaviours of her lover who eventually becomes her finance as well. Amelie is very resistent to the engagement, but finally gives in when he repeats the question over and over again. In the end which coincides with her being totally exhausted at work as well as feeling cornered in her private life, she decides leaving the country without really telling her fiance. They only meet again years later when her first crime novel is translated into Japanese and she goes back for a promotion tour.
The book is quite funny when you have some first hand experience with Japanese people and behaviour and I read many things that reminded me of behaviours I had observed as well. So I am not sure that Nothomb is correct with her assessment that her fiance was particularly eccentric character. Surely a very entertaining story and it is obvious why this one took her much longer to publish than her accounts of work life in Japan as it`s of a more private nature.