I managed to get a job at a tiny software company out in the Japanese countryside, through a friend, whose best friend's husband regularly golfed with someone, who knew someone, who knew the company president. Paid on the same scale as young junior employees who were still living at home with their parents, I struggled to cover rent and groceries, and had to save up when I wanted to buy an english language programming book or a pair of tennis shoes in my size, but I was writing software, my Japanese language skills were improving dramatically, and I no longer felt completely insulated from the local culture, as I had when I specialized in "creative accounting" in the Tokyo offices of a U.S. investment banking firm.
As the company's only english-speaking employee, and the first foreigner anyone in the company had ever personally met, I was part developer, and part exotic company pet. On nights when the entire section would go out for some traditional drunken bonding, my coworkers might order me a dish of fermented squid entrails ("shio kara"), or conduct various other kinds of "experiments". I'd be asked (usually, directly in front of one of our single female coworkers), "What do you think of Miss X here? Don't you think she'd make a fine wife? Ha ha ha...". Everyone went out of their way to make me feel welcome, and to accomodate my obvious language, social, and numerous other deficiencies, compared with what would be expected of a normal new Japanese company hire. Instead of "Andy", the managing director began to refer to me as "An-chyan", an endearment for a loyal young mafia henchman, which visitors to the company always found hilarious.
We programmed wearing suits and ties, seated side-by-side on long tables pushed up against the windowless wall, in a small cigarette-smoke-filled office with 1950's era furniture. We punched a time clock promptly at 9AM, ate lunch together every day, and rarely left the office before 7:00, often staying until 8 or 9 at night, and coming in for a few hours on weekends -- not because of any specific company policy, but just because it felt wrong to leave when everyone else was still there working. Employees were not allowed to use the front enterance, but had to enter the building through the back alley. We were all on a rotating schedule to clean the office on Friday mornings, including "benjo soji" (hosing down and scrubbing the ceramic squat toilets), and I occassionally got to lead the office in reciting the Monday morning "Chorei", or company pledge ("We solemnly pledge to give our all on the company stage, to optimize our skills and use of technology, in order to earn the trust of our customers and society"). Gradually, it all came to seem... perfectly normal.
Occassionally, there were moments when I'd realize just how culturally clueless I really was, such as the day my manager informed me the company had cancelled its policy requiring employees to wear their suit jackets in the 90 degree, 90% humidity walk from the train station to the office -- and I realized that, rather than confront me directly with my casual disregard for company policy, they had simply changed the policy, avoiding any potential awkwardness, while still subtley reminding me that I was breaking the rules.
I'm afraid I may have been a detrimental influence, as well. My coworkers found my interpretation of weekend office casual attire to be very entertaining, as I described how developers in the US often worked in shorts and t-shirts. Once, I tried to liven up my dreary work area with a plastic dinosaur on top of my monitor, and came back the next day to find my coworkers giggling uncontrollably, with a paper skyline of Tokyo in flames taped at the feet of "Godzilla". A week later, toys of various kinds started appearing next to the keyboards of a few other developers.
About a year after I started working at the company, the woman whose husband had helped to arrange my initial interview invited me to accompany their entire family on the annual "golden week" stay at their vacation home. Making conversation in the car, they asked how the job was working out, and began to look at each other uneasily as I described my various experiences. When I mentioned "benjo soji", and innocently asked whether this was a common practice in Japanese companies, the wife finally turned to her husband and asked in horror "Just what kind of company did you set him up with?"
It was a great experience, and alot of fun.