Seniority

In here everybody is not at the same level. Beginning with the head of the lab, every worker belong to different classes according to their age and the years after entering the company. The car park, the name list, the order of giving speech, everything is fixed in accordance to the class.

What makes it complicated is that the age and the years does not match because some workers entered at the age of 18 and some at 24. So when you are new in that organization when 24, there will be a lot of "seniors" aged under 23. Does it really matter? Yes, because we should talk in polite Japanese to seniors, it is necessary for us to know their age. Keigo is really too much. It creates a kind of barrier between us implying that you belong to a different class from mine.

Even if we should stop speaking in keigo, it would not mean that we don't respect each other. I wish Japanese language and culture were more casual.