Workaway, workahow, workawhere.

I've had a few messages recently about Workaway, how it works and what the deal is. I've written before about what the general system is, and you can always google workaway.info, but after six or seven months I should hopefully have a few bits of experience for anyone interested in following in my footsteps (don't, my hiking boots stink).

I've mentioned before but no, as long as you're working for free you don't need anything more than a holiday visa. There's a few Japanese hosts who insist on you having at least a Working Holiday visa which is a bit weird, and from what I can gather the law out here's still pretty fuzzy on the issue. It's like the one time I went backpacking to the US when gap-yearing was a bit of a new thing over there, it wasn't illegal but they see a guy with a huge backpack and assume you're coming to invade. Some Workaway hosts have no idea and expect you to know if you're legal or not. Others are super on top of it and know exactly how much work they can ask you to do over how many days a week, which is a bit more reassuring. The Japanese government doesn't seem to know what way to jump. I've heard about guesthouses being threatened with closure because they used unpaid Workaway staff, and hosts having their Workaway profiles shut down because they were using people as part of a commercial business, even though that's about 80% of the profiles on there. As long as you don't, do not, mention anything to do with the word 'work' at the airport entry desk, and don't decide to start working cash in hand on the side, you'll be totally fine.

Types of work vary massively. To date I've stayed at six different placements doing everything from renovation work, basic gardening, kitchen help, guesthouse cleaning, clearing land with power tools and even some video production. Most hosts in the big cities are guesthouses and sometimes language schools, and they can either be super shitty or totally fine, depending on the individual project. Out in the countryside there's a lot more projects like renovating old buildings and outdoor work, and sometimes they'll be looking for specific skills like plumbing or carpentry. There's plenty of odd little projects out there - social media content, website design, eco developments, creative hipster artsy summer camps. For my taste I prefer the manual or outdoor work, it's usually a bit more involved and stimulating with jobs you can sink your teeth into. And the countryside hosts usually fatten you up with that sweet, sweet homecooking.

Wherever you end up the only things you really need are a decent attitude, some common sense and the ability to use both hands to a half decent level. I'm not being intentionally mean but it's really surprising how many people struggle with at least two out of those three. It's a wonderful part of traveling - meeting new people from around the world on their own exciting voyages... and realising that as much as I do stupid shit sometimes I can at least work out which end of a hammer's the useful one. The Darwin Awards would have a field day with some of the stupid crap I've seen people do around power tools.

Finding places to work is a little bit like internet dating. Very occasionally you might get lucky, and one message results in one reply which turns into a perfect match. But. For every one of those you're going to have to send a heap of messages which either go unreplied, result in you talking to some crazy bastards, or mean you get catfished by people who... shall we say... oversell their virtues. I'm talking about Workaway here, not dating. Maybe. But it does pay to try and have plans A through D at the back of your head and keep a few options open, the good Workaway hosts get super busy and the shit ones have a habit of flaking. Before I even left the UK for either of my trips to Japan I've had some idea of my first two stops, with a couple of others in mind. Obviously everything shifted the minute I hit the ground, but it's nice to have a vague idea.

There are some danger areas to look out for. I'm traveling solo, and never quite know until I arrive if there'll be a crew to hang out with or not. Most of the time there's other volunteers or the host speaks pretty good English (my Japanese is no bueno), but there's been one or two places where my most significant daily conversations were with Netflix. Thankfully it's possible to do a pretty quick about-face and make an escape to the next place after a day or two. There's also a few fairly militant Workaway bosses out there. It's pretty standard to be sent a questionnaire or info guide to read in advance, and the Japanese Way seems to mean that these go into a LOT of detail. At length. Over many, many pages. It's pretty understandable - hosts don't want to let flaky or unreliable workers into their homes, and a bit of paperwork hoop-jumping is a pretty good scare tactic. But some of the hosts can stretch the limit of how much they can expect from unpaid/volunteer staff. I've heard horror stories about eight or nine hour days on six day working weeks, sometimes at places that don't offer any food or cram people into dorms with one shower between about twenty people. But thankfully Workaway runs off a feedback system, in both directions. I'm a big fan of messaging people directly through their profiles to ask for more info, and most people are willing to give you a bit more info about if a place is super isolated, run like an internment camp or otherwise worth skipping.

If all else fails look for places that have a cat or a dog. It usually seems to be a good sign.

#travel #japan #Workaway #japanese