Two weed-eating goats at Yotsuya Station now have better leave, a clearer job description and a healthier senpai relationship than most of the commuters walking past them.
TOKYO, Japan (Catchpenny Asia) – Two goats hired to eat weeds beside Yotsuya Station have become the most envied employees in the Japanese capital after commuters learned the pair will receive the entire winter off, a strict no-snacks policy that keeps them focused, and a workplace hierarchy that everyone involved actually understands.
The animals, a one-year-old male named Nagi-kun and a two-year-old female named Pokke-chan, have been clearing a patch of ground beneath the walkway near the station’s Akasaka Exit as part of a JR East trial of greener weeding. As SoraNews24 found when it went to ask why goats were spending every day in downtown Tokyo, the arrangement runs until the end of the year, after which the goats rest through the cold months, when grass grows slowly, and may return in spring if the railway needs them.
The pair have, in the words of The Japan Times’ write-up on JR East’s new four-legged landscapers, proved to be a hit. For a city in which “seasonal leave” usually means the two days around New Year when the office printer is switched off, the news has landed hard.
A Senior Goat and a Junior Goat
Much of the public fascination centers on the working relationship. Pokke-chan, older by a year, has been widely described as Nagi-kun’s senior colleague, making her the first senpai in Tokyo whose junior has never once been asked to stay late and pour her beer.
“It is a very traditional structure,” said Professor Masaru Ikeda, who studies organizational behavior at the Shinagawa School of Workplace Studies. “The senior goat eats first. The junior goat watches and learns. Nobody sends an email about it. If you put this in a Marunouchi office, it would be called a revolutionary management framework and sold as a 280,000 yen seminar.”
Ikeda’s team spent three afternoons observing the goats from the walkway and compiled a preliminary performance assessment, which it shared with Catchpenny Asia.
- Meetings attended: 0. Weeds removed: estimated in the several thousands.
- Time spent looking at a phone: 0 minutes, against a Tokyo office average of 3 hours and 40 minutes.
- Instances of eating lunch at the desk: continuous, although researchers noted that the desk is also the lunch.
- Complaints filed about the commute: none. The goats live on site.
- Times either goat said “I’ll check with my manager”: not recorded, owing to the goats’ limited Japanese.
The Snack Policy That Has Economists Talking
Visitors have been asked to be kind to the goats but not to feed them snacks, so that the animals stay hungry enough to keep doing the job they were brought in to do. Labor economists say the logic is elegant, and possibly a little too familiar.
“This is simply the Japanese salary model, applied honestly,” said Dr. Reiko Sugawara of the Institute for Wage Stagnation Studies in Chiyoda. “Keep the worker slightly underfed so the worker keeps working. The difference is that the goats were told up front. My graduate students were not told until their third year.”
A survey of 312 commuters passing through Yotsuya at rush hour, carried out by the institute, found that 71 percent would accept a no-snacks rule at their own workplace in exchange for the winter off, 18 percent would accept it in exchange for being left alone under a bridge, and 11 percent asked whether the goats were hiring.
Lawnmower Operators Raise Concerns
Not everyone is charmed. The Kanto Federation of Mechanical Grass Professionals, which says it represents roughly 900 people who operate weed trimmers on public land, issued a statement warning that “a goat cannot be held accountable for an uneven verge.”
“We welcome innovation,” said federation secretary Toshio Hamada, who wore ear protection throughout an interview conducted in a quiet cafe. “But my members have spent years mastering the strimmer. Now a goat walks in with no certification, no safety goggles and no understanding of the paperwork, and the public wants selfies with it. Nobody has ever taken a selfie with me. I have asked.”
Hamada added that the goats’ rental arrangement with their owners makes them, technically, outsourced labor, a status he said places them “in the same position as half of Tokyo’s IT departments, except the goats are visible.”
Stand-Up Comics Find a New Hero
In the clubs of Koenji and Shimokitazawa, the pair have quickly become shorthand for the working life nobody gets.
“Nagi-kun is one year old and already has a job at a major railway company,” comedian Daisuke Nomura said during a late set in Koenji. “I’m 34. I applied to JR East twice. They didn’t even let me eat the weeds.”
Comic Haruka Ishiguro said she had tried to negotiate goat terms with her day-job employer, a logistics firm in Saitama. “I told my boss I’d like to take the winter off because I grow slowly in the cold,” she said. “He said that was fine, as long as I came back in spring if they needed me. Then I realized that’s just being let go with better branding.”
Overseas interest has followed. Readers of bohiney.com, the American humor site, have written in to ask whether the goats take freelance work, with one Ohio resident offering a backyard, unlimited dandelions and what he called “a very relaxed HR culture.” Rural observers point out that livestock tend to collect admiration on both sides of the Pacific, citing the tale of a pig named Napoleon taking the swine class as proof that animals now receive more professional recognition than most mid-career staff.
The Winter Question
The planned seasonal break has prompted a lively debate in ward offices about whether Tokyo’s human workforce could adopt a similar schedule. A working group at one central ward office, convened to study the matter, met once, agreed the idea had merit, and scheduled its next meeting for after the New Year holiday, citing slow growth in the cold.
A rival proposal, put forward by a business lobby in Minato, suggested that human employees be allowed to take the winter off only if they could demonstrate, as the goats have, that they had personally eaten the problem. The proposal was withdrawn after several members of the lobby were found to have eaten nothing but conference sandwiches since the spring.
For now, the goats remain on duty beneath the walkway, chewing steadily while commuters stream past toward the ticket gates. Staff have posted no performance targets, set no key metrics and scheduled no one-on-ones. Pokke-chan, approached for comment, continued eating. Nagi-kun waited until she had finished, then did the same.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/