From Engineer to Making Drinks at Busan Tower

Two weeks have passed since I started working at Busan Tower.

There are several different roles inside Busan Tower, and mine is making drinks and putting together desserts. It’s not as complicated as café work, but not too simple either — just the right level of difficulty for me. I’ve worked at a few cafés before, and back then I had to keep investing time just to memorize the recipes. Most of the staff and part-timers here are genuinely good people, so there’s almost no mental stress at work, which I think is the biggest perk.

Every morning I head up to the third floor to clean, and the view from up there is really something. On clear days you can see the sea and the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin all at once. Just seeing that view on my way in makes starting the day feel pretty good.

Of course, it’s not all upside. Standing for eight hours straight means I have to stretch constantly, and my legs get pretty sore. Still, I’ve decided to count it as a workout for my lower body, so it’s a plus in its own way.

One thing I learned after starting here is that there are way more foreign tourists in Busan than I expected. Roughly, the customer base breaks down like this:

• Chinese 3 : Korean 3 : Japanese 2 : Other 2

Chinese customers usually speak to me in English or Chinese, and since I don’t speak any Chinese, I often can’t catch what they’re ordering. So for now I’m getting by with my basic English — though even that doesn’t always work. Once, I told someone clearly, “I can’t speak Chinese,” and they just kept speaking Chinese anyway, so I ended up asking a coworker who’s fluent to help me out. Since then I’ve been studying Chinese whenever I get a spare moment.

Japanese customers mostly order in English, but I can usually tell right away from the accent, so I switch to Japanese. Sometimes other staff even come to me asking for help with Japanese-speaking customers.

For English-speaking customers, I just answer in English. My English still isn’t where I want it to be, but either way, switching between languages like this is naturally improving my speaking and listening.

Looking back, when I first started working in Japan, I spent my days sitting at a desk, running meetings in business Japanese, and otherwise just quietly getting through my work. I used to think I wasn’t very good with people because of that. But this job is service work, and everyone around me is upbeat, positive, and full of energy — and being around that, I can feel my social skills slowly coming back.

Like I said before, I’m building my own lifestyle right now. Working at Busan Tower, I barely feel any mental stress, and I’m genuinely grateful that I can make money doing this. No overtime means I actually have time to myself — enough to write blog posts like this one. On weekdays, once I’m off work, I shower, eat, rest for a bit, then head to a free co-working space for young people to work on development and the blog. That’s roughly how my days go these days.

Not a bad start, all things considered.

Bonus: Busan Tower, caught on my way home from work.