Things I learned for the first time after becoming a leader

Junya Tokunaga

(Tokunaga Junya)

My name is Junya Tokunaga. I joined Sakaeya in November of 2023. Before that, I lived each day without much thought or purpose. However, despite this, Mr. Horiuchi, who is both a staff member at Sakaeya and a longtime friend of mine, often kept in touch with me and invited me to various things. I've known Mr. Horiuchi since the second grade of elementary school, and we used to play together almost every day back then. Even now, we often talk about silly things. At some point, Mr. Horiuchi started inviting me to come and help out at Sakaeya during busy periods like the Obon holidays and the New Year holidays. Since my previous job gave me weekends off, and of course I also had holidays off during Obon and the New Year, I thought it would be a nice change of pace for me, as I don't usually have any plans, so I readily agreed and often went to help out. From that time on, I felt that the people at Sakaeya were incredibly warm and welcoming. People would cheerfully greet me even though we were complete strangers, and they relied on me even though I didn't have any particular talents. I began to think that I wanted to work in an environment like that. However, at the time, I had been working at the company for over 10 years and was entrusted with many responsibilities, so I, being someone who lacked courage to begin with, couldn't even consider changing jobs.