A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: itâs close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing, and, ideally, very little thinking. Her first gigâwatching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goodsâturns out to be inconvenient. (When can she go to the bathroom?) Her next gives way to the supernatural: announcing advertisements for shops that mysteriously disappear. As she moves from job to jobâwriting trivia for rice cracker packages and punching entry tickets to a purportedly haunted public parkâit becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all but something altogether more meaningful. But when she finally discovers an alternative to the daily grind, it comes with a price. This is the first time work by Kikuko Tsumuraâwinner of Japan's most prestigious literary awardâhas been translated into English. There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job is as witty as it is unsettlingâa jolting look at the maladies of late capitalist life through the unique and fascinating lens of modern Japanese culture.