en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/9/e145b092d8026853d748383363cc9d22.html
- Relationships are everything. Ever wonder why a meishi (business card) is so important? It's because that identifies the person you are working with. It identifies their position in their company, with you and within society.
- Japan is a hierarchical society/culture. This can be attributed all the way back, even before the Samurai periods and such. This is a culture based on levels from peasants/serfs towards emperors and such. The mindset has never really changed, despite the elimination of real power from the emperor towards the parliament. When you go to work, you're expected to be unquestioningly obedient to your superiors. This is called the kohai-senpai relationship. It does not matter if you believe or even in truth know more than your superiors. You must respect and obey them at all cost.
- Respect elders. The old rule this country, unfortunately. They are a social disease in a sense because they continue to reign their power, but retain the old mindset that keeps Japan trapped in some ways with invalidated, outdated social doctrine. These people don't retire but should and can hurt your business if you let them in.
- Language is more than just communication. It's a significance of relationships and a key pride of the culture in Japan. Japan suffers fromt he sin of pride (among others) and this is one area where they won't relinquish, especially in the global world. Certainly, other countries face similar issues (America for instance has always had battles in school for enforcing English). That said, this is an extremely sensitive issue. On top of that, the method of speaking such as using keigo and kenjogo expresses relationships and hierarchies and thus a person's place in society. While foreigners are excused from being forced into this, it still is not looked favorably by the Japanese. After all, you are being called a "foreigner," not a guest.
- The pokerface syndrome. Japanese are notorious for being two faced. They hide what they really feel and express things subtly. This is one of the hardest things for foreigners to really understand about Japanese society. It becomes impossible to read the Japanese since they are not open. However, only experience reveals how to handle the Japanese with their signs. Just trying to get a woman in bed can be a daunting task since what they want might not be what you're willing to give.
- Japan as a passive-aggressive society. Japan likes to express themselves as a "peaceful" nation. That is true in the sense that they outlaw guns and want to prohibit military presence. However, internally, they are constantly plotting, not just as a country, but against each other and everyone. It's just their nature. You do not know what they really want to do until it's too late. They don't show their animosity, but express it through subtle jabs. For instance, people will do nothing, approve of the action by their superiors, then lay blame to others for not following up. You might compare this art to the art of ninjitsu because of how stealthy people behave. But people here are truly vicious. You just won't know it until you're affected personally.
- The Japanese office. I think the notion of the Japanese office is a plight in society. It's a construct of undeniable inefficiency. Yet it somehow works in the minds of Japanese. What is the Japanese office? The above mentioned characteristics with the additions of incredible loads of bureaucracy, "kakunindo" or the constant check/confirmation to avoid blame/responsibility, the long hours, the lack of work/life balance, the nonsense business attire, the non-expressive attitudes of people, the women who manuever their careers through sleeping with their bosses, the emphasis on relations rather than real results, etc. If you ever go to Japan to do business, make sure you clean house whenever this situation arises. Even if it cost your company thousands of dollars per person, it's better than the eventually loss of the branch.
- You need to have a native be owner of the office. This seems to be the real killer for companies in Japan that try to migrate over. I've seen companies holding duo positions where the Japanese side might be owned by 40-50%+. This presents a huge problem in terms of identity for the company as their would be a natural inclination to assert the Japanese office into the company. At that point, you've lost your branch to your partner and will get into constant political battles with no end in sight.
- If you do want to partner up with a company, you need to improve your relations with that company. Straight one-to-one business that I've seen can hurt a business, especially those inexperienced with the Japanese side. For instance, I saw one company that was attempting to get some sort of alliance with NTT. However, NTT was extremely slow to react. The problem stated was the so-called stereotype of the Japanese being slow to respond. Truthfully, that's not the case. The problem was that the company attempting to form the relationship with NTT was quite small and not well known. NTT had strength in that relationship and probably felt that the cost-benefit for putting more effort into that relationship was not enough. For that company to succeed, the key ingredient was that the company needed to invest in the salesmen that came from NTT. In other words, they needed to take those salesmen to Las Vegas, get them dead drunk, purchase a gorgeous hooker (I'm NOT joking), and play golf and even lose to the salesmen. Why? Because those salesmen need to feel something special on a personal level to arrange that type of commitment from the company. You want quick results with a large Japanese company? Do my recommended approach.
- Avoid letting any Japanese software vendor to take charge of your local branch's IT. I've seen many Japanese software vendors and have been extremely disappointed with their results. Despite another stereotype of Japanese people being technogeeks (cellphones, electronics), the truth is that Japan's education in computers, especially software is quite lacking. I think people are more on just the hardware level where things like clock speeds, memory, etc. can be quantitatively measured. However, at the software level, as I stated before, software is a heavy philosophy. The Japanese do not understand the same type of philosophy, nor view programming as an art, and lack the necessary English skills to really keep up with the trends in terms of publications to be effective in this realm.
- Japanese are extremely demanding. I've mentioned before how Japanese remind me of small children constantly opening their mouths, waiting to be fed. Service in Japan is always superior to many countries. However, when you're on the side of the people providing the service, that expectation needs to be met as well. Japanese tend to be extremely detail oriented, especially at the cost of looking at the overall picture, and focusing on areas that have no functional benefit. That leads me to my next point.
- The Japanese are mostly superficial, believing in the image above all else. Go to theories on Jean Baudrillard who wrote up many essays describing the simulcra. The Japanese are incredibly fascinated by images more than reality. Disneyland is a popular place just as Baudrillard compared it as what most think is the symbol of American-ism. Women here follow fashion trends and are heavily influenced over ads. Tokyo is nothing but one ad after another. Go to the subway and see how many ads pelt you. Again, everything here is image, image, image. This is a society that lives in a world of simulation, not reality.
- Creativity is not valued, but copying is worshipped. Again, this goes back to my statement on the image and its role in society here. People will never create something on their own, but they will attempt to make something existing better. If this happens, you are praised. But I think that they are incapable of making the web better. This is something that they do not and cannot push the boundaries on based on my experience.
- Critical thinking has no value and is in fact a threat to society. There is something called "Common sense" here. But it is not what a typical American would call common sense. For instance, my friend told me a story where her bike was chained up because her friend had accidentally forgotten the key to the lock. So the friend hammered on the lock until it was finally broken. I think the friend's rationale (if you call it that) was to avoid humiliation and took it upon herself to amend the problem and save face.
- Humiliation and shame are considered the ultimate sin here. If you want to humble a Japanese person, shame them in front of everyone. One of the most pathetic yet surprisingly gratifying experiences a person can have here is witnessing someone bow and say, "Moshiwakearimasen!!!" That implies that nothing was able to be done and that some extreme cost had been incurred and caused by that person. No one here wants to accept such responsibilities, hence why they constantly are in the process of checking, double checking, and triple checking since critically thinking about a problem rather than handing the issue to a superior is far more risky for the individual here.

This is a very long piece. Hope you enjoy it! And good luck trying to utilize my thoughts here! I hope to add to it!]]> Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:59:23 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/9/e145b092d8026853d748383363cc9d22.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/6/de3fad10626e89bc046f3aac95f72abf.html Akihabara. I did a write up a while back on this subject, but now we're seeing it enforced. These past few days during Golden Week, Akihabara had troves of police now marching like Nazi's with their little flags overtly compelling street performers to halt all activities. The excuse given a while back on the subject matter was that the streets were meant for walking and riding bikes. However, why the law enforcement?

I did reply to my friend that the cause was that the police were being sent by the yakuza, since the yakuza could not get an easy cut of the cost of a free street performance compared to an overpriced venue (remember pay-to-play?). Sadly enough, the street performers never really hurt anyone and in fact helped probably bolstered the numbers to Akihabara and expanded the types of people who would go.

In contrast, my other friend (a female) told me that when she went to Akihabara for a job interview, she got stalked by two geeks. This isn't the first time I've heard that. One of the Densha Otoko special series shows even parodied how these geeks would go photograph a young pretty lady if they showed up in Akihabara. Also, there were stories of geek kids getting beaten up by smaller groups for money, as the geeks kids were too cowardly and easy pickings for these groups.

When I look at both accounts on how justice is supposedly dealt out, I see completely misconstrued priorities on the subject. Shouldn't the police be doing something to stop perverts and bullies rather than focusing on street performers who just want to use the area to get some recognition? You never really see people getting hassled like that in Shibuya. That's pretty messed up.

Then there was an article over on JapanToday that described the Japanese court system with regards to how one film group is kinda showing a documentary. There was a fictionalized version of the court system as well as the criminal system. Essentially, if you're caught there's very little you can do. You lose all rights and your best bet is to grovel and apologize. Even if you're innocent, the investigators and police are trained to force you to plea guilty no matter what. It's a truly ruthless system, completely corrupted and quite frightening.

Now, I'm not saying other countries are perfect, even America. But some things are so blatantly misguided, it leaves me to wonder how the people can tolerate such injustices? For me, it's just not so fun here anymore.]]> Tue, 06 May 2008 15:00:46 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/6/de3fad10626e89bc046f3aac95f72abf.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/30/29aa29161f2270715f59c696ed3f2b46.html
I think the only people in Japan who would resent such a proposition are old people. The old people here are really useless. I mean, being useless and invisible is one thing. Being useless and imposing their will on people here with little basis in the modernizing, globalizing world just is hurting their descendants. These people can eat all their "natsukashii!" foods in the summer and choke on their mochi during o-shogatsu for all I care. But let the young people finally take control of this country.

I figure that the only real way that the young people here have any chance at all in surviving the next 30-40 years is if America fully annexes this country. I mean, if it's true in what they're saying about how most students are moving towards arts and finance, then this country is truly screwed! Back in the 80's from what I remember, it was the Japanese who excelled at math and science. Now, there's a said deficiency. So does that mean kids are growing up dumber here?

It's funny because when I talk to my coworkers, many say that at one time they were good at math, but can't remember a thing. So my guess is that most people memorized for tests and then promptly forgot it once they passed their exams to get into the next level of education. Then once college rolled around, people immediately went brain dead as autopilot took over.

Not that the American education system is that much better, but at least the few necessary skills that can be imposed in this annexed new world would be English skills (or at least greater emphasis starting from kindergarten) and critical reasoning. Then allow students from Japan to be able to participate as US citizens at the university level and completely dispense with the jyuku system.

Another positive aspect in annexing Japan would be to get rid of the completely corrupt judicial system here. The jury duty system in the states sucks big time, but the court system in Japan is ruthless and lacks a balancing system. Sure, the court system in the states is bad too, but I do feel slightly more assured in that system than the notoriously bad system in Japan.

Maybe Japan can provide better dieting practices, work ethic, service capabilities and higher demands for better quality in America as a trade off. Now, working over time isn't that good either, but at least the work ethic and diligence that most Japanese exhibit (while not necessarily efficient) is something I'd like to see more in America, rather than this ultra lazy and indignant attitude. Also, teach Americans manners for their service industry. The American service industry is absolutely pathetic.

Well, I doubt my dream would come true. But it's also nice to ponder such ideas....]]> Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:07:08 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/30/29aa29161f2270715f59c696ed3f2b46.html