It's Springtime!

Finally some light in the darkness! After two long gray weeks of rain and cold it seems like springtime is now finally reaching the Tokyo area!

Wonderful sunny morning today with almost 15 degrees outside and even warmer in the sun, it's finally getting to be nice to live in Japan again. I do realize that there will be some back and forth now in the coming weeks between cold weather and warm nice springtime weather, but I still think that it's fair to officially open springtime.

If you plan on visiting Japan, mid- late-April and May is the best time, before the summer heat and humidity comes down on this little island.

There came a note...

Today as I was happily slaving away at my computer I received a small handwritten note from the peon that I have been trying to save from termination last week saying:

"Now he's making me print out organization charts with my name removed from them!"

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, it kinda reminds me of evil nazis making you have to execute your own family before they execute you, just to have you suffer a bit more. It's a hard life in the corporation...

Defiling the pure white beauty

I have a deep dark secret that I have managed to keep concealed from the Japanese people in my vicinity for all these years in Japan but that I thought I should get off my chest here in this blog.

You see, I do the unthinkable when no Japanese person is around to see me... If I eat something with rice at home, first of all I put away the chopsticks and use a knife and fork or even a spoon, but this could be forgiven by the Japanese, just mildly scorned upon. What I do is the unthinkable... I pour some soy sauce over the rice...

Now you might understand how heavy this burden has weighed upon my chest, if there is one thing you just don't do here in Japan, it's pouring soy sauce over the rice, defiling the pure white beauty that is the rice. Pissing all over the centuries of labor and love that Japanese farmers have put into delivering pure white rice to the Japanese households who know to enjoy the taste of white rice. If any of my Japanese friends knew of this secret I am sure that they would cut off all contact with me, I would become an outcast, a freak in the eyes of the Japanese, but yet I cannot stop myself in the darkness of my own apartment, alone, with the curtains drawn. Pouring the soy sauce over the white rice, coloring it brown and enjoying it...

Out in public, I pretend like everyone else, using the chopsticks, keeping the rice white and pure, pretending that I'm normal. But it's all an act... The fact that I have 50% Japanese genes in me would make my soy sauce and rice habits even more unforgivable since I am supposed to know better.

Oh yeah, I don't wash it either before cooking, but I can pretend that it's out of sympathy with the Japanese troops in Iraq.

Can I take a picture?

I still regularly meet up with my former colleagues from my consulting days, mostly Captain Britain, Luke and The Boy, but I am on friendly terms with most of the guys and gals back from those days. Last week I met up with the gang for some drinks at some fashionable Japanese type semi-standing bar in Shibuya. There were about 6 of us and we were having a pretty good time, laughing, drinking and talking in the otherwise empty place.

Since the next day would be a working day we were getting ready to pack up and go home around 10pm, but just as we were about to finishing our drinks a "reporter" with a cameraman had come into the bar and approached our table and asked if we would mind if she took some pictures of us enjoying the place since she was going to write a feature of the place for some magazine. Since the place was otherwise empty and our crowd probably looked international and all with a mix of Japanese, westerners and half-breeds like me, we were probably her only chance to get some pictures of customers having a good time.

She asked us just about the time we were reaching for our jackets, and Dr. Y became the representative of our group, telling the reporter that we really were on our way home and didn't want to stay for 10-15min longer just to let them take some pictures. He expressed this and after a few seconds of silence added "but... if you buy us a round of beer, we can stay for 15min longer...". She immediately answered "Sure!" and actually ran to the bar to get us our drinks.

We stayed for 30min longer and had a plenty good time. They'll send me the magazine as well when it's out. So, if this happens to you, do like Dr. Y and negotiate!

Under Siege - Worst week ever?

This is actually not one of my standard entertaining fun filled post, I probably have been through one of the worst weeks in my professional life, at least outside consulting... The amount of craziness, nastiness and overall in-your-face stupidity I have endured during the week could easily break much stronger men than me. Perhaps after the weekend I might feel encouraged to bring out some of the more entertaining outbursts of stupidity, but at the moment I am still in shock.

The week started off with a late evening meeting in which Mr. Shachou tried to get my support in "pushing out" (as discussed in my previous post), a person which I personally work well together with and has consistenly performed well but with the only issue that he has been pretty vocal about what he thinks about our local management. For some reason I ended up in the middle of all this and had to try and broker peace and/or make sure that the treatment of this person wouldn't be too nasty. This carried on for the first two days of the week with me having to spend my evenings talking over the phone to the targetted employee and try to ensure him that things might not be as bad as it seems.

Then, later in the week we were hit by some pretty hardcore phone conferences with head office management where we got cross checked on some things we had no idea about but which were committments from our organization from a couple of years ago which they remembered but which I had never heard about... This resulted in a flurry of pointless meetings keeping me in the office much later than I would've wanted to be. To top it off, the weather in Tokyo this week has been mostly gray, rainy and depressive, not the kinda of weather that makes me jump out of bed full of energy.

I feel completely drained now, but a weekend with some R&R and plenty of Ms. Sunshine should help me recover a bit by next week, it can't really be worse than this week... or... can it...?!

(Bonus points to anyone who can name the movie from the screenshot!)

Firing and hiring in Japan

In Japan, the labor laws are quite protective of the employees and it can be really hard for a corporation to get rid of any unwanted empolyees assuming that no things such as blatant theft of company property, deliberate attempts to hurt the company or such has occurred. Basically, even the most incompetent employees are pretty well protected as long as the company is not in a harsh financial downturn in which they can cite money troubles to get rid of people.

So what do you do then, if you're in a management position and want to get rid of that annoying peon who keeps interrupting you, being in your face and just annoying you with stupid questions? You can't just straight up fire him/her because that could make you end up with plenty of problems in case they would decide to take it to court to sue the company for mistreatment.

You're getting worried? Now, relax, there is still a way that you can get rid of that annoying peon without breaking a sweat. You did the talk and expressed your wish for the person to leave the company, but he/she refuses to accept the package, probably knowing that he/she was lucky to get the job in the first place? Here's what you do! You see, the labor laws are pretty hard on firing people, but it allows for relocations without much limitations. That annoying guy who keeps sleeping in the meetings? That horrible girl who takes hours to send an e-mail?

Annoying guy who sleeps in meetings? - You send him off to man a new sales office in some asshole part of Japan, far away from his family with a minimal expense package giving him unreasonable sales targets that will allow you to lower his salary considerably when he fails to achieve the targets. Trust me, even if he would be stupid enough to accept in the first place, he'll leave soon enough and even if he doesn't you can take pleasure in the fact that you're making his life a living hell.

Horrible slow girl? - You allocate her from her finance position to one of handing out tea and counting the stock of papers from the warehouse, even if that is not to make her leave, at least she's out of your face for considerable time.

In all seriousness, during my time in business here in Japan I've seen some pretty horrid measures taking against people from management to ruthlessly make them leave the company and continously punishing them in case they refuse... We currently have things like this ongoing in my little company and it makes me somewhat sick since the person(s) on the receiving end actually don't deserve it since the only thing they've done is telling unwanted truth to management.

To tie it back to the picture illustrating this post, they need to wear an armor like that to suffer the abuse!

Girl on Girl Action

Generally I work pretty well with women and get along well with most women in my workplace but for reasons completely unknown to me, I've ended up smack in the middle between two; one of them is a direct peon and the other one is an indirect peon of mine.

The thing is that I get along pretty well with both of them, and they both have their strenghts and specialities in work that are quite different considering their backgrounds, which I can respect while recognizing the areas where they need a little more support.

Sitting in a meeting with both of them and me is generally pretty non-exciting, they keep happy faces and seem to be speaking almost normally together in an, at least decent, professional way. However, the minute I turn my back for just a second they're at each others throats with accussations of incompetence and general fighting (not physical though...). Then, when I happen to be alone with one of them, discussing a common area, comes the efforts in trying to convince me of the other woman's incompetence. It's actually pretty annoying to try and break this up time and again...

I've been thinking, maybe I should make them settle the score once and for all in a no holds barred fight, but it might be against the company rules to encourage violence, I think I should double check before I start selling the tickets...

Crappy at three languages

Quite some time ago, I graduated from a Swedish university and even if I by no means were a master of grammars and spelling I think it would be fair to say that I had a pretty decent grasp of language measured up to other natives. My English was also at a decent level with normal everyday conversation no problems but quite a few grammatical and spelling flaws and with a pidgin level of Japanese capable of me making it through the day without not too much pain, but not that great.

Now things have changed, in work my first language is obviously Japanese since all my colleagues are Japanese, but I also frequently talk to people in English in the head office, with other foreign colleagues and at home with Ms. Sunshine. Also, in my years in consulting, English was the primary language. But the times I use Swedish are now pretty rare and usually limited to conversations with family and friends back home, speaking it is now problem at all if you exclude business lingo which I am not completely comfortable with in Swedish. But my writing in terms of spelling and grammars has worsened quite considerably.

So now I am in the situation where my Swedish level has decreased quite a bit, my English ability has increased and my Japanese ability has increased significantly, but as it looks now, I am by no means perfect in any of these languages. So now I've ended up in the strange situation of being semi-crappy in three languages, some form of balance has been struck and the three languages live in harmony and equality inside my head.

Maybe I should mention my German as well, once I had a basic grasp of German, but the Japanese took the German language in my head outside and gave it such a beating that it hasn't really dared to come back. I can still understand a bit, but the moment I try to speak, the Japanese shoves the German in my head to the side and out comes Japanese instead...

I do not intend to learn another language...

Making the Case

Recently I have been precoccupied with finalizing up a business case that is on our table, concerning establishing a separate subsidiary to deal with some business outside the core medical device market, namely the dodgy IT and "service" support side... I have no particular experience with this market and has more been working on it from the business side and putting together all the calcs to see if the investment makes sense and is worthy the millions of dollars that needs to be pumped into it in hiring the staff, investing in the new office and developing the systems etc..

After quite a bit of work and some subtle adjustments of some figures I did come up with a version that gives the company a return on investment 5 years from start of investment (which is the requirement we have for making a "go" or "no go" decision). However, all the revenue forecasts from our brand new IT and service offer comes from the "soon to be" president of this new great subsidiary, but since his business skills are not really enough to convince hardened western executives I got involved. I was pretty satisfied with the financial model and the subsequent business case I put together and am ready to face the dreaded head office management full on to argue the justification of this investment.

However, some of the revenue forecasts seemed a bit too enthusiastic and I sat down with the up and coming president to discuss this. The conversation went something like this:

Mr. Salaryman: Seriously, do you really think we can pull off these kinda figures so soon after launch?

To-be-President: (frowning) No, I think it might be a bit too high estimates actually...

Mr. Salaryman: So you don't think we'll reach the targets you set?

To-be-President: (looking concerned) Well, not really, but we'll do our best...

After talking to a few more related people and everyone basically answering the same way "those figures are a bit too difficult" I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Here we were, the whole organization ready to put on a pitch for something that no one believes in without no one really seeing it as a huge problem... After a week it started getting to me and I started to change around some of the assumptions and limiting some investments to get it more reasonable and finally ending up with a reasonable return on investment. After showing it around to the related people the response was "yes, this looks much better, this we can do".

I don't think this is only my company that's doing things like this, the plain truth is that most organizations become pretty stupid even if the people inside it basically are smart... But now we finally have a feasible and reasonable plan that people believe in, for some reason it makes me a lot more comfortable to negotiate with the dreaded western executives...

Are we not communicate?

The scientific event I attended recently gave me quite a few pearls of entertainment and hearing doctors communicate across borders can be amusing and sometimes borderline absurd. After a lecture when the floor is open for questions, it is not uncommon for exchanges such as this:

Japanese Doctor: (Speaking in severly broken English with a strong Japanese accent) Thank you very much for your beautiful presentation! I am Kawahara from Kyoto . I have two questions for you.

In your lecture, you mentioned that you sometimes treat patients who are suffering…um… um… from, related complications such as this and that which we often… um… um… se in Japan but I have never heard of the things you mentioned because it is not customary…um… here in Japan to treat such complications as you mentioned in your lecture through… um… the treatments you described so I was wondering whether it is normal for the patients to be suffering from these type of complications because I don’t um… think it should be usual and we need to consider many aspects when selecting the appropriate treatment for the patients, things like um… physical um… um… condition, history of illness and other such items I think, so my question to you is how do you perceive this?

American Doctor: Thank you very much for the praise, it is a pleasure for me to come here to beautiful Japan and present some of my findings. What you say is true to some degree, but you must keep in mind that the methods we use here in the United States and Europe are not as accurate as some of the methods that I have heard are available here in Japan. That said, I think that we need to keep in mind that every patient is different and from my own personal experience I have seen some cases where the patients have been overtreated. I think we have a lot to learn from each other. Did that answer your question?

Japanese Doctor: (Says nothing and sits down)

Happy Birthday to my blog!

I just noticed that today is actually exactly two years since I started this blog with this humble little post. So I think that I should congratulate myself for actually keeping this up for the two years I've been doing it, and I have no plans to stop in the near future, at least not as long as the craziness continues all around me.

It's nice to see that the visitor number has been growing, at a humble, but steady rate for each month and regardless of number of visitors dropping in from the link, it's always very flattering and nice to see when people start to link to my site (thank you very much to the latest additions; Karen in Praha, Our man in Abiko and DJlosangeles, I'll get around to linking you back eventually), also fun to see that people from different age groups can find something to like here.

It's always really fun to see a visitor dropping in from a random link and then see how that person spent several hours reading through all my previous posts (but for some reason most people work their way back in time, but if you're going to read through all of it, it would be better to do it from the start, but hey, whatever makes you happy!).

Also, I would like to thank all the people who sometimes leave comments, seeing feedback on a post is one of the really fun things in doing a blog, however, as a pretty rare comment poster myself I fully understand people who are content with just reading the stuff without commenting. I should give a special mention to my favorite comment of all time Kaiju on this post who showed that being a grown man doesn't stop you from throwing random personal insults on the Internet, good man!

It's always hard to know what posts have been most appreciated, if I count "popularity" based on the number of comments a certain post received I find it a bit strange since some of the posts I find most amusing myself generally get the least comments...

Personally, I would probably rate my post on advice in handling large amounts of jizz, the Ikea picture post, my discussion about the shitty box Sapporo sex scene, me taking on stance on the human rights of pygmies and my foray into the always hot topic of Manpanzees as those posts that makes me giggle a bit when I go back and read them again. For some strange reason, those posts received very few comments... It seems like me and my readers are not always completely aligned in our interests here...

Also, I'm pretty satisfied with my choice of pictures and fitting in Ted Bundy, My little Pony, retro Superman, Nazi war criminals, God-Jesus and Fix und Foxi in the same blog is a feat of its own. My own personal favorite though is probably the screenshot I took from the movie "Meet the Feebles".

So, Happy Birthday to my blog and let the congratulations pour in!

I think he's dead

A quick highlight of one of the more entertaining events at the scientific event that I attended recently.
Scenario – A Japanese doctor is holding a lecture in English discussing his participation in setting international guidelines for a certain surgical procedure:

Dr. Deadpan: In 2004, I was in the meeting held in Bonn , Germany , chaired by Dr. Steiner he died (Observe that there is no pause here between “Dr. Steiner” and “he died”, it’s said in one breath)… (Dr. Deadpan silent for a few second and looking like he’s searching in his mind) Yes, he died after the meeting...

Everyone is naked and is having sex all the time - Welcome to Sweden!

To follow up on my previous Sweden post, in addition to the welfare pornography and all the misconceptions around that, there is another image of Sweden that I regularly have been forced to correct during my time here in Japan .

This usually comes from Japanese men in their upper ‘50s and 60’s with the question of “Sweden ? That’s the country of free sex?!” accompanied by a leer. This requires me to have to explain to them that this concept of “free sex” does not mean that a Swedish girl will actually sleep with anyone; but that it means that women in Sweden can actually chose with whom to sleep. Also that the chances that they would actually chose to sleep with the person who asked the question is lower than the chances of the Swiss Navy winning a naval battle with the British Navy.

I have crushed a lot of dreams this way…

We need to discuss what we discussed in the meeting

As I probably have pointed out way too many times by now, I'm pretty used to corporate insanity and stupidity and I've probably gotten used to most of it, but there are still some instances when I can get completely floored by something going on in the company.

A little bit earlier I was asked to participate in a meeting to discuss some of our projects which Mr. "We Have A Serious Problem" is responsible of, due to some unclarities in whether we, as a company, are adhering to the proper rules and regulations. The theme of the meeting was appropriate and nothing I had any issues with, since the company might be stupid, but we are trying to adhere to the appropriate ethics associated with the healthcare business. However, since I am no actively in charge of this project and by no means an expert, I declined to participate but asked them to provide me with the results of the meeting so I can stay informed.

Apparently they had a meeting for 2-3 hours and later in the day I got sent the minutes of the meeting as Mr. "We Have A Serious Problem" compiled them and sent them out. From the corner of my eye, I could follow how the other participants kept having additions and amendments to the meeting sent back and forward to each other (a lot of mails were deleted that day by without being read...). Without following the details I could clearly see that there was a certain amount of disagreement to what actually had been said in the meetings and to my mild amusement I could see how some people wanted to add things that actually hadn't been said or decided upon...

Then, the mail that really floored me came... Obviously from Mr. WHASP and it requested another meeting for 2 hours to "confirm the minutes of the previous meeting"! I couldn't stop myself from laughing out loud at my desk, probably temporarily dropping my mask of sanity. I cannot say how happy I am that I declined to participate in the first meeting!

"This is so exciting!"

There are certain aspects of Japanese culture that I have difficulties wrapping my head around and understanding what the deal is about. I'm talking about the Japanese fascination with wrapping paper and the elaborate wrappings that gifts are subjected to here. If you're a westerner like me, you probably see the wrapping as just an obstacle to tear through like a meat grinder to get to the actual gift hiding inside. However, in general, Japanese people love to admire the wrapping and often also saves the wrapping paper while commenting on how beautiful it is.

Now, wrapping presents is not one of my talents as people in my immediate vicinity are very well aware of and the rare times when I purchase a gift which I cannot have gift-wrapped for me at the shop usually end up pretty messy and something I have to profusely apologize for if the recepient happens to be Japanese.

Just recently I was walking towards the station with the always wonderful Ms. Sunshine and as we were passing by a crappy mom and pop like shop I never paid any attention to ever before, she cries out with excitement "Wow, this is one of those shops!" and pulls me inside it with her. The shop was dedicated to wrapping paper, paper bags and similar stuff, something which holds a minimal interest to me. As she was walking through the small cramped shop she exclaimed repeatedly "This is so exciting!" and once even followed by an enthusiastic "Aren't you excited?!" (thankfully she never gave me time to answer that one, but I assume that my complete lack of excitement was pretty plainly visible on my face).

I think the picture here very well illustrate how differently the two of us must've perceived the shop, it is clear that we saw very different things, to the right is how I imagine that she perceived the store and to the left is how my camera perceived it

I'm not against this excitement about wrapping paper and general obsession with gift wrapping here in Japan, but I do have severe difficulties getting in on the excitement, after all, the wrapping is just an obstacle to getting to the gift!