Yearly Archives: 2015

It’s weird. Now I’m in Japan.

This is the third time to come back to my home country after having lived overseas for years: first, after living in the Kingdom of Tonga for two years, and second, after living in Calgary for four years and half. I’m always surprised at some things after coming back. One of those things is people’s face. When I was young and didn’t imagine I would live overseas, some people said that Japanese people look emotionless. I thought “come on! do people outside of Japan always smile or show anger?”, but now I know what they meant. When I was working in Tonga, especially when I was concentrating on something, my Tongan coworkers often asked me “are you OK?” I always said “yes” and thought “what do you mean? I’m OK as usual!” After coming back to Japan, I wanted to ask everyone “are you OK?” because they looked so emotionless especially when they are commuting. It was a weird feeling. I understood that I often looked, or in another word behaved, like typical Japanese when I was working in Tonga. However, sadly, I eventually came to feel nothing about that because I had become merely one of them.

Recently I wrote about my memory of coffee, in which people on a busy street suddenly looked like emotionless people to me after having a cup of very nice coffee. As I mentioned in the post, it happened before going to Tonga, when I didn’t understand that Japanese people generally look emotionless. Probably, now I think that, the cup of coffee freed me from daily concerns and made me a “normal” person just like coming back from overseas.

Now, which side am I on? Which face do I have? It’s been five days since I came back. Some people look emotionless to me, but the feeling is not as strong as when I came back from Tonga or from Calgary. It’s quite easy to guess why; I had been working for a Japanese company in Canada where some people expected me to work like Japanese, then I was laid off and many frustrating things happened in last few months. Furthermore, I will start a new job in Japan from next week, and I don’t know what it will be like. Honestly, I don’t have a good feeling. But as I often write, what I feel or how I take the situation at the time depends on how I see it. I know it is easy to say but hard to do, but what frees me from daily concern is not a cup of nice coffee but how I see everything. Oh, wait, can this be next year’s resolution?

Of course, coming back to Japan is not necessarily a bad thing. One of good things in Japan is food: not like typical fake Japanese food in Canada but real ones. Even OK-quality typical restaurant food at the airport, as shown below, was good to me. I was even excited by that.

OK, food shouldn’t be the only good thing about Japan. Let’s look for more good things that would help me to free myself.

Companies love to make illusions to increase their revenue. In North America, fat-free is widely believed to be good for your health, but for me who came from a country where people widely recognize that too much sugar is not good for our health, sweetened fat-free yogurt is bad for your health. In Japan, people call electric car “eco-car”, but they cannot be environmentally friendly because the majority of electricity in Japan is generated by burning fossil fuel. The difference between gasoline cars and electric cars is where to pollute, whether on the road or at the power plant. There is virtually no difference between them in terms of global warming. But I don’t blame those consumers because such illusions have been imprinted on their mind by those companies who love to increase their revenue by all means.

Recently, nearly 200 countries gathered in Paris and agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emission. It sounds very challenging. Using electric cars cannot be a solution, at least in Japan for now.

According to this internet article, some researchers have concluded that the world could run entirely on renewable energy by 2050. Is this an illusion? According to the internet article, claiming that replacing all fossil fuel is unrealistic is “mythical”. The following is a quote from the article.

“People who are trying to prevent this change would argue that it’s too expensive, or there’s just not enough power, or they try to say that it’s unreliable, that it will take too much land area or resources,” Jacobson says. “What this shows is that all these claims are mythical.”

“Myth” is often deliberately made. Electric car as “eco-car” in Japan, as mentioned above, is a typical example; the car industry deliberately made the myth (I mean, I hope they are not so ignorant that they seriously think electric cars are environmentally friendly. They are smart, knowledgeable people). If the argument in the internet article is true, who made the myth? Oil and gas industry? I don’t know. In other cases, the root of myth is often unclear. One example is recycling. Many people believe that recycling is good, but in fact it can be only better than disposing because recycling itself requires energy. Reuse is generally better than recycle, or even disposing harmless materials can be better than recycling equivalent materials. I don’t know if the myth was made by recyclable material manufacturers or it has been made because of people’s misunderstanding or ignorance.

When I studied design at the University of Calgary, we took some core courses where students from all the programs of the faculty got together and learned together. In one class, a student from another program provided a short presentation to discuss speed in today’s life style, and asked me a question; “Japanese people do everything fast. What makes you guys do so?” I couldn’t answer the question well because it is “the norm” and we don’t know what has shaped the norm. Some people always rush other people around them assuming it’s “efficient”, but it’s not always the case. Even when nobody rushes us, typical Japanese feel they are forced by “something” to do everything fast. It’s the norm.

This tendency is often obvious in some office environment in Japan. People in Japan generally think they must work log hours everyday, and when they leave their office earlier than their coworkers, even after having worked for more than 10 hours, they apologize. One day, in my third year in my first company (which means, I was only one of a bunch of young employees), a newcomer told me “excuse me Mr. Shibata, I have to leave now. I’m sorry.” I asked him “why do you apologize? Do you think I take offence if you leave earlier than I do?” He replied “no.” Then I asked “who do you think would get angry if you leave now?” He said “you may be right. Nobody, maybe.” What I wanted to tell him is that he wouldn’t need to worry about it, but it revealed that we were somehow controlled by ambiguous rules. Why does it happen?

You may have heard of recent news about Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, like this internet article; he has decided to take parental leave for two months. By the way, if I understand correctly, the term “parental leave” has been recognized relatively recently because that type of leave used to be only called “maternity leave”. Anyways. Many people might wonder why it was possible, and the internet article describes the theory behind that.

New parents at Facebook can take four paid months off. They receive benefits such as $4,000 for each child born or adopted. As we’ve written before, however, employees may feel reluctant to take advantage of such plans if their companies don’t have a culture that encourages taking time off. And company culture typically comes from the top.

I believe he thought not only about his family but also thought of his employees. According to another internet article, only few employees take this type of leave even if everyone is allowed to do so. There must be different reasons, and probably some of them do not take leave because it’s the norm. I want to believe that such a norm can be changed by strong leadership, and it can even influence other companies or organizations where people are controlled by unwritten rules. While the norm is usually formed unintentionally by a big group of people, corporate culture can be developed by leaders as mentioned in the internet article above. Unfortunately, many people at higher positions in an organization, typically managers, do not have to lead others as long as they manage their job, as I wrote in an old post. As I wrote in another old post, a sophisticated system can be made by smart people in an organization, and I want to believe that they also, or possibly other people, lead others to maintain the system.

My mom never listened to me (and she must have thought I never listened to her). For a few years after graduating from my university, I stayed at my parents’ place and spent more than an hour to commute to work. I usually worked until late and as a result had supper at home late at night. It was only something to take to live and I didn’t want to spend time on it. I preferred something simple and told it to my mom, but she always prepared something that takes time to have such as hot pot. Eating was not something to enjoy but a time consuming daily task to me.

At that time I only thought I didn’t have time, but it might not be a matter of time. It might be the way of my thinking. I could have thought that supper was a time to forget about the job and release myself. But because of the demanding job I was not mentally healthy enough to think in that way. I don’t know if my mom wanted me to enjoy supper for this reason or she simply didn’t listen to me. Whichever it was, one thing that worsened the situation was that I didn’t know what cooking for other people is like then.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I went to ROM, Royal Ontario Museum, right after being laid off by the uncivilized company. Whenever I go there, as I wrote in an previous post, I find different things interesting or attractive to me. This time, a collection of cookware and tableware in the Pompeii special exhibition caught my attention. The common practice in Pompeii, or in any ancient Roman cities, seems not very different from that in Japan in the Samurai era as we see in so-called samurai dramas or movies; in upper-class houses, the kitchen was a busy place where servants worked and the dining room was a place for the rich people to enjoy meals, as depicted by the practically designed cookware and the decorative tableware. But that style of having a meal, which is still common in many societies today, is only a form of happiness, I believe. After having experienced living by myself and cooking for myself, I’ve found that cooking can be as fun as having a meal especially when cooking for other people.

Yesterday I had Izakaya Hiro with my ex-coworkers. In an old post that I wrote a little after moving to my current apartment room, I wrote that I would invite my friends and have a party. Izakaya is Japanese style bar restaurant where people enjoy drinking and eating traditional and modern Japanese food. Izakaya Hiro is a small party at my place where I serve my original Japanese and Asian fusion food to my friends. I enjoyed cooking for my friends and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the meal. It was really fun. I’ve had Izakaya Hiro several times and now I know what cooking should be like and what eating should be like.

In the Izakaya Hiro yesterday we talked about a book that I wrote about in an early post: 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん (My Gabai Grandma from Saga). In the book, the author tells about his financially-poor AND happy life with his grandma in his childhood. Today I read the book again and found something I have forgotten, which happens to be one of the 12 tools for more mindful living as I wrote in the previous post: be grateful. We tend to seek things that we don’t have and forget to appreciate what we have. Whether we are happy or not depends on how we think. Interestingly, in the foreword the author says that even layoff could be good if you think differently; it could be a chance to release you from a demanding life. When I read it, I thought “bingo!” Of course it does not mean that I don’t need to do job hunting, but it means that the current unstable situation could be a good period for me.

My apartment is very old and many things do not work. Elevators never work normally. Intercom does not work at all. Air condition does not work properly especially when the season changes. Hot water stops once in a few months. Those are all technical issues, but they are not all. The laundry room is supposed to be opened at 9:30 am on weekend, but it rarely happens because someone does not do his or her job (we even don’t know who the someone is). Last weekend, I went to the laundry room around 9:45 am to find it was still locked and more than a few people were waiting. I waited for one minute and decided to go back to my room. About half an hour later, I went there again, but it was still locked and all the people who I saw last time were still waiting there. They wasted at least half an hour, and no one knew how many more minutes they would need to wait.

I was only lucky when I decided to go back to my room. There is no strategy to predict what time the laundry room will be opened. This laundry room case is only a simple example, of course, and everything happening around us is unpredictable (except for the speed of light!?). We often need to let things happen, and when something undesirable happens, we often need to accept it.

This is pretty much like what I learned and wrote on this blog a little more than two years ago. At that time, I found an internet article titled “12 Tools For More Mindful Living” and learned, for example, to become okay with discomfort or to let go of control, but two years seem long enough to forget that. This is what I wrote in an old post titled “Memory” a little more than a year and half ago.

As I wrote in the previous post, life is uncontrollable, and probably I should accept that being unstable is “normal”. It is kind of good to remember the feeling of helplessness to get ready for the next helpless period. Who knows?

Now I am a job hunter again. Who knew it? Nobody. I should recall this feeling again, and accept whatever as it is.

Today I had a chance to go to a cafe where a friend of mine works. This is what I found inside the cafe.

Actually I found that happiness in my cup of coffee. Even when we do not have a cup of nice coffee, we should be able to find happiness everywhere. We should learn what mindful living is like.

By the way, I wrote about a ladybug in a recent post, and according to an internet article (sorry but turn down the volume on your computer before clicking this link), there was a reason for “ladybug invasion”: warm weather. A more surprising fact for me is that ladybugs are generally disliked in Canada, while they are usually liked in Japan. Hey, Canadians, be happy whether ladybugs are beneficial insects or not!

Nearly three years ago I wrote about my old-fashioned manual coffee grinder. Now it is more than ten years old, and cannot grind coffee evenly. I don’t think I will throw it away even if it does not work properly because I have developed attachment for it. It is actually one of two manual coffee grinders I brought from Japan, and today I cleaned the other one, which is more “stylish” and has not been used as much as the old-fashioned one, to use it from now on. I need a manual coffee grinder to brew a cup of coffee which satisfies me.

My passion for coffee dates back to my young adult days. It was when I had worked for my first company for about a couple of years. One day, I was going to have a small party with my university friends after work. We were meeting at a train station, but in those days we did not have google map and could not estimate travel time accurately. When I got to the train station it was still too early and I had to kill time. In Japan, in front of or around every major train station, there is shotengai, which is usually translated to “shopping street” in English. But typical shotengai is different from what people in North America imagine from “shopping street”; it is usually a busy place, streets are typically narrow, they rarely sell luxuries but mainly sell commodities, and shops are generally not stylish. At the train station, I thought there might be a coffee shop or something to kill time in the shotengai, and walked around there. After a while, unexpectedly, on the second floor of a small building I found a sophisticated coffee shop which did not match the shotengai atmosphere. It did not need to be an elegant place only to kill time, but I was interested in the fine-looking cafe. I went upstairs and took a window-side table. There was a couple of university students near me, and they were talking like “is it really OK for us to be in such a nice place? Can we afford this?” At that time I was a working adult dressed in a suit and quietly thought “I can afford this”. The coffee they served were more expensive than typical ones, and I found the price “reasonable”. It tasted so good, and gave me a nice feeling. Then I looked down outside the window. There were busy people walking on the narrow street. Suddenly they looked like a bunch of emotionless poor people to me. But the fact is that I was only one of them until several minutes ago. I asked myself “what makes me different from them?” Then I thought “does this cup of coffee makes me different from them?” The answer is “no”, obviously.

At that time I could not find anything special that made me myself. When I graduated from my university and started working for the company, I had a sort of future vision. But as a couple of years passed by, I gradually became aware of the gap between the vision and the reality. Since the moment when I though for one second that a cup of nice coffee makes me different from other people, I had thought what I could really do to retain myself. Eventually I decided to go to a developing country to do a volunteer job, and ended up coming to Canada to pursue my dream job. Since that moment, coffee has been something special for me.

Now what? It’s been a week since I was laid off, but I still have no concrete strategy for job hunting. I might be taking time to accept the reality, but one week must have been enough. I know that when doing helpless job hunting it is so easy to lose myself. Let’s sit back and think of it, with a cup of nice coffee in my room. I may need to recall the feeling I had in the elegant coffee shop, but what I see outside now is not a crowd of people but the sky, like this.