Category Archives: Just a thought

Technically speaking, I am a professional Japanese-English translator/interpreter.  But English is still difficult for me though I have used English for more than 10 years.  Having said that, what troubles me when I interpret between Canadians and Japanese is not language but attitude.  It’s attitude barrier.

I was born and raised in Japan, but since when I was a little kid, I’ve had difficulties in communicating with typical Japanese.  When they tell something to other people, they hide important points between the lines.  Canadians do it in some degree, but typical Japanese do it in much higher degree.  So, when they listen to other people, they always try to read between the lines.  It’s like coding and decoding.  For some reasons, I cannot code and decode in their way.  When I speak frankly, they assume I imply something. If I say, “no, I’m not implying anything”, they assume I imply something by saying it.  As I wrote in a previous post, in Japan, it is important to show your efforts.  When someone asks other people to do something that they cannot afford to do, they do not say “I cannot do it” but make tremendous efforts to do it, which makes other people feel bad. So, they try to avoid asking other people to do something whether it is demanding for them or not.  If someone says “I can do it”, typical Japanese assume the person implies that he/she cannot afford to do it but will make tremendous efforts to do it because he/she was asked to do so.  If they want someone to do something, they do not tell it to the person but expect him/her to read their mind.  If the person do not do it, they complain about the person behind his/her back.  All those things happen in the current work place, and it often causes problems between Canadians and Japanese.  I’ve tried to explain it to my Japanese coworkers, but they never understand it.

A good thing is that now my Canadian colleagues understand me.  When I lived in Japan and had problems caused by the attitude barrier, those Japanese told me “you are wrong”.  Now I know I was not wrong.

In a previous post, I wrote about corporate culture based on the Toyota’s recall case.  In the post, I discussed communication among different engineering teams, and wrote “Now I imagine how they have established the system.  Did anyone take initiative to communicate among development teams?  Or did anyone establish a system to share information among different teams whether or not they are willing to communicate?”. Recently I found an internet article that shows a case in which the latter system does not work.

Probably many people know the nightmare of Boeing 787 Dreamliner.  I found an internet article that introduces insight into it.  Boeing outsourced the majority of engineering and construction of the plane, expecting it would reduce the development cost and time.  But the result was totally opposite.  To make a long story short, Boeing could not manage communication with and among partners.  According to the article, Boeing adopted, or at least tried to adopt Toyota’s outsourcing system.  But they only superficially adopted the structure of the system and did not lean the culture.  Boeing introduced a web-based communication tool to share information with partners, like I imagined as in the previous post, and it failed.

Now I am sure about two things.  First, communication among engineering teams is not easy.  Second, copying a system does not work unless the corporate culture is understood and introduced appropriately.  Probably I will face situation like this in some degree in the future.

As I wrote in a previous post, I bought a car.  Was it a good choice?  I still don’t know.  I mean, I chose a good car, but don’t know if buying a car was a good choice or not.  As I wrote in the post, I seriously thought of environmental impact when I decided to buy a car.  But this internet article about “dis-ownership” points out another critical issue; people choose sharing over owning not because it is “green” but because it saves money, as the article goes “the new status symbol isn’t what you own–it’s what you’re smart enough not to own”.

Of course I knew it when I bought the car, and now I know it as reality.  It costs.  What compensation do I get?  Time.  Is time money?  Yes, sorta.

I agree with the author of the article; when I was in Japan and spent more than an hour to commute by public transportation, I read a lot of books.  But it does not work here in Orillia.  Before I bought the car, I used bus to go to work, but I spent less than 10 minutes on bus and spent way more time on walking and waiting for a bus, i.e., I could do very limited things when commuting such as briefly checking internet news on my Blackberry.  Now, with the car, I have more time to do more things.  I bought time.

As I wrote in another previous post, I spent more than a week in downtown Toronto, and did not use my car a lot there.  Probably in some cities, sharing is a better and smarter choice than owning.  This raises another question.  How can more cities be smarter ones?

Today I used bus to go to downtown to look for a hair salon; I expected I would walk around to find one in downtown where parking is limited.  And I ended up choosing one with parking in front.  Oh well.

I spent 11 days at my friends’ place in downtown Toronto during the Christmas vacation to take care of their dog while they visited their parents’ place in Calgary.  The photo below was taken from their room.  Now I have spent a little more than a week in Orillia since I came back from Toronto.  I ask myself; which is better to live, urban area or rural area?  As I mentioned in a previous post, Toronto is not a favorite city to live for many people, but I actually enjoyed staying in the core of downtown Toronto.  Many things, almost everything you need in your daily life is available near by.  In Orillia, I use my car almost daily.  When I was in Toronto, I usually walked and used public transportation, and even missed my car because I used it only once in a few days.  And of course, Toronto is generally more lively, exciting and inspiring than Orillia for many reasons.  I found one authentic Japanese food restaurant, and there must be a few more.  So, is urban life more suitable for me?

However, interestingly, a day after I got back to Orillia, I felt like walking in downtown Orillia, which is even smaller than downtown Hamilton or Kensington Street in Calgary, where most buildings only have two stories.  I actually liked it.  Honestly speaking, I did not enjoy living in Hamilton; it is not big enough to be sophisticated and not small enough to have hospitality.  I like the small town’s hospitality in Orillia, which I did not find in Toronto.

So, which do I prefer???  Anyways, let’s see what job I get after April and where I will go.

As I often write, I think one of my roles in the current job is, albeit unofficially, to bridge the cultural gap between Canadians and Japanese.  I’ve found it is easier to explain a cultural difference to Canadians than to Japanese.  When I talk about a difference (hoping it will make the job easier), Canadians typically say “aha, it is different from Canadian style”, while Japanese typically say “Canadians don’t understand the Japanese way”.  What makes this difference?

Probably one of the reasons is the history.  Canadians, as described as cultural mosaic, embrace diversity.  Let me assume I do not need to explain the reason.  On the other hand, Japan is, to make a long story short, composed of one ethnic group except for the Northern part and the Southern part for complicated historical reasons.  (A large number of Koreans migrated to Japan a few thousand years ago, but their offspring are considered to be Japanese today.  Probably I am one of them.)  Therefore, Japanese people are generally conservative and do not accept diversity.

For other unknown reasons, when Japanese people find two different things, they, probably unconsciously, try to judge which is right or correct and which is wrong.  This is one of the reasons why I prefer living in Canada to Japan.  When I do something different from what the majority of people do, Japanese typically say “you are wrong” while Canadians generally say “that’s different”.  Canadians have more acceptability. Probably they are more adaptable.

Perhaps one of the reasons of their reaction is my stance.  For Canadian colleagues, I am a counterpart who gets closer to them.  On the other hand, for Japanese coworkers, I am a fellow who stands on the other side.

Anyways, this is more interesting experience than I had previously expected.  Now, let’s enjoys this.

Patch Adams is one of my most favorite movies.  When Adams is a psychiatric patient, he finds that healing people heals himself.  After being discharged from the psychiatric hospital, he becomes a medical student and heals patients with humor.  This movie is based on a real story.

It is always good to see a thing from different perspectives.  As I often mention, I am half designer, half engineer.  I can see a product from different perspectives.  As I wrote in a previous post, I like teaching, but I was a bad student when I was in Japan.  I can see students from a teacher’s perspective and from a bad student’s perspective.  But the most difficult thing to see from different perspectives is myself.

As I often write, it is so easy to get discouraged in my current situation.  When I see my friend who is discouraged, for whatever reason, I project myself into her/him.  This is the moment when I see myself from a different perspective.  I tell my friend what I want to be told, and find that encouraging my friends encourages myself.

Many of my friends know I love coffee, and many of them know that I use a manual coffee grinder.  They know its quality.  It is also enjoyable; I like the feeling, the sound, and of course, the aroma.  Many people have been impressed, and no one has complained about it, until today.

Today someone told me to use an electric coffee “grinder” because it is “efficient”.  But she missed two important points.  First of all, what she calls is electric coffee “grinder” is actually coffee chopper.  Grinding and chopping are physically different.  Second of all, she does not understand the meaning of “efficiency”.  What she means by “efficient” only means quick, and she dose not care about quality.  While efficiency can be defined as the quality of the outcome divided  the time and/or effort to produce the outcome, she only cares about the speed.  The quality of outcome by an electric coffee chopper is poor, and using it is not enjoyable at all.  I was so surprised to see a person who does not understand it.

Although she is an extreme example, many other people misunderstand the meaning of efficiency; they do not distinguish the difference between efficiency and speed.  Pursuing speed without considering efficiency is like designing a mechanical component without tolerance.  It is like people; life without having tolerance is miserable.

One day I hung out with my Canadian friends and had rich cheesecake.  One of them asked me “what is ‘rich’ in Japanese?”  What I came across was something you hear in Iron Chef judge’s comment, but people do not speak like that in casual conversation. Then I thought how I would explain traditional Japanese food that has a rich taste, but I could not find any example.  Conclusion: no traditional Japanese food has a rich taste, thus Japanese do not have a casual expression that describes rich taste.  Since a language develops in a culture, this is quite natural.

Now I work between Japanese engineers and Canadian workers.  I have known that translation between two languages is, ultimately, impossible, and found that it is quite difficult to explain it to people who have not been exposed to foreign cultures.  Merely staying or even living in a foreign country dose not count unless they talk with locals in “their language” whether it is their native language or not.

As I wrote in a previous post, I like teaching and have experiences in teaching in different settings.  It is relatively easy to teach to people if they are willing to learn.  If not, the first step before teaching is to make them understand that they need to learn. Now, I work with Japanese engineers who do not need to learn Canadian culture or English-speaking culture and in fact are not interested in it.  My struggle continues.

One of today’s top news is Toyota’s recall.  While the focus in Canada is its scale and impact, Japanese internet news tell the inside.  Toyota, like many other car companies today, uses common parts among different types of vehicles.  This is a double-edged sword; it reduces development cost and time, and if the part is ill-designed, it affects all types of vehicles that use the parts, 2.77 millions in this case.

Let me talk about this from a different perspective; how do they manage car development in that way?  Generally speaking, engineers do not communicate.  When I worked for a famous Japanese company to develop endoscopic systems, the parts commonly used among different products are limited to very basic, off-the-shelf parts such as switches.  The system to save digital endoscopic images was a good example. A team developed an image processing unit; it converts analog images to digital images to process it, and then converts it to analog images to output.  Another team developed an image saving unit; it receives analog images from an image processing unit and converts it to digital images to save.  If those development teams communicated, it wouldn’t have had to convert images three times which lowers the quality of image.  If I understand correctly, in Toyota and other car companies, development teams communicate, or they have a system to share information among development teams. It may sound easy, but from my experiences in engineering jobs, I can tell that it is not as easy as it sounds for big organizations.

Now I imagine how they have established the system.  Did anyone take initiative to communicate among development teams?  Or did anyone establish a system to share information among different teams whether or not they are willing to communicate?  In either case, I imagine, it was a paradigm shift.  I want to assume they have a constructive corporate culture.

A few years ago in Japan, talking about unique characteristics of a prefecture was a fad. Although some arguments were suspicious, each prefecture definitely has different characteristics.  For example, people in the Northern part of Japan are generally humble; when they need help, they don’t say so, even when the earthquake and tsunami hit the Northern part of Japan 20 months ago.  They are very different from some of the Sandy survivors.

Today is only a day 2 of my new life in Orillia and it is still too early to talk about characteristics of this city, but I have a feeling that people here are different from those in Hamilton.  But, first of all, what characterizes a city?  History?  Main industry? Weather?

Some days ago, I wrote about corporate culture, and there may be similarities; new people are influenced by other people who have been there since a long time ago, whether it is positive or negative.  One of the differences is probably that corporate culture can be changed positively by a strong leader.  Unlike local communities, people who work for a corporation chose to work there, more or less, for a common goal.  A strong leader can, literally, lead people to the goal.