Globalization Adventures in Bavaria

The Sun the Beach and the Nigerians

2011-06-26T15:53:00.001+02:00

Already a few days into summer vacation I have finally found a good app for blogging outside office. It is still early season here in Spain so there is not much traffic anyway. So I am sitting here, listening to some good old Sisters of Mercy and watching some illegal immigrants making their living. Obviously they must have discovered a new business-model. After picking crops and selling sunglasses on the beach they have seem to have discovered the meat-market. So if you are black, decently built and broke, you can always try the following: Grab your bike and go along the beach until you spot some 40+ woman sitting there all by herself reading a book. Place yourself in her line of sight and strip down to your white D&G swim-shorts. Before going into the water do some stretching. Make sure you have her attention before diving into the waves for a few minutes. When you come out again make sure your efforts with the white shorts did not go wasted. Maybe throw in some additional posing when drying your body in the wind (no towel!). Now it is time for some exercise to flex your muscles, preferably one-armed push-ups...
Don't ask me if such a dumb strategy could ever work. In the observed case the victim packed her stuff and went away before I could see the finishing move. On the other hand as I said, season is just about to start.

Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 3)

2011-06-07T11:41:00.002+02:00

Due to some holiday we just had a long 4-day weekend and we spent a good deal of it mentally reclaiming our apartment from the bad vibes that were left by the psychological weaponry our Japanese house-guests had used against us. In my opinion we were quite successful with our countermeasures so most probably this will be the last or almost last part in this series of ranting off my stress from what you might call an "unfortunate" pick of friends. Indeed I agree that for sure you would (hopefully) find Japanese that would behave differently than our series of worst-case experience. My point is just that there most likely is some hidden explosive power in putting together German, Chinese and Japanese culture under the same roof.

Reason Nr. 2: The Wrath of the Japanese Housewife
A constant source for unrest with Japanese house-guests is always that what seems to be a completely antiquated perception of the role of men and women in Japanese society. To the ingenuous observer it seems to be that the sole reason for Japanese women to exist is to serve their husband. From my experience of Japanese culture I think that in reality this is much more complicated than it looks on the first glance. I do not think I can elaborate on this further here. The funny thing however is that sometimes my Japanese house-guests seem to believe that it is exactly as simple as this. Especially when they come in contact with the very pragmatic style in our household. Between me and Ms. Moonshine there is almost no fixed distribution of work at home. Since we both are heavily loaded with work we apply a kind of dynamic scheduling. For example who's at home first and is hungry starts cooking. Who thinks it's too dirty starts cleaning etc. During phases of extreme stress or workload that can mean one person has to do most of the work but over time the accounts usually balance quite well. Therefore when we have house-guests I do not feel strange when it is me standing side-by side with a Japanese house-wife in the evening preparing for dinner while the crazy scientists stay in the lab until late at night to finish some important experiment. I do however feel strange when the kitchen talk over more than one hour everyday is about how much she hates cooking, how bad her cooking is, how embarrassed she is cooking in our home etc. etc. Of course "I can read the air" but there is simply no way I will come home after a 10h day as a Manager and cook for 4 people while the only house-wife had slept until 11, was shopping, out for a coffee with a friend, had watched 3 parts of "gossip girl" on youtube and the most difficult decision today was which bar to go in the evening.
On the other hand I would never in my wildest dreams have the idea of asking my 1.50 cm <45kg wife: "honey can carry that old laser-printer to my office (which I will go anyway - but I am a lazy bastard) tomorrow?" No matter how Japanese my wife could be, some things should be done by the person with the proper physique.
Good thing is our tolerance level towards other cultures is quite high. Sadly the other way round this is not the case. Sooner or later the "battle of the sexes" happens in our peaceful household. If he comes back late he will be not allowed to eat anything leftover from our side of cooking so that he does not get used too much to good food that is time consuming to prepare. He in turn will find extra humiliating senseless work for her to do to keep her occupied. She will go on strike not doing anything anymore in our household because all men are suppressing women for thousands of years anyhow so it is completely ok, if the only one who has a real job and earns real money comes home and cleans the toilets for 4 persons.
I guess all in all Ms Moonshine and I are always regarded as a threat to the typical Japanese lifestyle. Both ways of course, but this does no make it better.

Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 2)

2011-06-01T13:35:00.002+02:00

With the Japanese house-guests finally out of the house and being the boss of my own crib again (Ms Moonshine was away for a seminar) it was a pleasantly quiet evening yesterday - the right moment to officially establish a new "rule for life" not to ever allow Japanese friends in the house for more than 24h again. That written down on a piece of pergament and signed in my own blood there was still some evening time left to reflect on the actual reasons for that new rule.

Reason Nr. 1: Cracks in the Facade
One of the biggest source for tension when living with friends under the same roof for a while is the actual difference between "seem" and "being". What people "are" and what they would like to "appear" to others is usually never the same thing. Even Ms. Moonshine and I have a certain facade that we use outside to protect our inner happiness. In our case this facade is not too much different from what we actually are. Just since both of us already painfully learned in high-school that no-one likes people that are overly smart we usually play a little dumb and pretend to have not recognized or know certain things that were not supposed to be recognized by the average person. That way we brainiacs are not perceived as a threat to any dark secrets people might have and that way we can get along with most people and well integrate in our social circles. Otherwise we are pretty authentic, because we think it is way to cumbersome to keep up a second public identity.

From my personal experience with Japanese culture however I have the impression that it is the most superficial society in the world. It seems nowhere else in the world the following things are so important:
Smile all day, saying "thank you" or "sorry" without really meaning it, clothing style, hair-style, number of "friends", "invitations", money, number of vacation pictures, reputations of restaurants you go, how many dishes your wife cooked for your lunch-box etc. etc. Everything over there seems to be a competition of how many, how much, how long, how big etc. In such a fierce competition environment people sooner or later must feel forced to "optimizing" their perceived performance. This can be done by omitting certain details about your quirky political views, religious believes, kinky sex life and so on. This can also be done by inventing additional things like friends you do not have, a non existing kinky sex life, driving a car you cannot afford etc. Most of the time however the fake public facade is not really creative, just something like you pretend to have a happy marriage and being the nice guy outside and then go home and beat up your wife. Or you pretend to be the interesting womanizer outside and at home you are just a boring gay guy watching sex & the city all day.

But no matter how your public facade might look like, one thing is for sure. It is almost impossible to keep up the act once you are living together in the same household. After a few days your facade will get the first cracks and your real "you" will start shining through. The bigger the difference between reality and illusion was in the beginning, the bigger the felt embarrassment and problems will be. In our case the Bavaria/Moonshine household had not so many things to hide except maybe the real age of Ms. Moonshine and that at a certain point it was impossible to pretend that we had not recognized that our Japanese friend's Peruvian husband is not a super-lazy ultra-latino-macho with taliban like catholic beliefs who basically thinks women are only born to serve men by all means. If he practically could he would even call his wife to the toilet to wipe his ass off. Definitely he was not the loving caring "much-better-than-Japanese-man" type that he was advertised outside. And his wife was for sure not the multi-interested cosmopolitan but still loving and caring perfect Japanese housewife. More the boring countryside girl that hated cooking and drowned her frustration about the slow career advancement of her lazy husband in tons of beer. And her real hobbies to fill her boredom were not fine arts and lyric but manipulating people, hardcore horror movies and young students.

Naturally this was bound to lead into disaster. Not so much because us seeing the truth since most things we had figured out before already (besides I like horror movies, too). It was more them realizing that we must have figured it, but still tolerate it, so we either must have figured it before already (and pretend we didn't) or we cannot be part of the ultra-hip society they glorify, because we know, but not totally despise their secrets. Consequently two things happened. First they started hating us for knowing their secrets. Second they tried to protect their remaining secrets by all means, meaning not talking to us at all if possible and using our apartment only when we are not there in a kind of shift. We were the night-shift and they started partying at night and sleeping during daytime. Not particularly bad you might think but it will give you a feeling of your house being invaded by someone who thinks you have some crazy transferable disease. In other words it makes you feel like being back in high-school. And I really hated two things in my life: High-school and people that tried to manipulate me.

Japanese House-guests from Hell (part 1)

2011-05-31T17:44:00.002+02:00

Today is a great day. When I will be home from office our house-guests-from-hell (hopefully) will be gone for ever and never to be seen again. Actually this was the second (and officially the last time) that we - out of some emotional attachment to Japanese culture - will ever help out some Japanese friend in a kind of housing/hotel-emergency case by offering them our guest-room until their condition has resolved.
Not that they overstay their welcome in particular or that Ms. Moonshine or I would suffer from a kind of weird house-rule syndrome that would make living together in the same household for some time a kind of never-ending nightmare. On the contrary I personally think that we are probably the nicest and most relaxed hosts in this whole wide world. Since we both work, we are rarely at home. Our apartment is rather spacious to allow everyone to spread out and have some privacy when needed. We are neither overly tidy nor utterly untidy. We like to cook and don't mind cooking some additional servings as long as it does not become a regular institution. Also we both grew up in an environment where we learned to share basically everything with our brother or sister, so we do not really need to have "our" tomatoes and "their" tomatoes side-by side in the fridge.
So in summary I would say we have everything that is needed to make the stay of some guests over several days or even weeks a pleasant experience for both, them and us and so far this has been always the case...except for when the house-squatting party happens to contain some Japanese.
In such a case the outcome seems to always similar. After some time the atmosphere becomes somewhere between slightly chilly and deep-frozen and when they move out we never talk to each other again, even though we used to consider them as friends for several years.
I know this might sound like Mr. Bavaria and Ms Moonshine are just a weirdo couple that makes use of poor Japanese people's emergency situations to lure them into our dungeon and torture them until they finally manage to escape their doom, barely saving their lives. However there is this huge evidence of numerous other non-Japanese house-guests that we had a great time with together and became even closer friends and they basically always can't wait to visit us again. As a first conclusion, the reason must be hidden in the mere fact of the house-guests being Japanese...

Mondai Meetings (I don't like Mondays)

2011-05-24T14:24:00.004+02:00

One of the most noticeable changes of our little "overseas" place being transformed into something 100% Japanese-like in is the total number and time spent in (useless) meetings. Especially Monday seems to be a day I can quite confidently forget about getting anything useful done for the future. It starts with the weekly team meeting which is kind of necessary, transitions smoothly into people-bother-you-even-while-eating (aka lunch-meeting), followed by the company all-hands meeting with all the information about how to correctly fill out the latest forms. It continues with the research-update-meeting, where you usually hear about which nice conferences people went to, what they ate and (yes there was something...) what ultra-boring presentation they heard that might be slightly relevant to "maybe" one other person in the company. If you are lucky there are a few minutes left in the time slot so you can run and get a mug of coffee before you enter the dreaded research-management meeting where you get confronted with things that regular employees better not see, otherwise they would immediately start looking for a new job (for example 1 year plans to come up with a 6 month plan).

On the bright side - it took the employees only 2 weeks to come up with a new technical term for this state of idle pastime at the beginning of a week: Mondai (=something like "Problem" in Japanese) Meetings.

No Clue? - Make a Questionaire!

2011-05-20T13:54:00.003+02:00

Today was a quite special day. In my inbox I found even two new emails in the kind of half-threatening, half-asking-for-help style, trying to harass you into participation of a company-wide survey.

Back in the good old days where we still used to use or own brains such a survey came up maybe once a year for some really tough questions like "what food do you want at the christmas party".

Now our company is finally 110% fully Japan compliant and we consequently try to apply swarm-intelligence on almost any new operational issue like for example:

- I got a task to create the company facebook page...

question 1.) Can you explain me what facebook is?

question 2.) What should I put on the page?

- We need to save money...

question 1.) do you know about any unnecessary expenses we could cut?

question 2.) if this is not enough, what necessary expenses should we cut?

Power to the people!

But this time, really!

2011-05-19T17:45:00.002+02:00

Yikes! Being promoted into management AND writing a blog seems to be something that does not go very well together. However yesterday I had one of these life-changing moments (after a couple of mojitos) where you suddenly decide that you are not really happy with the way things are working out currently. Very often such moments go along with a certain desire to change something - or in my case yesterday - change something back. To make it short - I decided that I want my life back as it was before and I am going to start with picking up this blogging activity where I had left it.

Finally back...

2010-11-22T12:40:00.002+01:00

After a long break I finally made it back. Things went really crazy this year and completely out of control after our new Japanese president had decided to turn our little European dependency into a 110% Japanese compliant environment.

Only 10% of our employees are actually Japanese, and many of them had left Japan years ago to escape from that 100% Japanese thing. The other 90% come from about 13 different nations and cultures around the globe and most of them are not fully compatible with the hardcore Japanese style of work environment.

Naturally that lead to a large fluctuation and since no-one wants to be last to leave a sinking ship I had also decided to enforce my next career step somewhere else. However things usually turn out different than expected. At a certain point it became very difficult to hide my plans since head-hunters started calling me everyday and all these 1-day off applications to do some job interviews in remote cities did not go unnoticed.

Long story short: During my summer vacation I suddenly received a phone call that it was decided to promote me to manager of a team of 3 people (that has grown now to 6). Of course there were a lot of conditions and the connected raise was ridiculously low (almost insulting) but for various reasons it was almost impossible to reject such an offer.

Also obviously I did not get promoted, because I had lots of supporters or deemed (already) suitable for that position. It was more about our president making a lot of non-deliberate promises to Japan and the deadline to full fill these promises was only 3 month away. Others that had been originally promoted to finish the job in 9 month were obviously failing and also obviously there are not many people on earth who can finish 10 IT projects in just 3 months with a fixed deadline and most of them work for Google or Microsoft but for sure they do not work for a Japanese company.

Even for me that was quite some challenge. But after 3 month of continuos work, 15-18h days and no weekends the work was done and the presentation in Japan (from which I have just returned and have quite some crazy stories to tell) was a nice success. Now it is time to get some rest and go back to normal life for some time.

Life is slow…

2010-03-21T09:55:00.001+01:00

In a list of things that can bore you to death, technical trainings are for sure in the top ranks, no matter where in the world you are working. Things get however a little more tricky if you work in a globalized setting.

For me it currently means listening to a fat Chinese dude trying to speak English but ending up with a French accent, applying Chinese grammar style. Most of my training time I spend 0n figuring out what is a “vaidiuu (=video)” or the correct “leewaal (=level) of attention to pay.

But the really bad thing is that I would have plenty of time blogging but just nothing to blog about. It is almost like the universe would take a break when it sends you to a technical training. Every day is just a perfect copy of the last one. You get up early in the morning with the distinct kind of Groundhog Day feeling that somehow you have lived through that very same day already and can predict with 100 % accuracy what will happen next. After rushing to the train your whole day passes in the blink of an eye and you will find yourself in the late evening trying to figure where to get some food to cook your dinner.

This torture will go on for another 3 weeks so I think I better come up with a decent plan for some extra-work activity or I will go crazy (or run out of topics to write) for sure.

picture: "Blood-Thirsty Beast Bites Bloomberg" by Mike Licht from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

It's great to be useless...

2010-02-22T10:02:00.004+01:00

According to the CEO of our little Japanese overseas gulag, the last round of promotions was done "strictly based on performance". After several days of thinking about why I had been screwed again in that corporate game I came to the conclusion that Japanese might always mean what they say literally. Obviously my performance must have been not "bad", it was just "wrong". Consequently I decided that from now on, it would be most beneficial to just show the "same" performance as the people that got promoted. That means I have to try to be completely useless and oppose the plans of the CEO in every way possible while at the same time looking incredibly busy working on things that only I personally benefit from. Here is a short abstract of last week when applying that new strategy for the first time:

Being a completely useless moron is actually hard work in the beginning. All the time you catch yourself accidentally giving out helpful comment to others or feeling incredibly bored. It gets much better as soon as you find a project that only you benefit from, while at the same time your work is completely useless for the company. For me personally that was actually more easy than I initially thought. I just shifted the focus of my research project from something that could be used next year to something that has a 20 year time horizon. That also has the advantage that no-one else can understand what you are doing and you never have to deliver an actual hard result until in 20 years.
Actually not doing anything productive frees up a lot of time to clean your office, do administrative paperwork and so on. People from the administration section suddenly get much more friendly and praise you for your tidiness and timely delivery of time-sheets, travel reports etc.
Since you are useless in any economical sense, there are no longer hard deadlines you have to meet. And even if there are, you suddenly find out that you have been the only one in the company who ever tried to actually full fill them. Being released from that burden you find yourself with plenty of left over spare time to enhance your social life or pursue you hobbies.

Especially the last part can actually generate a beneficial feedback for your work life again. On Friday I was out with a Japanese fellow worker and learned that the Japanese expatriates already had asked back into their network on how to deal with the "difficult" unpredictable behavior of our new president. The answer they got back was quite enlightening for me: "Just don't take him serious!"

picture: "So, Now You Know" by orijinal from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Japanese Family Business

2010-02-16T10:18:00.006+01:00

Last week I had a quite intensive discussion with one of my American colleagues, because he had complained quite hard about my "low level" comments I made to my fellow "Nazis" about the fact that our Japanese CEO had contracted his own wife to be the exclusive interpreter for our company. The discussion was quite hard and one of the types that did not really get resolved until you forcefully move out of it by saying "I understand that from YOUR cultural background you might have another view on that topic. Please also understand that from MY cultural background my opinion on that topic will not change".

Anyhow here are my reasons why you would not want the wife of your boss being hired for interpretation, no matter what cultural background you are from:

- You are not allowed to call in the interpreter before 9 am, because Mrs. Boss does not want to get up early in the morning, has to bring the children to school etc. This is a real problem, because naturally you would use an English/Japanese interpreter for calling to Japan. Because of the time difference, whoever you call usually has to work overtime there then because of her.

- You can not have a conference call to Japan while the boss is on vacation, his children are sick etc. because you are not allowed to ask for any other interpreter (not married to the boss)

- Even though Mrs. CEO is a very skilled interpreter for general discussions she heavily seem to lack technical vocabulary. Sometimes you have no idea what the other side is talking about even if you hear the English translation 3 times. And of course you are not allowed to ask for an interpreter with special technical background (unless the one you ask for happens to be married to the CEO)

- If Mrs. Boss mixed up the appointment and has to wait fully paid 30min for the conference to start, she gets angry, because she initially wanted to go shopping instead, she shouts at Mr. Boss who in turn shouts at head of GA who shouts at....until finally you yourself get shouted at by the female Japanese receptionist that it is obviously your fault if Mrs. Boss can not read a simple email with a date and time in it.

- And finally all female Japanese in the company are mad at you, because of course you could not hold back the comment that nowhere in this world and especially not in Japan it is possible that a female receptionist shouts at a senior member of the technical staff.

Anyone else still questioning why in Germany we just continue to make "low level" comments about anyone stupid enough to employ his own wife?

picture: "Money fight" by HikingArtist.com from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

What a great idea...

2010-02-10T15:31:00.004+01:00

I was already writing about the raging war that is ongoing in our company since the new president arrived freshly shipped from Japan about 6 month ago.
To solve the conflict and force everyone "in line" our big boss spent his whole Christmas vacation, developing a grandiose master-plan that will sure win him the hearts of all employees, so that we can all hold our hands and happily follow our great leader into a new bright future. Here is how the plan was unfolded and set into practice:

Step 1: Promote all hostile managers by one level
Step 2: Promote all lazy or opposing senior staff to managers
Step 3: Double the workload for the only two people that actually had worked something the last 6 month
Step 4: Tell these 2 people that did not get promoted that they are to young to be a manager no matter how good their performance was
Step 5: Announce publicly that you made your promotion decisions strictly based on performance the last 6 months, nothing else
Step 6: Visit your HQ in Japan and show the product that was invented by one of the 2 people that did not get promoted.
Step 8: After getting praised for your great achievement, ask for more budget and promise it will be ready by the end of 2010 (instead 2012 as stated in the project plan)
Step 9: Piss off even harder the one guy that did not get promoted and should put the project into practice in 1/3 of the time without any budget (read 0) by transferring him (additionally to existing work) to IPR department and make him read all the patents from the last 10 years.

Good job! That sure is a winning strategy.

picture: "Google's Master Plan" by jurvetson from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

You are not allowed to have fun at work....

2010-02-01T15:39:00.004+01:00

During last week's all hands meeting a new "imperial edict" was announced.

"Thou shalt not have fun at work"

Now we all know or at least can guess that working in a Japanese company is not really funny at all by definition and any attempt to develop high spirits will be easily scotched from the beginning within company walls. So last week's decree was primarily targeted to close a minor loophole that has existed for quite some time.

Apparently some people have managed to connect longer exhausting business travels with one or two days of private time off in the same region afterwards on their own expense.
At least in Germany this always had been within a legal gray zone. But not because of the fact that it might be an abuse of company resources. It was merely a taxation issue, because the personal benefit of such an arrangement could not clearly be quantified and hence not be taxed. And in Germany it is just inconceivable that you use or receive something tax-free (in some places you have to pay tax on the freshness of the air that you breath - no kidding!).

So the general rule of thumb by the government is that if something can not be properly taxed, then you just can not get it (unless you work for the government).
Of course there were always ways around that (e.g. staying one more day would save the company 50% of the ticket price etc.) and because of that, there was another rule of thumb so far in most German companies that you could do it maybe once a year.
Recently however a German High Court ruled that the whole situation is an unfair practice. In a rare moment of applying common sense, the judges ruled that the personal benefit of such an arrangement can be very easily quantified. Most of the time this benefit is 0% (I guess when you just add some days afterwards) or X% if you make a vacation and during some days or some hours each day also visit some clients that happen to live nearby).

My guess is that our Japanese bosses were reading that very same newspaper article as I did. However most likely their reaction was quite different from mine. Where I was thinking "cool, maybe next time I add a weekend in Tokyo" they were probably thinking "OMG, what do we do if business trips are no longer considered to be severe punishment (read working 18h and being away from family and friends)?".
Consequently a task-force was established that worked over the weekend to come up with the following announcement on Monday:

Announcer: "The old rule of 'you are not allowed to combine business trips with vacation unless with special permission' is changed"
Announcer: "The new rule is: 'In general you are not allowed to combine business trips with vacation'"
Audience: "What does 'in general' mean?"
Announcer: "it means you need special permission to do it in the future"
Audience: "huh?"
Boss: "Let me explain it. I will not allow you to do sightseeing"
Audience: "But the Japanese are still allowed to visit their family after a business trip, isn't it?"
Boss: "That is not the same thing"
Audience: "Were is the difference between sightseeing and visiting the family?"
Boss: "visiting the family is not fun!"

Well to be honest, as far as I can remember, the last answer was more like "shut the fck up!". However that could falsely be interpreted as a very racist and discriminating attitude by certain begrudging people. Since we know that Japanese are not like that, I allowed myself some editorial freedom to replace this last sentence with an innocuous semantically correct equivalent.

picture: "Rocky Horror Picture Show" by jenniferlstoddart from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Way back then, when I was young...

2010-01-25T19:26:00.011+01:00

I can still remember the good old times, when I was at elementary school. Life back then used to be pretty easy, except for one thing. "dating" a girl that you were interested in (or that was interested in you) was a rather complicated issue.

Of course you could not just ask her out for a date, because you were just a 9 year old boy and you had no idea that something like a date would even exist or that it could be something else rather than climbing trees or getting dirty in some mud-pit.

And of course the girl could not give you any kind of subconscious signals in body language telling you to come over and ask her out for a date because you would not recognize it even if she would have written it on a baseball bat and smack it against your head several times.

The way it was solved back then (remember no mobile phones existed yet) was that "she" had to find one of her female friends to act as a "proxy" or "surrogate" (nice movie btw). Of course that proxy could not talk to you directly (no way!). Instead she had to find one of your friends to act as a "proxy" on your side, too.

Negotiations then started along the lines, whether your friend has heard "you" making remarks about a certain other girl, what you would think of her etc. If that first round of negotiations went well, your proxy might get the permission to make vague and strange comments to you, to find out more information etc.
The whole procedure was not very efficient in any way that either:

the school year had ended before anything really "happened" and after summer vacation everyone had forgotten what was going on before or one side has moved, you changed your friends or something else like that.
After 2 years you find out that you have been in a serious relationship for more than a year with someone you never even have talked to (or worse never even had known to exist)
Over all that negotiation your two proxies had found out they like each other and now need to concentrate on themselves.

More than two decades after this nice childhood memories, I find myself sitting in a video conference room, actually talking to eye-candy-girl again, trying to explain her the latest super cool technology (of that other guy from a university) we have discovered in Europe and that should make it to Japan (within the same company, so it is not really "sales"). She in turn asks me questions that are way to smart of her (Sorry, but I met her in person two weeks ago. And actually she is not that "candy" if you see her with more than 128kbit/sec). So it is obvious that she is only acting as a proxy for some real person that is way to valuable (or way to smart) to waste his/her time in a video conference.
To make it even better, we have to use professional interpreters on each side that have no idea about the technology we are talking about. That way the whole bizarre situation becomes very similar to:

"Dating a girl when you were at elementary school, just you do it around the world and your friends have to use two more friends for doing some English/Japanese translation"

The Number Game

2010-01-21T16:24:00.004+01:00

I came to realize that a lot of times I write about my observations and findings in the field of inter-cultural differences. Sometimes however I come accross things that seem to be just the same everywhere you go or for everyone you meet. In technical terms: Some things are just cultural invariants that never change.
One of such rare cultural invariants (unless you are in a country where they still do stoning) you can experience if you ask a girl: "How many guys did you already have before me?" Most likely you will notice a short delay in the answer. It might look like she is doing some math, but in the end you always get the same answer "3". So why is that? Let's take a look behind the scenes:

Guy: ""How many guys did you already have?"
Girl [thinking]: "20....but actually that one last week was only 10sec...doesn't really count, so let's say 19"
Girl [thinking]: "19...hmm..but he will think I am a complete slut. Actually 4 times I was so drunk, I can hardly remember. You could say I was date-raped. Being raped does not really count I guess...
Girl [thinking]: "15...well and that one time was with a girl. I was just experimenting....and he just asked how many guys..."
Girl [thinking]: "14...yeah, hmm... and that one BJ in the airplane...I mean even Bill Clinton said it does not really count as sex"
Girl [thinking]: "13...uhh yes that thing after the Christmas party with my boss. I did not really wanted to. Somehow I was forced to. My career was going slow. But that is kind of working, isn't it?
Girl [thinking]: "12...he will think I am a whore or something. Let's say 6, that sounds more plausible.
Girl [thinking]: "6...should be ok for a good looking women of my age....but it's still a lot of people if you put them in one room together. Quite a long queue. He might think I am too experienced...and I still want to get married in a white dress one day..."
Girl [thinking]: "3?....Yes 3 is good. Let's say 3. That is very good. Let's say I had one boyfriend in highschool, one in university and one real man before him. That way he won't be too cocky, because I could still compare his performance."
Girl: "Oh...only 3 - you are my 4th and last, Darling"

picture: "85/365 - angel vs. devil" by lisadragon from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

My Boss has a Number and this Number is 666... (part 2)

2010-01-18T15:55:00.010+01:00

...actually I am not completely sure, whether our boss just wanted to be "nice" by serving us some "dessert" after dinner, whether he just enjoys bringing people into corrupting situations or whether he was testing how far we could survive in a "difficult" cross-cultural situation. Maybe it was everything together. But obviously he enjoyed watching 3 German guys at 1 o'clock in one of the filthiest places in Roppongi surrounded by a bunch of completely drunk women (at least I hope that they were women - oh and did I mention that he had filled us already during the business dinner with a lot of wine?).

However technical people seem to be a quite hard nut to crack and our boss is not really famous for his patience or strategic flexibility. He just tried to fill up these two girls even quicker. And that seems to be the problem with Roppongi girls. They just seem to swallow everything you put in front of their mouth. One of the girls passed out and virtually fell over the table and that was when the whole adventure suddenly turned into a creepy nightmare. All the people suddenly moved away from her. My boss moved to the other side of the bar (guess he knew what would happen next), my upper management decided its time to go back to the hotel (obviously knowing when to cover their butt) and even the normal guests kind of moved two tables away. Instead, suddenly a lot of creepy looking Japanese guys started closing in, coming out of the shadows, touching the poor girl everywhere and I think they even tested whether they could carry her away.

At that point I had not slept for 36h already because of a heavy jet-lag and I was quite drunk but still I got the chilly creeps just from imagining what could happen if these ghouls were successful. Fortunately she was with a friend that still could walk and talk and together we managed to scare away the creeps just to next face the bar staff that wanted to roll her down the stairs themselves out into the 0°C tokyo night and into a group of around 10 Nigerians prowling the street in front of Mowtown, ready to clean away any passed out trash that might have escaped the creeps in the bar. It took me almost an hour to make sure that she did not need go to a hospital because of alcohol poisoning and could be safely transported home.

My first Roppongi experience pretty much ended by half-carrying that "girl" down the narrow stairs at Mowtown's through the crowd of Nigerians and sitting her into a cab sending her away. Later forensic analysis of "photographic evidence" revealed her to be a married woman around 40 (and I bet 2 cute kids at home. Different culture, different habits I guess).

I said my first experience ended "pretty much". What was left to do was walking home through Roppongi at 4 o'clock in the morning, alone, in a business suit, not having slept for 37 hours and fairly drunk, hence on autopilot and with not much clue where the hotel was, but this is a completely different story.

16h later at home in Munich and already seeing white mice from sleep deprivation I of course had to come up with a reasonable explanation for all that funky smell in my suitcase, the lipstick on my shirt and a lot of photographs of unknown girls in my camera. With a German wife that would have pretty much resulted in a death sentence, but fortunately Mrs. Moonshine is Chinese. All she said was: "Here is advice for the future":

- reduce "drinking with the boss". Often (not always) you can say no

- next time be prepared that he will take you out for karaoke and calls in some professionals.

- You don't have to shag them, it is ok to reject.

- Next time you are not allowed to discriminate against women over 35.

My Boss has a Number and this Number is 666...(part 1)

2010-01-18T12:41:00.007+01:00

I just recognized that my last blog entry was already almost 3 months ago. I never though that this could actually happen, but it did. What's the deal? Actually my new boss, while staying in our little overseas exile, has developped big plans for his 'comeback' to Japan. These plans include turning us gaijin-weaklings into a real productive Japanese workforce. Europeans however are not necessarily keen on being "japanized", especially not in their own country. Consequently we had a significant loss of workforce recently, which again just means even higher workload for the remaining staff. That also holds true for the amount of business travel one has to suffer.
On the other hand side that also means increasing career opportunities, which might be the main reason why I have not really made up my mind yet, wether to just follow the example of others or just bite my tongue and wait for a little longer. Anyhow what I am not lacking currently is good advice from other people about how to advance your career in a japanized environment. "Go out drinking with your boss" seemed to be the no.1 suggestion.
So it happend that I was in Tokyo last week, had a nice business dinner and afterwards got an "order" by my boss to follow him to his favourite bar for a "2nd round". That was the beginning of a really creepy nightmare, because of what I did not consider was that my boss likes playing little mindfucking games with his gajin staff all the time.
So we (I and my manager/director) just walked to "that bar 100m accross the street around the corner" not knowing what our all big boss had set up for the evening. It was a trap. 100m accross the street around the corner and we were in the middle of Roppongi. Just out from the business dinner and still all dressed up with our best gear found ourselves in a bar called "Motown" filled with all sorts of western ex-pats and Japanese women that looked like 28 (later I was reading in my travel guide: if they look 22, they are 15, if they look 15, they are 28 and if they look 28 they are over 40). After fending off the first wave of quite ugly looking gals at the entrance we found ourselves a nice spot and started realizing the whole purpose of that place. Our boss meanwhile seemed to wait for something. 10 minutes later we had 2 at least a little more sophisticated looking ladies at our table taking care of the "upper" management and our boss was busy buying them drinks. Then he moved away to the 2nd row and watched the show. That show was pretty interesting at first. After being groped at my ass at least ten times I found out that "I am only a technician, the managers are over there" did not work in every case. One of the two more "mature" looking ladies at our table just did not want to move away from me...

Last man standing...

2009-10-23T14:21:00.004+02:00

I pretty much have not blogged basically since the Oktoberfest has started almost a month ago. Not that there would not have happened a lot of things that would be worth while and funny to blog about. In fact the opposite was true. But currently I seem to live in the middle of a soap opera where everything seems to be artificially condensed into a continuos stream of important/funny/tragic events that give the audience no other choice but to eagerly wait for the next commercial break so that they can see the bathroom for other important business without missing anything important.

While desperately waiting for that break I find myself in the middle of that "last man standing" kind of scenario in my company. It is about 1/3 - 1/2 into the movie where there already had been some kind of smaller shoot outs between Bruce Willis (our new boss) and various factions of the mafia (our German middle-management) that used to control the little town. Revenge followed by punishment and re-revenge had already been taking place several times and some nice little bloody backstabbing is currently taking place between some mafia factions against each other giving Bruce a little bit time to gather new strength.

I for myself try to stay out of everything, which is currently pretty hard to do. Actually I like Bruce and want to see him winning. My problem is that I used to work for one of the mafia groups until they traded me in for some alcohol. Now I work for the other faction but of course they do not really trust me, because I used to be the enemy before. Moreover everyone knows that I kinda try to make friends with Bruce, so whenever faction A or B starts a new assault on Bruce's hideout, they try to grab me, push me to the front and use me as a shield. And if that is not the case and I can manage to stay away from the gunfire, I have to be still very careful not to be hit from a stray bullet from far away.

All that makes it currently very difficult to keep life properly organized. However I made some progress this week and even managed to land some tough blows on my ex-manager and his minions of darkness. I hope that this will keep them away for at least a week or so. Just long enough for me take a deep breath and maybe take a leak.

picture: "iraq" by The U.S. Army from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Oktoberfest Madness Beats Business Madness

2009-09-30T16:21:00.008+02:00

Just back from vacation at the beginning of this week there were already plenty of chances to be exposed to typical business madness:

During my absence someone was so kind to scheduled a business trip for me to Paris (anyone having been there already knows why I am not happy about that), and even worse I have to meet with a French company there.
an important business meeting was canceled, because our new lawyer "...could not send that NDA because the CC adress did not copy" (ever wondered why there are TWO buttons on a mouse?)
My work student slept for 2.5 weeks in the office (properly paid of course) because IT could not give him a new computer with more than 256MB of RAM ("you get what we think is enough for you")
I had to be in the office at 7am in the morning on Monday for a phone conference with some Taiwan guys just to read their email (sent on Sunday evening) that they "...forgot that they had a business trip to Japan scheduled"
On Tuesday I had to be in the office again for a video conference with Eye-candy girl and the seven Dwarves outside the camera angle. This time they had organized an interpreter so I guess we were properly understood but on the other hand just discussing about the first slide (of 150) took us 1.5 hours.

But you know what? All that does not matter. It's Oktoberfest time baby! In the evening you just go there, dance on the tables with the crowd and watch the girls scream for the Lederhosn-strip like in the pictures on the right. Almost guranteed in the morning you can not really remember what the fuzz was all about yesterday.

Off to the beach...

2009-09-08T19:21:00.004+02:00

While preparing to leave for my summer vacation and still somewhat attached to the topic of the last post I found another perfect reason why it could be a good idea to come to Europe as a Japanese expat:

your summer vacation will be 2 weeks
you can enjoy the scenery of Europe's summer beaches (see picture. hint: the interesting part is in the middle, it is not the guy with the beer belly :-))

Anyhow you might ask, why am I taking my summer vacation now? The answer is pretty simple. During August it is way too hot in the south parts of Europe, whereas it is very nice to be in Germany. Starting with September it gets colder though, so a lot of people now head towards Spain and Italy for something that is called "Late Season". It is much cheaper, less crowded (because the natives have to go back to work already) and you can extend your summer feeling for another two weeks. And when you come back you will be right on time for Oktoberfest action to make you forget that 6 month of bad cold weather are right in front of you.

picture: "Qui c?" by Michael Boulenger from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Sex sells

2009-09-04T11:34:00.007+02:00

Either someone in my company is actually reading my blog or they figured out by themselves that their top-5 reasons to live in Munich were not really that attractive. Anyhow, nr.6 of our company newsletter this time has a feature on nudist people in the English garden.

Even though these people are a dying breed (I like the part about Japanese photo safaries) and not especially attractive to look at, this rings up a lot of nice memories for myself. For example when taking Mrs. Moonshine's mother out to the park for a nice Sunday afternoon walk. Accidentally passing by one of the textile free zones she suddenly shouted "Liu mang! Liu mang!"(gangster/hooligan) and tried to hide behind Mrs. Moonshine while at the same time holding her hand in front of her eyes.

It took a while for us to recognize at all what actually caused her freaking out before we saw the small group of not particularly attractive middle age couples taking a naked sunbath. I guess if you live here long enough, your brain actually refuses to recognize any unattractive things around you.

picture: "Munich English Garden" by curran kelleher from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

More "stuff" please

2009-09-02T17:11:00.013+02:00

In his continous effort to battle the wrath of the German managers, our new boss seemingly decided for a new strategy - bring in more "stuff". "stuff" in this case is his version of "staff", but apperently no one has dared to correct him so far, when he is writing Jenglish emails like "I come with some of my stuffs to visit you".

Anyhow, in his mind, more Japanese "stuff" is necessary to weaken the tight defense lines of the all-German middle management at the moment. Sounds easy, but isn't, because usually we only get expats that were some kind of exiled (idiots, rebels, women-over-30-that-do-not-want-to-get babies etc.). Neither of this sort seems good "stuff" in his mind so he decided to start an all brand new "come to Germany" PR campaign. Of course you can not call it like that, so it is called "weekly report/newsletter".

The "report" part in this newsletter is about 4 lines of what has happened on the business front, followed by 1/2 page of an employee profile (aka "this will be the guys you can command around") and 1/3 page of a description why Munich is an extraordinary "nice" place to live.

Perfect idea you might think. Well could be. Personally I would just have picked a slightly different set of "top-5" reasons, why I would come to Munich as a Japanese expat. However here is the top-5 from the newsletter so far:

1.) Ice bach surfing as they call it.
2.) Munich marathon
3.) Sister city of Sapporo
4.) "Eco" and "Bio"(organic) is so important, in a nearby village, they even switch off street lights at 11 p.m. (if you are not at home by then...tough luck)
5.) Munich was completely reconstructed after being severely bombed in WW II

picture: "WM Special" by Mohan_S from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Everyone is dying to learn Japanese...not

2009-08-31T18:03:00.006+02:00

As some sort of follow-up to this rant of mine, I was just updated with the new "nice" regulations regarding the company language lesson. But first let me give a short summary for what has happened so far...

Working in a Japanese company overseas (read: outside Japan) speaking Japanese is of course not an absolute necessity. However it is incredibly useful just for example because all technical documentation is in Japanese, you can understand that the guys in the conference think you are a hairy monkey or glimpse into the weekend love-life of the girls from administration when they chat in the coffee kitchen.

For all this and many more reasons the company used to bring in a language teacher every week for two hours to have us hairy monkeys (after working hours and voluntarily of course) properly educated not only in Japanese language but also culture and etiquette.

Total cost for that show was about 400€ a month, 4800€ a year. That's hardly the cost of a single business trip of one of our managers.

Under the new "nice" regulation from now on we have to take lesson outside, pay the fee ourselves, and after 6 months we can apply for getting our money back. How much depends on the attendance rate (in %) but not more than 90% - fully taxed of course (i.e. -50%). Ergo best you can hope for is getting back 45% of the total cost, but only if you do not go on vacation (what a convenient coincidence!). And as if that would not be enough to scare away any potential applicant - you also have to take and pass the JLPT test once a year (good luck with level 2&1) to stay eligible for that program. That test is only available in 2-3 cities in Germany but of course the company reimburses the travel cost....oh yes you guess it right, of course that can not be done during working hours => 2 days vacation gone AND we have to properly tax it (-50% baby!).

That must be the first "employee benefit program" I heard of that actually costs you more money than you get. My only comment was " why exactly would I learn a language that only 120 million people speak AND pay for it myself?". The answer to my comment was: "Because it is such a nice language."

It's a girl...

2009-08-28T12:04:00.006+02:00

Recently I had to go through more video conferences with our mother company in Japan again. This provided me with a convenient opportunity to confirm an old observation of mine. Working in a rather technical environment (read: no women around) it was fairly easy for me to notice that in each and every video conference so far, there was always a Japanese girl sitting on the table with our Japanese counterparts. It was not necessarily always the same girl but the thing in common is that she looks good, hardly ever talks and always appears in the upper left of the screen.

No sure what this is all about, whether this is a legal (quota) issue or they always just want to rub it in that their staff looks better than ours. However the whole thing sometimes gets really funny, for example:

The meeting starts and there is an empty chair at the left side of the screen, just next to the manager. The meeting goes on but the manager over there seems to be distracted by something. He keeps on looking at the empty chair to his right, then try to look towards the door (which is pretty much directly behind him). 30 min later that door actually opens, a girl comes in and sits down on that empty chair. Shortly after the camera zooms in on her to bring her full screen. Clearly she was not looking embarrassed at all for being late, rather she looked like something in between bored and annoyed. The camera then was zooming out again but only half way so that only the manager and the girl appeared on the screen. The rest of the meeting went rather unproductive because we were listening to people presenting from off the screen wondering what is so important about her. However she did not speak a single word and from the meeting minutes later it turned out that she was just a low level peon.

Just last week there was another video conference with a different department, but with a similar setup. Girl sitting in the upper left corner. The Manager next to her across the corner of the table. This time she was even doing some short 5 min presentation. The rest of the meeting, other people presented from the opposite side of the table and invisible to the camera, while we could watch her about 60 minutes, first doing her hair, then refreshing her make-up 5 times etc.

Thanks guys for the show anyway, we always appreciate looking at your eye candy.

picture: "Video Conference 2" by Junhao from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Back to madness...

2009-08-27T16:26:00.004+02:00

Just coming back from a somewhat lengthy trip (completely madness-free, you could almost call it a vacation) I find myself writing the 8th version of my 2nd half 2009 performance plan. Version number 7 just came back, again rejected by the new big boss. Fortunately writing the new version is very easy. I will just copy everything from nr. 6, because this one contains everything what Mr. big boss wanted to have (as did version 4 and 2). Most likely version 8 (aka 6,4,2) again will be completely changed by our middle-management into version 9 (aka 7,5,3,1) to contain exactly what they want to see in it.

Actually I am wondering for how long this stupid game will continue, but I guess I will be busy for the next two weeks producing performance plans. After this two weeks I will be in real vacation, lying on the beach in southern Spain, performing...well I guess planning what to do/eat/drink in the evening is my only task there.

picture: "Google's Master Plan" by jurvetson from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Nice :-)

2009-08-06T14:35:00.004+02:00

One of the nice things I came to recognize about Japanese people is that whenever they start involving you in a conversation, they usually try to establish a mutual feeling of harmony/commonality first. Usually this is done by mentioning a fairly unimportant topic that both sides can easily share the same opinion on or even better agree on, is "nice". E.g. when it is 35° degrees, it is obviously "atsui, desu ne", the party yesterday was nice, etc.

However there is times when this habit obviously sucks pretty hard. For example yesterday, I received the following email:

Mina-san,

today I talked with Dr. Boss about the company's language lesson. Dr. Boss will change the system as follows and I think the idea is very nice:

* we will cancel the language lesson in the company

* if you want to continue, you can do that at an external approved school

* The company will support the lesson fee (How much? Still unclear...)

* But participants will have to submit a result (e.g. pass the test at end)

Here is how I answered this email (being completely ignorant to Japanese habits of course):

Dear Office-Lady-san,

I was happy to read about all the nice changes that are going to happen. You know I learn Japanese because it is quite beneficial for my work (e.g. sometimes translate something for yourself, not getting lost on a business trip to Japan etc.). I understand that in the future instead of walking just down the hall, I have to drive to the other side of the city to get to my lesson. I also have to pay for myself first and only get a part of my money back if I pass the test. I am very sorry, but could you maybe point me to what exactly is the "nice" part you mentioned?

2009-07-30T15:44:00.003+02:00

With the new boss finally arriving two weeks ago (feels like 2 months) there is not much time for writing recently. This is because unfortunately I have decided to like his new attitude and working style. At the same time (unfortunately) all the middle-management in our company decided to not like the new boss, because he seems to be a serious threat to the I-fly-around-business-class-all-time-keep-the-miles-and-never-have-to-work-anything-but-still-get-2-month-bonus-every-year kind of lifestyle they had enjoyed so much in the past.

As much as I enjoy watching this perfect soap-opera setting evolving, it somehow creates a difficult and dangerous situation for me. So I am quite busy currently fending of all the backstabbers that have queued up behind my back to make sure that there is no one left that could potentially help the new boss succeed.

On top of that I got another difficult task assigned by my lovely Mrs. Moonshine - finding a girlfriend for her best friend (which happens to be a guy). For a lot of reasons I think this is a 1st grade suicide mission but explaining that in more detail can easily make up for a separate blog post I guess. But just in case you happen to know a <=30 year old female willing to date a pretty average blond German Mr. Niceguy (partly nerdy but PhD grade, good job and his parents own a small factory on the plus side) please let me know immediately, because in Germany this is pretty much what we call a hopeless case and globalization is the only hope I have left to bring peace to my little leisure-time evenings.

P.S.: I could not come up with a decent picture for this post, so I thought I share some interesting finding from my weekend trip. It seems to be some Japanese graffiti but I found it on the top of a bavarian mountain.

Festival time...

2009-07-24T10:01:00.004+02:00

Summertime in Germany always means one thing: Festival time. Basically, all the outdoor activity is crammed into the two months of July and August, because the chance for heavy rainfall or cold weather is only 50% there.

Last weekend we had planned to meet with a lot of friends during the always lovely "Japan Festival" here in Munich. While lingering alone over the festival, eating my Takoyaki and watching strange people in strange costumes I took the time to reflect a little bit about the different cultural flavors of semantic of the sentence "We meet at the Japan festival on Sunday."

Chinese: Mrs. Moonshine obviously just came for the food, because after I had stood in several queues (one for the food, one for the water, one for the beer etc.) for almost one hour she finished her dish in 7 minutes, then wanted to go to pursue some other spare-time activity. My attempts to make her wait at least until some friends would show up ("Don't you want to see the Ikebana, Bonsai or Kendo show?") were futile ("It's all stolen from China anyway....").

Germans: Wanted to come late to the show, because they had at least 3 other things scheduled on Sunday (that they forgot to mention when they said the sentence "let's meet...."). Of course they also didn't look into map ("I live in Munich, you know, I know, where English Garden is...") and hence lost their way. After walking 1h from the wrong end of the park to the right one, the festival was already over.

Japanese: Did not show up at all. I realized on several occasions already that "Let's meet next week at the festival/beer garden/party/etc." must have a completely different meaning for Japanese than it has for the rest of the world. However I had planned a separate blog post about the benefits and pitfalls of making friends with Japanese. So for today I want to leave it at this.

The one thing they all want to know...

2009-07-16T17:56:00.007+02:00

Looking back the past few days this week will definitely go down in history as the "week on the grill". It started gorgeously on Monday with our new CEO holding his inauguration speech. Obviously he was still suffering not only from jet- but also from a pretty heavy farewell party lag on Friday before in Japan but still managed to rally the troops (promising free lunch might have helped in that). Apparently someone with insider information had been singing like a little bird as our new Mr. Shachou managed to address all problems people were complaining about for years and he promised to start solving them immediately. Not in my wildest dreams I would have expected ever to see someone (especially not a Japanese) speak out the truth that clearly.

Of course the cuddly feeling did not last very long. Immediately after the speech he started having his "interviews" with the staff. That was the part where, like in the horror movies usually, the overly colorful and bright colors fade into dark and grey and the music changes into a creepy tune. At least for the people that did not know or want to say the magic words ("screw what I have worked on for my whole life. Jump? How high?"). For me personally it went pretty well. Maybe I used a little bit too much magic, since I am allowed to work on my 3 old projects and got 4 new ones on top of that.

Anyhow after that shocking experience I went out with some old friends of mine and some new friends of my beloved Mrs. Moonshine to celebrate (mostly me still having a job). Sitting out in a warm summer night on a rooftop terrace, eating Chinese food, drinking, laughing and trying to manage Japanese, German, Bavarian, English and Chinese (a)cross(the table)talk I was leaning back in my chair, wondering when the one question about Germans will come up.

It took until 10 p.m. and two beers but then the Japanese/Peruvian couple could not hold it any longer. There it was, the one thing they all want to know about Germany...

"Do you really have mixed nude sauna??? Even in the gym?"

Yes my friends we have. No one of the "normalos" here wants to sit sweating in a dark room full of men only, you know.

picture: "sauna" by gabrieleventi from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

How do you get a girlfriend in Japan (without your Mom helping)?

2009-07-12T23:49:00.001+02:00

Just as a quick follow-up to this post...the week after the dinner party we wanted to know more about Japanese dating habits:

German guy : So what do you do if your parents don't know anyone with a nice single daughter?

Japanese guy : Kompa

German guy : Is that an Internet dating site?

Japanese guy : No, it is a group date.

American guy : What's a group date? You mean like speed dating? How does it work in Japan?

Japanese guy : No no, not speed dating. Just equal number of boys and girls in a room...and you bring a plastic bag with some canned beer.

German guy : That really works?

Japanese guy : Most of the time...

Ok I do not really want to comment too much on that other than I really didn't make this one up. I looked up the word later...usually Kompa is described as something a little bit more sophisticated. Maybe he'd referred to the "student" or "I-am-30plus" version of it. Anyway my advice for all Japanese singles: Visit Munich at the end of September. Then you can have beer and equal number of boys and girls in a large tent... and kompa (the sophisticated version) all you want.

picture: "The world's largest six pack" by magnetbox from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

You see my finger....?

2009-07-11T22:00:00.000+02:00

It is weekend and I am out of the company and not really in the mood for some good old Nippon action. So I thought it would be a good idea to open a new category in my personal globalization madness diary.

Something that always seems to spike everyone's interest is bi-cultural marriage. Maybe it is honest interest, maybe just lust for disaster, I don't know. Anyway I thought I could throw in some first hand experience, so here comes...

Getting married (Chinese style) part 1:
Once upon a time...several years ago...

Ms. Moonshine: "Do you see my finger?"

Mr. Bavaria: [just reading some important work-at-home stuff, but decided to take a quick glance on what finger exactly had just been referred to] "hum, what is with it?"

Ms. Moonshine: [obviously pointing at her ring finger]"When I am 28, I want to see a ring on it!"

Mr. Bavaria: [is hearing some remote alarm bell ringing, doing some quick calculation] "You are 27 now, that would be next year...[calculation ended. result: in 7 months] We just know each other for 6 months. Don't you think this is too quick? Why 28?"

Ms. Moonshine: "Because in China you need to get married before 30!"

Mr. Bavaria: [thinking: I must have overlooked that shelf life sticker somewhere] "Why not 29?"

Ms. Moonshine: "Because if you marry with 29, everyone knows that you have just married because you are almost 30!"

Mr. Bavaria: [thinking: I am so doomed] "Flawless logic I guess"

Waiting for the new boss...part 2

2009-07-10T11:33:00.000+02:00

Even though I never have promised to update this blog regularly (like in everyday) I somehow feel sorry for the lack of updates recently. Not only because my big idol Mr. Salaryman just has pushed my blog (thanks man, now I owe you 2 beers, 1 for inspiring me and 1 for pushin' - I really feel the pressure now...). No - I feel sorry for myself, because it proves that sometimes the craziness around you can really keep you away from things you would like to do.

My personal crisis at the moment is that I am still waiting for the new "big boss" of our little Japanese off-shore Gulag. "So you get a new CEO? What's the big deal about it?", one might ask. Well technically nothing. As I wrote in a previous post, this happens about every 3 years and it happened before. The problem is more related to what is described here. However if you are a big company and (in Japan) cannot find an "asshole" part that is big enough to dump your waste…then you would like to send them even further away, preferably to a part in the world with bad food and where they have to speak English all day. After 3 years they will be "hungry" to come back and their English (as well as their willingness to comply with a proper Japanese salaryman behavior) will have improved a lot.

I guess you will get the point. Consequently we get all sorts of Japanese expats here that "voluntarily" took the burden of living for 3 years in Europe. We get complete idiots, morons, rebels, slackers, single women over 30, and...well and we get people like our new CEO.

He is so infamous in Japan that a Japanese colleague once described him as "a nightmare". Europeans that already have met with him are less drastic. Usually they only describe him as "The General" or "Mad Dog". Among famous anecdotes that made it to Europe are the one where he shouts in the middle of a presentation (in English) "Why exactly do I have to listen to this shit?" and the one of during a Q&A session standing up saying "#!-:!###" (a series of very nasty Japanese cuss-words, then followed in very polite English by…) "can I ask you one more question?". Of course the presenter was not Japanese but has lived long enough in Japan to get "properly insulted" as an eyewitness pointed out.

Needless to say this guy is already going to serve his second term in Europe. Last time he had screwed up something really big, so he was sent to France (good food but full of French). After his stay there, the Paris office was/had to be closed so this time he is sent to Munich.

Personally I am already prepared for the arrival of General "Mad Dog" Mc. Nightmare. I have compiled an extensive list of all Japanese cuss-words (about 80) I could find in the Internet. I also browsed through my Bavarian dictionary of cuss-words (about 1200...hmm 80:1200???) to have some more ammunition. Just in case, I also compiled a list of all my previous projects and achievements and I have updated my CV. Hence the worst thing that can happen is a nice 15 month vacation with roughly 60% of my last income - sometimes I love to work in Germany. Time to check the beach equipment anyway...

picture: "Angry" by JelleS from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

How do you ... in your country?

2009-07-09T08:38:00.000+02:00

One of the advantages of working in an international environment is that you never run out of conversation topics. Even in extremely boring situations, like for example being invited to a dinner party at your boss' house, you always have this good old question at your hand. However in case there are Japanese involved, you should always be careful what you (or they) ask for exactly - as the following incident will illustrate:

Situation: Our group manager's crib, dinner party, just sitting at the table, first beer (in front of me)

Persons: 2 German couples, 1 Japanese couple, 1 German/Chinese couple

Japanese guy: How did you guys meet your girlfriend/wives?

Me thinking: {Woa, wait a moment, is this the same guy that -when in the company- always uses me as a relay, because he thinks it is inappropriate to address direct requests to our manager (being 2 ranks above him). So he always asks me (rank+1) to do a rank+1 request myself instead? Did he really just asked us all, including our boss, in our faces this dreaded question that 99.9% of time only has 2 possible answers? Either an extremely boring one or alternatively an extremely embarrassing one? Help!!! What can I do? I need to fabricate something, quick, think faster boy...}

All Germans: [getting red faces looking down on the table. Obviously they all, like me, fall into the category two answer]

Mrs. Moonshine: [obviously it is much harder to embarrass Chinese] Oh, we met in the Internet.

Me thinking: {can someone please shoot me} [I have not enough time to explain all the full details of the embarrassment, why etc., but put it that way. If your girlfriend is German you might get away with "Internet" as an answer since serious net dating becomes more and more socially accepted in Germany nowadays. However if you are a German guy and your girlfriend is Asian, you will never get away with that answer...not in a hundred years]

All Germans: [putting on a mild smile]

Japanese couple: [gives us cartoon-style round eyes - blink...blink - then start giggling...]

German couple 1: Actually.....we also met ...hum... in the Internet first.

Japanese couple: [giggle pretty loud and pretty hard now...]

German couple 2: [my boss, somehow feeling old now even though he is just 3 or 4 years older, seems has also decided to go for the truth.... ] Well we met at a carnival party. I was dressed as a pirate, she was dressed as catwoman...

Germans: [giggling for a short time, then everyone is looking at the Japanese, full of anticipation]

...nothing happens...2 minutes silence

Mrs. Moonshine: [obviously failing to get the hang of the whole situation before, but never having a problem of being overly polite anyway, decided to "relax" the situation] Why don't you (Japanese) guys tell us how YOU have met?

Japanese guy: Oh... we are totally normal. My parents first talked to her parents. Then one day they brought her over to our house and introduced us. Then we married.

1 minute silence, meanwhile red color is building up in the faces of Germans & Chinese. 10 seconds later we laughed so hard that we almost fell off our chairs. That might sound a little bit mean, but I still need to give you some background information. The poor (or lucky) guy's wife can - by no means - be described as a "normal" Japanese woman. Not that we/I really know what a "normal" Japanese wife would be. It is more of an assumption, because from the observation point of an average male+heterosexual man, she seemed to have jumped right out of a collective Japanese men's (wet) dream. She was tall, gorgeously looking, super fine white skin, and (at that time) had long (really long - well below her behind) black hair, round dark eyes, never talked a single word, always just sat there trying to open her eyes even bigger and training the perfect blink blink and cat mouth thing that Japanese women sometimes do if they want to look cute. Moreover, everyday she stood up at 5 o'clock in the Morning to cook her husband full blown fresh lunch, and she even had given him explicit permission to have "some fun" if away from home on a business trip...and if that would be not enough...she was a nurse °o°.

Oh my god! Everyone in the company always had wondered why this average looking, average talented, average everything guy had ended up finding such a wife. How could we know that the answer behind all this was so simple. His good old Mum had just arranged everything for him...

picture: "Feeling Cute Niko" by Myvirtuallady from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Reading the Air...

2009-07-03T09:12:00.000+02:00

"Reading the Air" is a term Japanese people use to describe the sum of non-verbal communication techniques that finally decide about the "real" meaning of what was just said (or not said) during a conversation.

Air-reading is considered a serious skill in Japan, sometimes it can be even an "art". Needless to say that Japanese people think that they are (by definition) very good, while non-Japanese are (by definition) very bad at it. Let's look at an example:

Office Lady: The Japanese lesson this week can't be held on Tuesday,

because the teacher is going to a concert.

She plays the African drum, you know...

but she has time Wednesday or Thursday.

I already asked Mr. C, but

he can not come on Wednesday or Thursday,

what about you?

Mr. B: Both days are fine for me....

Office Lady: ...ok,

then I tell the teacher there won't be a lesson this week.

Mr.B: ????

....ok, thanks

The truth is that in reality Japanese people are not very good at reading the air. In fact they suck pretty hard hence creating a lot of frustration and misunderstanding even among their own kind. Comparably, an average Western male person is much better in "reading between the lines" as we say, thanks to years of personal experience with cut-throat contracts, lawyers and of course thanks to our mothers who constantly educate us from 3-years on that if a woman says "yes" it can mean "no" but "no" always means "no" except for the few exceptions where it means "yes".

Consequently it is not because of our lack of ability but because of our western passion for efficiency why we try to avoid "air reading" whenever possible. Normal (i.e. not being a politician or lawyer) members of the species of Western males only use their "air reading/writing" skills for two purposes:

getting laid.
insulting someone without getting punished.

Considering this new facts, we can go back to the original example and see who really has failed to "read the air" there.

Office Lady: The Japanese lesson this week can't be held on Tuesday,

(not that it would make a difference for you chimps...)

because the teacher is going to a concert.

(anything is more important than you)

She plays the African drum, you know...

(you monkeys should try that instead of Japanese)

but she has time Wednesday or Thursday.

(actually she does not really want to come this week)

I already asked Mr. C but

(I asked that lazy bastard first, because I knew he'd skip...)

he can not come on Wednesday or Thursday,

(...and the company doesn't want to pay you a private teacher)

what about you?

(now I made it so clear even a monkey can read that)

(this time he has to give in and skip, too)

Mr. B: Both days are fine for me....

(I know you want to cancel lesson again, because you think

it is a waste of time and money to bring in a teacher every week

for only 1 monkey boy. Of course you can't say anything because it is

about Japanese language. Guess what, this is a battle of endurance.

Making you loose your face is the only joy monkey boy has left...)

Office Lady: ...ok,

(damn...I can't believe it)

then I tell the teacher there won't be a lesson this week.

(maybe he didn't notice what just happened)

Mr.B: ????

(uh...? Did I win this time, did I REALLY win)

....ok, thanks

(yezzzzzzzzzzzz!)

"Strange rules" immunity...

2009-06-24T15:28:00.001+02:00

Today, this term was officially included in our unofficial corporate language dictionary. Initially it was introduced by a Jordanian colleague in his farewell-email to describe one of the main soft-skills he had developed during his 4-year stay at a Japanese company.

Obviously the term "strange rules" refers to something that is not like "normal rules" as people from most cultures would actually understand, i.e. something that is either followed (because there is harsh punishment), can be safely ignored (no punishment) or only has to be obeyed to a certain percentage (because everyone does).

"Strange rules" instead describes a set of Japanese behavioral regulations that seem to be very hard to define. Instead I would like to give some real-life examples:

engineer1 : I need "x" to finish my project

j-IT : No

engineer1 : Why? I checked and it is not violating our IT rules!

j-IT : Because I don't want (you to have it).

salaryman1 : I am now working here for 2 years. My performance ratings were always excellent, I think it is time for a raise.

j-HR : Sorry, everyone here gets the same

salaryman1 : Yes, but the Japanese staff gets the same AND gets stock options AND gets their apartments paid AND they get weekly fish delivery straight from Japan. Maybe I can also get stock options?

j-HR : Sorry this is not possible, but you do not want stock options anyway

salaryman1 : Why would I not like stock options?

j-HR : Stock prices of our company are going down, so you would loose money.

peon1 : I need to go to that overseas meeting in Costa Rica so that you can keep your board member seat in the XYZ.

CTO : Sorry, because of swine-flu HQ has prohibited all travel.

peon1 : But we got plenty of omiyage this week from Japan, California, Shanghai...And the company calendar shows a lot of scheduled business trips to Boston, LA etc.

CTO : Sorry, but this was all operation critical. But thank you for reminding me of the board membership thing. You need to participate over a phone conference. I already talked to the chair - it is ok. The conference starts at 9 p.m. European time.

peon1 : But that meeting takes a least 4h. I will be working 16h then. That is against German labour laws.

CTO : Just don't tell anyone.

How to get fired in a Japanese company...

2009-06-19T09:05:00.000+02:00

While some people argue that it is hard to get fired in a Japanese company - even if you are a complete moron - there is a tiny chance if you are happen to be French. Just follow the following recipe:

At the company christmas/year end party, come 2h late
take the only free seat right between your Japanese CEO and your German CTO
Make sure you shake their hand extensively.
While shaking hands, tell in a loud voice both of them that you are sorry for being late but you had to go to the doctor first.
When they ask you back "oh what happened, are you sick?" you say...
"No big deal, the doctor just said I just should not work on my little Napoleon 3-5 times a day and I should take a break for at least 2 weeks - then everything will be fine again."

picture: "That was easy" by Jason Gulledge from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Waiting for the new boss...

2009-06-18T13:51:00.000+02:00

Things are heating up and we are nearing the final act. Getting a new CEO in a Japanese ex-territory company can be a long (1+ year) process that has to be divided into several segments to be understood correctly

act: In a Japanese company almost anything has to stay secret as long as possible. For all non-Japanese staff it even has to stay secret beyond "as possible" (see below).
act: However despite (or because being secret) all non-Japanese egg-heads in the company can easily predict that the first guy (with the right rank) showing up (after the usual 3 years CEO turn) to inspect his new turf is the no.1 candidate => egg heads know that the new CEO will be Mr. Y 1 year, 3 months ahead.
act: On a business trip to Japan one of the "super-social" non-J guys has heard from a non-J ex-employee now working for another J-company that he had heard from his ex-ex-boss (Japanese guy but during heavy after-work alcohol drinking) that Mr. Y is on top of the list of possible new CEOs, and that this list is very short => all non-J staff knows Mr. Y will be new CEO 1 year, 2 months ahead. Japanese staff could also know but they do not believe what non-Js say by default anyway.
act: nothing happens one year. Obviously Mr. Y does not really want to be CEO of an overseas Gulag. He gets the usual Japanese 1 year to "voluntarily" accept. After that, he is ordered to go "voluntarily".
act: 2 months ahead the old CEO officially announces that he will leave (sometime this year) and will be replaced by someone else (sometime this year). J-staff gets a separate briefing and will learn that Mr. O leaves in one month and Mr. Y takes over. J-staff feels great that they know a "secret" 2 months ahead.
act: 1 month ahead Mr. Y arrives to stay one week in the company for handover. He is shielded like a pop-star secretly brought in and out of the meeting rooms so that no-one accidently would meet Mr. Y on the floor. Managers are introduced to Mr. Y one by one as is J-staff so they learn 1 month ahead that Mr. Y will be new CEO from now on (remember the "beyond possible" thing?).
act: 3 weeks ahead Mr. Y travels back to Japan so that he can officially "come back" in 3 weeks. Mr. O is in "vacation". Meanwhile Mr. Y is CEOing by phone.
act: ...we will see

picture: "Boss coffee" by ever from flickr (creative commons attribution license)

Better late than never...

2009-06-17T09:02:00.000+02:00

Ok, I know, here I am again, several years too late to be on the bleeding edge of pop culture fashion. So why do I start blogging now when everybody else already moved on to video diaries or fast foodish (or foolish?) SMS style twitter?

Well after one day worth of heavy thinking I came up with a lot of reasonably (higher) good explanations. All sounded very well. However I think the real truth is that I was just reading this guy's blog while doing research in a futile attempt do better understand my own corporate culture (and all the craziness that results out of it). I found his writing quite entertaining and - more important - somewhat comforting in knowing that I am not alone in experiencing a kind of weird everyday insanity that to some extent results from globalization and culture clashes.

I also realized that we have a lot of other things in common (like a not so far EBM music past, IKEA furniture and a kind of sadistic fetish in observing corporate/social politics). So my basic conclusion was that if writing a blog could work for him it could also work for me. Not that I would actually expect too m(any) readers but more like something between a free therapy and a twisted hobby.

Of course I have a slight disadvantage. I do not live in Tokyo, basically the center of most pop culture related craziness on this planet. Instead I live in Munich, which most people would argue is the exact opposite of Tokyo. Some would even say Munich is not even a city but just the world largest village. Nevertheless it is a village with a famous 6 million people drinking bout every year, some of the world's most famous sightseeing around and it had (due to its openness) become somehow a globalization focal point over the years. This is how I (being part of the dying breed of bavarian natives) currently ended up working for a Japanese company in Munich, speaking English all day long with colleagues from 13 other nations, German only in the evening to my Chinese Mrs. Moonshine and Bavarian only when I visit my parents (or when I really want to make an "impact" because Bavarian language knows more cuss-words than any other language I know of).

This setting should be interesting enough to post some crazy stuff almost everyday, however I am not so confident that I will have the time to so. Yet I will try to update this blog at least weekly.

picture: "Oktoberfest 2006" by farbfilm from flickr (creative commons attribution license)