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New years at our house means two things: Food and Japanese TV. My wife is from Japan, so when it comes to big holidays we do some American-style and some Japanese-style. New years is about as big as it gets in Japan, so we do it her way. It is
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These guys in Kyushu, Japan were going nuts when Barack Obama became president. They had election parties, and even invited the president to come and visit when he was in Japan in 2009. I just happened to have this brochure in a box of junk from a visit to Japan
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We have 3 kids who we are teaching to speak Japanese. We also have Japanese TV by satellite at home. This means that we show the kids the popular children's shows from NHK (Nihon Housou Kyoukai -- Like the BBC but Japanese). Some of these shows have been
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The new guy arrived from Japan just a week earlier. He is the one that observed "Americans could never survive driving the roads in Japan" -- While I was taking my Saturday to drive him around town to show him the sights. I remember considering stopping the car
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Bento. Traditional lunchboxes from Japan. I would go so far as to say that Bento is becoming an English word. In case you don't know, it means a lunchbox (usually for children), containing carefully prepared tiny portions of different kinds of food. I have compiled my own take
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I appreciate the entheusiasm for foreign cultures, but this guy in Austin has these Kanji characters plastered upside down and sideways on his shiny truck. I felt more than a little embarrased seeing them, for some reason. KR
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Working with Japanese engineers, one thing that was hard to get used to is how the phone is handled. I have noticed that for Japanese, being on the phone is often the same as being face-to-face with the person on the other end of the line. It is not infrequent
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Sometimes body language can be a problem. It always counts, and in international teams it can sometimes fail to carry the intended result. When working with Japanese folks, I am always very careful not to point at them when indicating one person over another for example. For some reason using
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My friend Sterling aptly pointed out that this product from China may have some unintended connotations in the United States. In case you don't see the problem, anything called "Pasture Cake" probably brings images of cow dung to mind. This unhappy imagery is only partially negated
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Japan is funny sometimes. We watch Japanese TV at home (more than American shows) and I noticed that a number of TV personalities all disappeared at the same time. The NHK news announcer lady, the performers on the kids TV show "okaa-san to ishyo", and others. In addition,
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Information flow in the Japanese community is down-right scary. One person hears something, then the grapvine kicks in, and before you know it, everybody knows everything about everything. Take as an example, what happened recently at a company here in Austin. (I will be deliberately vague here to protect the
Culture
Here is a funny story about 'being in charge' that came about on a multinational project's ski trip a few years ago. A group of about 20 engineers and managers from different companies (Japanese, and American) went skiing together in Salt Lake City. We were all