Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Another Saturday, another meet up with some coworkers for some English "lessons" and lunch. The topic somehow (and quite logically) came to the issue of how Japanese salary-men and Office Ladies spend their weekends. Not surprisingly, the typical answers were "taking it easy, hanging out with friends, and having a few drinks," but extent to which all of these mix in with work-related stuff is absolutely shocking for a foreigners used to a complete division between work and life. Sure, being good friends with your similar-aged coworkers and hanging out with them outside of office is of course possible and understandable (same reason why I am there every Saturday). But lets take a closer look at what we were doing: the lunch conversations frequently merged into classified technical fields of the company, interlaced with insider information each departments and their heads. This was happening all the while anything about the company is off-limits for everyday convers...

There was a particular example often raised when people talk about how picky Japanese people can be regarding, well, everything they buy. The Kit-Kat chocolate bar, started in the US with one original flavor (um, chocolate) somehow morphed into 27+ different varieties over its decades of development in Japan. While the Kit-Kat bar remains the same and popular in the States, in Japan, flavors come and go as consumers magically get tired of them a few months after introduction. And Kit-Kat bars certainly isn't an exception. Everything from soft drinks to sausages always seemed to carry some extra ingredient that is not thought of even in their countries of origin. Food flavors comes in and goes out faster than fashion trends, leaving companies forced to constantly innovate their products. Now, if food flavors in Japan are like fashion trends elsewhere, you can bet that actual fashion trends have pretty much no comparison. Well, everyone is a fan of innovation. Better designed p...

Company employees going out to drink after work and on weekends is pretty common phenomenon. (I did last night...and I am still feeling a little, um, unnatural in my stomach as I write this post) Even bosses and senior colleagues would likely to join for a few. The atmosphere is generally pretty rowdy as people's characters start to reshape toward a more spontaneous side after few. To such a biological certainty, one colleague said it well after a couple of beers, "I may get drunk,but I will not lose my consciousness." To someone from the West, that may just sound like the guy bragging about how much control he has over his alcohol-infused mentality, but the phrase, I realized, sort of takes on a double meaning in the Japanese context. As with anything else in Japan, the hierarchic power structure of any group environment can clearly be felt and is expected to be maintained even as rowdiness takes over. Even as alcohol renders the body incapable of performing prohibitiv...

I knew this day would come, but just not in such a desperate and tiring way...the day when my blog goes from a daily (and sometimes hourly) inquiry into my ever-randomly thought-generating mind to a complete afterthought in the shadow of daily work assignments and the lonesome life of a Japanese salary-man. I did not know that the shadow would be so spacious and chilling. People says the ever-increasingly non-relevance of Japanese companies is due to lack of innovative ideas in their ranks. Before, I used to find this sort of pointed commentary racist. Brainpower is biologically equally distributed and any society, rich or poor, is capable of generating rebels of some sort. How is it that the Japanese society has been automatically deprived of "innovative power"? Now I have a clearer understanding. The basic pretext of an innovative thought being generated are two: (1) a societal stimulus passes through the mind, whereupon the mind sees the stimulus' lack of consisten...

Heading into the grandiose welcoming ceremony for new employees, I was utterly surprised by the scale of Rakuten's ambitions to become global...well, on the surface, at least. Dozens of foreign employees from across the globe (especially a group of Chinese students directly hired from the mainland) and the whole ceremony was conducted in English. It seems that Rakuten takes its promise to become English-speaking very seriously. But, as the ceremony continues, the Japanese side of the company really began to take over. Even as (heavily-accented) English continues to fly, the ceremony was no different from any other Japanese one. The big bosses and the little new guys all bowed solemnly, and applause and cheers were not to be heard at any point. Even after the ceremony at a little welcoming snack session, the CEO passing through the room was treated as if homecoming of a celebrity, with us the new guys herded around him for a highly scripted (and highly unnatural and awkward) ...