spokedust

Japan Wandering

A recent interuption to the family life was a work trip to Japan. Amazon sells a lot of stuff in Japan. Interestingly, the Japanese have a very different attitude than the French. While the FR resent and resist the anglophile material, Japanese buy a LOT of material imported from the US & UK.

Culture clashes -
The staff works regularly till 10-11 pm at night. This seems normal to them. I don't get it, I can barely be away from family for 8-10 hours aday, and this trip was killing me. As a manager, the goal of efficiency isn't to reduce their work but change the work to something with a higher value. Being an american works 2 ways. My natural manner might be offputting to someone japanese but in the office, it affords an unique opporunity. Since my presence is very temporary, I have the opportunity to play bad cop, setting up my japanese counterpart for the good cop role. We all win - the inefficient process gets changed, my JP counterpart keeps face, probably even advances face.

The japanese have an odd sense of proprietary - though, mad cow disease & bird flue crazes are mostly past us, the images of everyone wearing surgical masks sticks with me. If you thought this was an oddity, apparently, it is dishonor to pass your germs on to someone else. So if you're feeling a cold coming on or even a mild cough/sniffle - stop by your local 7-11 and select a mask from the row of options next to the KitKat

Other experiences:
House church-120 people in a house and oh yes, I was in slippers.
simultaneous multilanguage worship. The pastor was thoughtful enough to select common psalm tunes so the JP sang in Japanese, us Gaijin sang in English. God can sort it out. I now understand better why pentecost bystanders thought the apostles were drunk

Warm sushi & beer for breakfast
An early morning (4:40am) brought me on the first subway over to the Tokyo FishMarket. The abundance of random squiggly, squirmy, slimy,scaly creatures in foam boxes is a marvelous illustration of what can be harvested in the Ocean. Looking out over puget sound, the water just looks dark & wavy. Walking through the market, there were aisles of squid, fish, octopus, eels (live), clams, oysters and of course the highlight - tuna. The big ones, don't think tuna fish, think tuna steak. Every morning except Sunday & Holidays, over 2500 of these tuna are auctioned off (Japanese auctions are humorous since I can't understand a word anyway). That is over a 700,000 tuna a year. Almost a MILLION of these big fish, just in the tokyo fish market.
After meandering, we joined the workers for fresh sushi - so fresh the fish is still warm and beer. Good start to the day.

posted by bikenomad @ 9:57 PM