Our articles often focus on the way cultural roots such as history, philosophy or even religion are reflected in a country’s current business culture. Everywhere in the world, including Japan, the world of work has been undergoing extreme change for several years. And yet some peculiarities remain, as can be seen in the following example.…
(Japanese version) In the first part we looked at various ways the same sentence could be interpreted based on context and how it is said. Then we reviewed specific danger spots that we need to pay attention to when communicating at work. In this second part, let us look at additional challenges in the remote…
In a previous post we learned how New Year is celebrated in Japan and how to say “Happy New Year” in Japanese. One of those greetings included yoroshiku onegai shimasu. It is one of the most common expressions in Japan. If there is one sentence in Japanese you should remember, it should be this one.…
If there is one question that comes up in every JCO session for Non-Japanese it would have to be this one. “Why do so many Japanese struggle in English?” In this article, we will look into a few reasons that might help explain this observation. Not a need: Japan, being an island, has been isolated…
All the trainings, workshops and programs that JCO has been conducting worldwide since 2006 always touch on the subject of communication in all its forms. In this article, we will highlight the visual part of the cultural puzzle that one has to be solve when working with Japan and Japanese colleagues. (In a previous post,…
In this article let us take a look at a question that comes up in our JCO workshops almost every time: “Why are the Japanese so pedantic, trying to plan everything 150%? Sometimes you just have to wait and see how it turns out!” Of course, there are various factors that contribute to the widely…
Many articles, research papers, and books have been written on the Japanese way of communication. Some authors go a bit overboard by referring to Far Eastern myths of “telepathy in the land of the rising sun”. As a trainer, I cover this topic in almost all training courses, workshops, or coaching sessions too. And yet…
Information sharing and reporting is often a cause of friction in Japanese companies. Here is one extreme example that shows just how serious the implications can be. A Japanese company abroad appointed their first non-Japanese CEO (previous CEOs were Japanese). This person, let’s call him John, had only worked for American and European companies previously.…
“Even monkeys sometimes fall from trees”, as goes the Japanese expression. Despite over 30 years of working experience with the country, this expression came to me as I realized that I had made a cardinal mistake during a kick-off meeting with Japanese clients. First things first, let’s gain a grasp of what this expression really…
Very often we are asked how to address Japanese business partners or colleagues correctly. Here are a few tips, which of course apply equally to written correspondence as well as to conversations. As a rule of thumb, in Japanese business life, the surname name is always followed by the honorific suffix “san” (meaning “dear” or…
