A few weeks ago my husband and I signed up as volunteers for a local Japanese Cemetery Cleanup Day (Organized by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California), so last Saturday we headed out to Colma (south of San Francisco on the peninsula) for a half day of work and connection.
This weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to visit the Itsukushima Maru, a Japan Coast Guard ship visiting San Francisco, where I met some inspiring young cadets who live and study aboard for four years.
Last Friday, I found myself in a situation that many outdoor enthusiasts can relate to: the dreaded decision to cancel a camping trip due to a rain forecast. This would have been our first camping trip of the season, at a spot we've visited at least once a month from April to October over the past few years.
When I lived in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, weekends often began with a slow walk through quiet streets, a coffee in hand, and a sense of curiosity about what the day might bring. This neighborhood in Koto-ku, tucked away in Tokyo’s east side, became my little sanctuary, a place where the past and present seemed to hold hands.
If you’re looking to escape the hordes of tourists in Ginza and you’re looking for a shitamachi experience where old and new Japan sit side-by-side, this is a place you need to explore.
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Back in the 1990s, when I first started studying Japanese, my tools were simple: paper-based study guides, cassette tapes, and stacks of handwritten flashcards. I remember lugging around thick grammar books and scribbling kanji over and over in notebooks, hoping the repetition would make them stick. There was a kind of charm to it: slow, tactile, and deeply personal. But it was also time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes isolating. Fast forward to today, and the landscape of Japanese language learning has completely transformed. There are countless affordable (and even free) resources available online: apps, YouTube channels, podcasts, and yes, even AI tools like ChatGPT.
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If, like me, you have navigated the waters of international business, you’ve learned that communication styles can vary wildly between cultures. While we often associate laughter with humor and agreement, in Japan, it can mean something entirely different—like embarrassment or confusion.
We do get this question fairly often, but never from companies we’ve worked with for sometimes ten or more years. Those long-time clients know the value of our our work, they also know that we’re always updating our content to reflect new trends in work and people.
Moving to a new country can be an exciting yet challenging experience, especially for Japanese expats who may face culture shock. Understanding and adapting to a different culture can be overwhelming. 新しい国に移ることは、特にカルチャーショックに直面する可能性のある日本の 駐在人 にとって、刺激的でありながら挑戦的な経験です。異なる文化を理解し、適応することは圧倒されることがあります。
A Japanese engineer reached out to me with the following issue: “I want to set deadlines but I’m afraid my staff is going to accuse me of micromanagement.” This question shows an understanding of how culture causes people to perceive their manager closely following up on what they do differently, but obviously what to do in practice isn’t always easy. ある日本のエンジニアが次のような問題で私に連絡をしてきました：「締切を設定したいのですが、スタッフが私をマイクロマネジメントだと非難するのではないかと心配しています。」この質問は、文化が人々に自分の行動を細かく追うマネージャーをどう捉えるかについての理解を示していますが、実際に何をすべきかは必ずしも簡単ではありません。
