Today, the agent reminded me to sign and return the notes attached to my dormitory contract. The document set out the contract’s most important rules, including how payments were handled, the times and procedures for moving in and out, and the conditions for renewing or cancelling the agreement.
Only after I had signed did it occur to me that I had never actually seen what the complete contract looked like. I hurried to ask the agent for a copy.
Yesterday, I spent the entire night putting together a week-long itinerary. It had been so long since I last planned a journey by hand that, while counting the days and checking distances and connections, I found myself taking out pen and paper and writing the same kinds of notes over and over, simply to make sure I had not miscounted either the days or the dates.
The effect of chronic sleep deprivation on the brain is formidable indeed.
On my trips to Japan over the past few years, I had always rented a car. The things one has to consider are entirely different when relying on public transport alone.
Continuing yesterday’s work, I once again asked AI to help me find information about several Japanese companies, so that I could contact them and explore the possibility of working together.
I am not entirely sure how quickly Japanese companies usually answer a business inquiry. Still, the laws of business seem to be much the same everywhere:
If the letter is trying to find someone willing to buy your product, the wait may be especially long, and quite often no answer comes at all.
If you are offering to pay and looking for a supplier, a response may arrive more quickly. Yet over the past few years, perhaps because of the industry I work in, three letters sent to prospective Japanese suppliers might still bring only one reply.
Even then, the reply was usually a refusal. More often than not, silence had simply become the norm.
As AI has grown more capable, asking it to help me write emails in Japanese has also become routine. I hoped that writing in Japanese might, at least, improve the chances of receiving an answer.
And so today, the first reply from one of the companies I had approached arrived.
The message, in essence, was this: because the work that followed would require extensive communication in English, the company had considered the matter carefully and concluded that it did not currently have the capacity to operate on that basis. It therefore had to decline the proposed discussion.
After so many years in Europe, and more than a decade of working life, this was the first time I had seen a company turn down a project because of its ability to communicate in a particular language. Part of me found it fascinating. It felt like a distinctly Japanese corporate reason.
At least, I had never before heard of a company deciding in advance that a project could not be made to work because of a language barrier.
Of course, there is no denying that, in many cross-cultural and international projects, disagreements born of language and cultural difference can leave their share of blood and tears during the work itself.
Yet in my experience, when European decision-makers assess a project, cultural or linguistic differences rarely stand at the very top of the list.
Then again, given the care and caution with which Japanese companies often proceed, I could not rule out another possibility: perhaps they simply did not want to work with a foreign company, and had chosen this reason in order to send a courteous letter and express their regrets with impeccable politeness.
By European standards, Germans generally rank among the stronger speakers of English. Twenty years ago, however, and even as recently as a little over a decade ago, a foreigner who could not speak idiomatic, fluent, almost “perfect” German would often encounter a quiet, barely concealed impatience. Sometimes people would complain openly that the person’s accent was too heavy or their pronunciation incorrect.
Perhaps this has something to do with the large numbers of immigrants and refugees who have entered German society over the past decade. At least in my experience, expectations of foreigners’ German seem to have shifted from “it must be perfect” towards “it is wonderful that a foreigner speaks German at all.”
I have never lived in Japan, so I do not know what expectations Japanese society places on a foreigner’s command of Japanese. Today’s rejection letter did suggest, however, that this company, at least, held itself to a remarkably high standard in foreign languages.
German culture’s “directness” is exceptional even within Europe. As a result, Germans have acquired a reputation for being “rude” in many European countries; their habit of saying things plainly does not always pause to consider whether anyone else can bear it.
Perhaps that is why, after living in Germany for so long, I feel like an enormous bear whenever I return to Asia, especially when I visit Japan: liable to knock over a vase simply by walking past it, uncivilised, inattentive, inconsiderate, without the least delicacy, almost barbaric.
Many people say that living in Japan for too long can leave them feeling suffocated. I can understand that completely. I can imagine it, too.
Even when I lived in Taiwan, there were times when I felt I could hardly breathe. What, then, would Japan be like?
And yet I remain curious. What is Japan really like, this country that resembles Germany in form but not in spirit?
Whether an experience is good or bad, if it helps us grow and teaches us something, it becomes nourishment for a life.
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