Good bye, the old good days of Japanese economy

Dr. Nobuo Ikeda is a professor teaching economics at Jobu University in Tokyo. He is better known as one of Japan's most popular bloggers. He is a great commentator as well as a belligerent agitator who vehemently criticizes contemporary Japanese people's complacence.

He was recently interviewed by a famous British business magazine, The Economist. He found the questions of the interviewer quite reasonable but sometimes hard to answer. To make his points clear, he posted an entry titled "Why Japan Is So Slow" on his blog site.

He points out the fact that although a long-term relationship between a supplier and a maker used to be efficient and help boost Japanese economy, its effectiveness is disappearing very quickly now due to change of the economic climate.

Now the game is over: when the future is not so bright, the payoff of "defection" would be greater than that of "cooperation". So the long-term relation became inefficient and fragile. It also changed politics: the Liberal Democratic Party has redistributed the rent of growth, but the source of the rent dried up. So voters want change, but they don't know what to change. And the DPJ doesn't know either. So we can't expect too much from them. Real change would occur when the LDP is divided after it lose the election, and the "third party" emerges.

I could not agree with him more. Japan's future is bleak. Japan will see hope only after going through several political turbulences. It's still a long way to go.

Japanese customers v.s. English-speaking customers

I have been thinking of this question for many years: which customers should I focus on, Japanese customers or English speaking customers?

Japanese customers and English-speaking customers are in sharp contrast to each other. Pros of dealing with Japanese customers are at the same time cons of dealing with English-speaking customers. Contrarily, cons of dealing with Japanese customers are at the same time pros of dealing with English-speaking customers. I will summarize pros and cons of dealing with Japanese customers and English-speaking customers below.

*When dealing with Japanese customers:

**Pros
- If you are a native Japanese speaker born in Japan, you have a huge advantage over other nationals because you are supposed to know very well what Japanese customers expect and how they behave.
- Market competition is mitigated thanks to the lingual and cultural barriers. It is often difficult for non-Japanese to enter the Japanese market without understanding the details of Japanese business practices.
- Japanese customers are more loyal than English-speaking customers. Once a good relationship is established, they tend to stick to that relationship.

**Cons
- Japanese customers are unable to express their needs effectively. They are unable to document their requests. Suppliers must infer what they want from the conversation with them. It is often very ambiguous.
- They are reluctant to make a written contract with suppliers. Even after entering into a contract, they often try to change the terms of agreement.
- Decision making is often too slow. This is due to their complicated internal decision making processes.
- They often look down on suppliers and don't look at them as partners on equal footing. As a result, they often make unreasonable requests to suppliers in terms of prices, quality and date of delivery.

*When dealing with English speaking customers:

**Pros
- Before starting any business, English speaking customers make a clearly described contract with suppliers. All the terms of conditions are well-written in the contract. There's no ambiguity.
- English-speaking customers are less likely to ask for an unreasonable request which is not described in the contract.
- The English-speaking market is huge and spreads across the entire world.

**Cons
- The market competition is fierce. There are so many competitors throughout the world.
- English-speaking customers are less loyal. Once they find more favorable trading conditions in your competitors, they don't hesitate switch suppliers.
- If you are not a native English speaker, you will be disadvantaged in terms of communication. Communication can be more difficult and costly.

In summary, Japanese customers tend to stick to a long-term relationship. It's very difficult for outsiders to get into a relationship with a Japanese customer. But once a relationship has been established, they rarely switch suppliers. Contracts are often written incompletely or even non-existent, and human relationships are more emphasized. In contrast, English speaking companies conduct business strictly based on contracts. No contract, no business. They don't stick to a certain supplier and are always in search for better trading conditions.

To my personal preference, I like the way English speaking customers do more. It's more strict but also more transparent than that of Japanese customers. When we work with diverse suppliers (unlike homogeneous suppliers found in Japan), we have no choice but to do business based on contracts. A contract symbolizes human rationality and it is the only common element among heterogeneous people.

Mistrusting Japanese companies

Although I am a Japanese person born in Japan, I have never liked the way Japanese white collar employees work in Japan. They always put the customers first ... often way too much. They accept unreasonable requests from customers so easily that they often look more like slaves rather than equal partners.

For example, let's say it's 4:30 pm on Friday now. You are an employee and thinking of the weekend's plan at office in Tokyo. Now the telephone rings and you will hear your customer telling you casually: "Oh I am sorry but can you finish this new work by 10 am Monday?" Yikes. That's tons of work. It means that you have to work overtime on Friday and throughout the weekend. But you have already appointments with your friends and family.

What do you think? Would you accept it? If you work in the culture of English speaking countries such US and Canada, you might say like this: "I am afraid I simply can't make it. Would you mind putting off the deadline a bit further like next Wednesday?" However, you can't usually say like this in Japan. You are exposed to a very strong social pressure and it's very difficult for you to refuse such a request from your customers.

I don't think this makes sense. This is a really terrible business practice, but is commonly observed in Japanese business scenes.

I can't deal with these Japanese companies. That's against my values. Of course, not all the Japanese companies are like this...but I have to say most of them are still like this.

Closing the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be

I am a big fan of TED. The website has so many great speech videos. As the site puts, those are exactly the "ideas worth spreading".

One of the greatest videos is this:
Michelle Obama's plea for education

Well, I am not much of a political person. I do like President Barack Obama, but it's because I find charisma in his personality, not because I support all his policies.

Likewise, I like this video because I find the speaker is a woman who has overcome numerous obstacles in her personal life, not because she is First Lady of the United States.

But Barack reminded us on that day, all of us in that room, that we all know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. We all know. And he urged the people in that meeting, in that community, to devote themselves to closing the gap between those two ideas, to work together to try to make the world as it is and the world as it should be, one and the same.

I am aware of the reality as well as the ideal. I am looking at both now. I am struggling between the two. One day I have hope, dreaming of the ideal. Another day I am discouraged, seeing the reality and how large the gap between the two is.

As Mr and Mrs Obama say, we must try our best to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. This is no easy task. But we have to assume the responsibility to make the world better place for our children.

Traffic jam in Saigon

As everybody knows, motorcycles dominate the roads in Vietnam.

On the way to e-Town this morning, I was stuck in a terrible traffic jam. Cach Mang Thang 8 (August Revolution) street was packed with motorcycles. Even worse, road work was going on everywhere on the street. Oh god. I have never seen the actual hell yet, but if I see it, it must look like this.

I strongly believe that motorcycles are the integral part of Vietnamese culture. Yet I must feel sorry for motorcycle commuters at the peak time. Saigon needs a little bit more of public transportation. Hopefully, subway or monorail. It will certainly make Saigon people's life easier.

Freedom of speech in Vietnam

Vietnam is a lovely country. I enjoy living in this state. However, there's one thing I don't like about it: Vietnam lacks freedom of speech. Nobody can criticize the ruling Communist Party here.

Once upon a time, Vietnam went through a fierce war. Politics destroyed everything in this country. Since the Vietnam war ended in 1975, Vietnamese people have lost their interest in politics. They have learned that politics doesn't make them happy.

Vietnam has neither freedom of speech nor democracy. But people don't seem to care as long as the government keeps its promise that it brings economic development to its people. This is a kind of implicit social contract. And so far so good.

I don't really object to it. After all, Vietnam is still a developing country and it's more important to feed its people properly than to give them freedom of speech. This is understandable.

However, there's a risk that it will prevent Vietnamese from thinking in a creative manner in the future. This can become a problem once Vietnamese economy has reached a certain level of affluence.

You could say that Vietnamese people are currently tuned more to be good factory workers than to be imaginative creators. Maybe, it's okay for now. I hope that someday it will have a full-fledged freedom of speech for the future generations in Vietnam.

How to keep myself motivated in writing blog in English

My native language is Japanese, not English. It's certainly much harder for me to write entries in English than in Japanese. I have tried to keep writing English blog several times in the past, all in vain.

In the meantime, I have been posting numerous entries in Japanese on http://d.hatena.ne.jp/elm200. The blog site has attracted more than 900,000 page views in the last 3 years.

The reason why I could keep writing the blog in Japanese but failed to do so in English is rather simple. In English blog entries, I have never received any reactions. No comments nor social bookmarks. It was as if I were talking to the wall. I say something but nobody responds.

There's a web site called lang-8 (http://lang-8.com/). This website has been created and maintained by a Chinese guy who lives in Japan. This is basically a social network system which specializes in language exchange. You can join the network to help people who learn your native tongue and get help from native speakers of the language you study.

Maybe I can post my entries in lang-8 to get my articles corrected by English native speakers. They might not respond to the content of my posts but I can at least receive some reactions in the form of sentence correction. It can be a motivation to keep writing in English.

However, I never really liked it very much. I don't know why. I just wanted to have an English-speaking blog. Perhaps I should just start writing in English. I don't have to make any excuse. As http://31o5.com/ at Bangkok says, after all, we are not English native speakers and it's simply impossible to be perfect on English. The most important thing is to make ourselves understood to as many people as possible. English happens to be the best tool to convey your ideas to the maximum number of people on the globe. Probably, we don't have to be too sensitive on grammar and structures of our English sentences. Just do it. Make your voice heard. That's all we need to do.