During the lunch hour of one of the training programs that I delivered for a group of Japanese managers, an HR manager, who was also a Japanese, approached me. I asked,
“Is there anything you’d like me to cover during the program?”
“No. But, can you educate American employees?”
“Of course. What’s on your mind?”
“They don’t have manners.”
It surprised me, as he looked like a laidback person. Besides, I’d seen him pulling his pants up several times during the morning session. As he did so, he pushed his tummy forward a bit, so he looked like the Manneken Pis (statue of a little boy peeing) in a fountain. He also wore very skinny off-white colored pants. I didn’t know until then, that bright ceiling lights could cast distinctive shadows underneath the creases of fabric. I turned my eyes decidedly upward.
“It’s hard to motivate myself to work with them.” He sighed. This must be very serious, as it takes a lot for an HR manager to be discouraged.
“Can you give me examples?”
“Well, when we share a birthday cake in the office, each piece is served with a fork stuck in it.”
He was saying that the fork should be placed on the plate, instead. This can be a very culture-specific issue: Japanese prepare a bowl of rice with chopsticks straight up in the bowl for a person who has just passed away. Of course forks are not chopsticks, but he might have been applying the same logic to the forks.
“Well, we work in the U.S., so we need to follow their customs here. For them it’s a way of securing a fork and serving the cake quickly. Many of them probably don’t see it as a matter of manners. They may not do it at their home either. But they want to be efficient in the office.”
And of course, inadvertently, Japanese can also commit some cultural faux pas. I’ve heard many complaints from Americans. The most frequent complaint heard is about the noise that Japanese make when they drink Japanese tea or miso soup, even coffee. Japanese do this to show that they’re savoring it, and also to cool off the hot liquid. In a tea ceremony, you shouldn’t make noises; however, in everyday life, noises can be an expression of liveliness, joy and a down-to-earth personality.
Many years ago, when I was training Americans, several female employees approached me during lunch, and asked me if I could teach a Japanese manager good manners.
“Can you give me some examples of his bad manners?”
“Well, he relieves himself in the office.”
I had this image in my head of an Akita dog raising his hind leg and doing his business near the bushes. It’s a good thing that people can’t see what I’m visualizing in my head.
After a few seconds of silence, one of them blurted out, “Well, he has stomach issues.”
With a couple of more exchanges, I finally found out that this Japanese manager walked around the office and blew wind. They told me that it smelled out- of-this-world bad. These women had done everything they could in their power: they wrote a letter, they gave him an OTC medicine that was supposed to be very effective. None worked.
“Is this an accepted practice in Japan?”
They assumed this, as other Japanese managers didn’t seem bothered by this.
I didn’t know what to say.
“No, it’s not acceptable anywhere in the world.”
But they were not convinced easily with my word. They must’ve gone through so much emotional turmoil by this unpleasant and very tricky case, as they feared his retaliation. I gave them some suggestions, but I had to wonder, how he managed to survive while he worked in Japan? Did his colleagues in Japan tolerate this? Or did it begin when he started eating American food?
Once I was going through Japanese dining etiquette with a group of Americans, when a sales manager interrupted me and asked,
“I just want to check with you about something. I went to Japan and had dinner with Japanese executives. What do you call the raw fish? Ah, sashimi. That’s right. You know, I can’t eat raw fish. But then, a shabushabu hot pot came and was set right in front of me. So, I put all of my raw fish in the pot, cooked them and ate it!”
He was proud of his ingenuity. But he also had a slight doubt in his mind, and wanted to make sure that his solution was acceptable in Japan.
I theatrically covered both sides of my head with my hands, like the person in “The Scream” painted by the Norwegian painter Munch.
“Well, sir. I can assure you that they’ll remember you forever. You made not a small impression on them. It must’ve been an oh-my-gosh moment for them.”
Some honest mistakes are good mistakes. You can laugh and build or deepen your relationships with others. There are things that you couldn’t have helped. On the other hand, there are things you can harm your relationships, if you force others to follow your way. I’ve been giving a piece of advice to myself for the last twenty-four years: take the good, and edit the bad. Enjoy good things in people, and play down what you don’t like about them. Focus on things that are important.
But still, it’s hard to make light of the out-of-this-world smell for long. To offset that much negative, he needs to come up with some spectacularly good things, like saving the world from a meteor. Some things are hard to get over even at the very basic human level.