October 2005. The first time I visited Japan was also the first time I went abroad. The initial feeling when the plane was about to land at Narita airport was about the peace and tranquility here. It was slightly cold. I got straight to Hitachi Software building and my one-month working onsite here began.
However, everything soon turned to be some kind of frustration. Japanese people seemed to be too shy to start conversation, and it was rare to find someone who can speak English well. It took me some time to get used to the railway system. I wish they used Romaji (the alphabetic representation of Japanese) instead of Kanji and Hiragana letters on their maps.
As having out-sourced for companies in both the US and Japan, I feel tempted to make a comparison of the two. Most Japanese could read English well, but their writing, speaking, and listening are usually limited and insufficient to work with offshore teams in English. Plus, they seem to be too shy about their English and prefer to use Japanese even if they can speak English pretty well. As a result, a lot of effort have to be put in communication, and delaying and misunderstanding often occurs. Another thing is that many Japanese companies still make use of old software technologies, architectures, and processes, even when building new systems. One of the reason is that these systems have to inter-operate with legacy ones. However, as I see it, it is also because of their "legacy way of thinking". Japanese companies often consider that it is safer to use old methods, which are guaranteed to work but not very flexible and reusable. I must say that sketching out the system architecture, analyzing and designing in an object-oriented manner, and refactoring the code are among my favorite stuff. However, with Japanese companies I don’t have much chance to do them. A Japanese company often requires many kinds of reports and metrics, and it takes hours to explain them why a simple item of data does not match their norm.
I am waiting for the weekend when I could go and see something interesting in Tokyo and Yokohama. Geee
1 comment:
That is so right. I have felt the same. In fact to the extent that in one project when designers explined that new project do not match reqs they cancelled the whole project and kept on using old system for next 2 years. That was in 2002.
AD (SDE)
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