[HN Gopher] Working and Communicating with Japanese Engineers
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Working and Communicating with Japanese Engineers
Author : zdw
Score : 132 points
Date : 2026-03-03 15:02 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tokyodev.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tokyodev.com)
| ilamont wrote:
| _developers from the West see no problem with clearly stating
| their opposition to a topic and listing the reasons why they
| oppose it--in many ways, this is seen as good, clear
| communication. This style can sometimes be jarring to Japanese
| speakers, who generally prefer to avoid anything that could be
| taken as blunt or confrontational._
|
| This was buried at the end of the essay, but is one of the most
| important points.
|
| I worked (not as a developer) in a company that was acquired by a
| Japanese company. Meetings were structured, and debate was kept
| to a minimum. If there was disagreement (typically framed as a
| difference of opinion or conflicting goals) there would be an
| effort to achieve some sort of balance or harmony. If the
| boundary was not hard, it was possible to push back. Politely.
|
| Also, if Japanese colleagues expressed frustration, or were
| confrontational, that was a red flag that some hard boundary had
| been crossed. This was extremely rare, and replies had to be made
| in a very careful, respectful way.
| keiferski wrote:
| From what I understand, it's not so much that all disagreement
| is to be avoided entirely, but rather that it should be done on
| an individual level prior to the meeting. So the fundamental
| difference is that a western company may use the meeting as an
| opportunity to discuss and debate an issue, whereas that
| process is done before the meeting in Japanese corporate
| culture.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| In Japan and in many East Asian cultures, debate is behind
| closed doors. And it would have taken _months_. Meetings are
| for ceremony.
| jamesbelchamber wrote:
| Could Project Managers start talking to me like the suggestion in
| Scenario 1 too please, that's clearly better.
| duskdozer wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of these seem to me like just good communication
| skills. It's just disproportionately helpful for non-native
| speakers, I guess.
| onion2k wrote:
| Lush, the bathbombs company, has an internal tech team that
| builds the apps, website, and point of sale systems. I worked
| there for a little while on some web-based tooling for payments
| which involved working with the Japanese team who did the tech
| for the Japanese site. They were _really_ good. Everything was
| incredibly clear and easy to understand because they had to put a
| lot of effort into written comms due to both the language barrier
| and the time difference. I built a great appreciation for what
| concise, high quality communication looks like.
|
| It's worth getting a role where you're forced into improving. I'm
| definitely a better communicator than I was before that job
| because of it.
| sunray2 wrote:
| Sounds really nice! Do you have an example of the concise, high
| quality communciation the Japanese team used? It'd be
| interesing to see what they focused on to make it so clear.
| atoav wrote:
| Not the person you asked here, but my guess is that it mostly
| has to do with the need for asynchronous communications. You
| can't just quickly ask the guy from Japan and expect an
| answer right away. That means the text needs to cover all
| questions.
|
| I once worked in a job where each day of the week was covered
| by a different person. Meaning at the end of the day you had
| to leave everything in a state that another person could pick
| it up right away without much hassle. This was mostly done
| via emails and pieces of paper with text on it, but worked
| flawlessly.
|
| And the only reason it did was because you couldn't just ask
| the guy from the day before a question. It all needed to be
| anwered by the work he left for you.
| p1esk wrote:
| I'm forced to do this with claude code: documenting work
| for context management. Every new agent starts fresh, so
| everything better be recorded and explained.
| onion2k wrote:
| There are a few things.
|
| - They didn't make assumptions about what the person reading
| would already know. Everything simple was explained, and was
| there were link to prior docs where complicated concepts were
| needed (e.g end of day cash consolidation in a store, because
| Japanese stores worked differently to US and Europe.) That
| made it really easy to read any document in isolation. We had
| a really good wiki that covered everything.
|
| - The team insisted on keeping docs up to date, and
| deprecating old docs for things that weren't relevant any
| more. They kept things tidy. They didn't drop writing
| documentation when things got busy.
|
| - They seemed to have spent quite a lot of effort organising
| things - tickets were always labelled and complete.
|
| - They were dedicated to using consistent terminology
| _everywhere_. They had a glossary and they stuck to it, and
| that extended to the code that they wrote. Product docs, tech
| docs, and code all used the same language for the same thing.
| I think they avoided using similar terms for things too,
| especially where things could be ambiguous in translation
| from Japanese to English and vice versa.
|
| To be honest, and with a decent amount of hindsight, I don't
| think anything was especially _clever_. It was just clear
| that the team put the effort in to doing the things most
| teams know they should be doing. I haven 't worked there for
| a few years now but I bet they're having a lot of success
| with AI because that documentation would be a great source of
| context.
| trueismywork wrote:
| Getting small details right is something everyone thinks is
| obvious. But how to achieve it without becoming mired in
| processes and keeping work going is a skill that is very
| difficult to cultivate and a very difficult problem to
| solve. Requiring a lot of clever people skills. Warms my
| heart to hear stuff like this.
| navane wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of my recent trip to Japan. The
| country isn't such a delight to be in for anything special,
| it's just clear that _they put the effort in to doing the
| things most people know they should be doing_. It's this
| discipline?
| resheku wrote:
| I have a similar experience. Whenever I send message to my
| Japanese colleagues their response is always detailed and
| precise. They might take time in replying as of course they use
| AI and auto translating tools but the reply will be accurate.
| In fact, I find the worse level of English understanding the
| better the answer they provide, and it's not only the work they
| put into it, there is a feeling of respect and importance
| towards other people work which I really appreciate.
| avidiax wrote:
| I feel that everyone could learn and apply the idea of having
| clear, concise language without jargon.
|
| I've hear this notion called "international English". English
| spoken in a way that non-native speakers find relatively easy to
| understand and follow.
|
| The hard part of this is that non-native speakers will rarely ask
| for this. It's a gift that you have to give, and a gift you have
| to encourage others to give. And most of all, it needs to be done
| in a way so as not to be condescending, by simply being clear.
| canpan wrote:
| I speak multiple languages fluently and people are always
| surprised when I share that my vocabulary is seriously limited.
| I learned it is an advantage. I am forced to use simple words
| to explain.
|
| On the opposite end: I had a coworker, I only ever got about
| 30% of what he said. I thought it's my Japanese skills. He used
| complicated sentences and words all over the place. But when I
| asked other Japanese coworkers, they told me they could not
| understand him either.
| electrosphere wrote:
| > I am forced to use simple words to explain
|
| I work with mostly Polish engineers and I am struck by how
| clear and concise their English verbal comms are. I admire it
| actually.
|
| I'm a native UK English speaker and I wish I had the simple
| directness that the Poles, Dutch etc have.
| chii wrote:
| Wouldn't that international english be the same simple english
| (e.g., https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)?
| accidentallfact wrote:
| I believe that this goes beyond vocabulary. It's more about
| who bears the burden in communication - in most cultures,
| it's the speaker, who is supposed to communicate clearly, and
| concisely. In western culture, it's the listener, who is
| expected to decipher whatever the speaker is talking about.
| tdeck wrote:
| > In most cultures, it's the speaker, who is supposed to
| communicate clearly, and concisely. In western culture,
| it's the listener, who is expected to decipher whatever the
| speaker is talking about.
|
| If you said this in Japanese, I'd say something like "Hmm,
| that seems a bit...". And you'd be expected to figure out
| what the rest of the sentence was.
|
| To be more clear, I don't think the generalization you're
| making is valid. My experience of non-"Western" cultural
| communication styles has not at all been uniformly more
| direct and clear. I think some subcultures in the US have
| an annoying habit of doing what you describe (e.g. "if you
| can't follow this you must be dumb" kind of mentality) but
| many others do not.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| It's always interesting to watch how a bunch of non-native
| speakers of English from different countries sitting in a room
| can talk to each easily, but when a Brit or an American joins,
| the conversation immediately collapses.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| In what way? What I've seen is the native English speaker
| bends over backwards to explain each and every idiom or try
| to not use them in the first place.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| As a non native English speaker: British accent is harder
| to understand (I know there are many accents in the UK).
| American accent is easier to understand. Idioms are equally
| harder to understand in both.
|
| For example "bend over backwards". I get the meaning, but
| my brain would never produce that phrase. I would say
| something like "adapts", "compromises", etc.
| lysace wrote:
| Text is often a lot easier than speech.
| zahlman wrote:
| I would say, text requires more _effort_ (at a minimum, typing
| is slower than speaking); but it pushes you to do things that
| you _should_ do in speech but rarely would do spontaneously.
| lysace wrote:
| It also allows the other person to take their time to
| understand and reply. They can use online translation tools
| etc.
|
| (Edit: Now that I read this: I should try writing e.g.
| Chinese using these tools, next time, instead of defaulting
| to English. My mother language isn't English, but it's pretty
| close, comparatively speaking.)
|
| A pattern I often end up with when there is a large language
| barrier: begin with long async messages that take a minute or
| two to write. End up with brief sync-ish messages as things
| get more detailed and we share more context.
| zahlman wrote:
| Yes, that makes sense. One of the things that has made
| Discord, Slack etc. so important (and could have done the
| same for IRC if people weren't so intimidated by it) is
| that users feel free to switch between sync and async modes
| as appropriate.
| bythreads wrote:
| Worked for years in japan, beg to disagree.
|
| Love japanese and japan but their work culture is horrific -
| Japanese are inefficient and the veneer of looking to work "hard"
| is more important than the hard work itself. People often stay
| until ridiculously late just to show they "put in the effort"
| which is more important than outcome.
|
| Then again that happens in many other countries as well ...
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| Most places/countries/companies that value hard work tend to
| produce a lot, but I also wonder what goes on when it tilts too
| far and hard work becomes what you are measuring for. In the US
| for example there's still the vague idea that working hard is a
| virtue of sorts, but there's also an equivalent desire to
| produce something, be efficient, etc.
|
| I haven't directly experienced Japanese work culture (just
| language and traveling) but it seems like they value hard work
| above all else, which makes innovation almost a threat. You
| might take away someone's opportunity to show "hard work" if
| you removed a difficult task.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > In the US for example there's still the vague idea that
| working hard is a virtue of sorts, but there's also an
| equivalent desire to produce something,
|
| This is the root of a lot of busywork and bullshit jobs as
| well. People work hard producing something of little and
| often negative value.
|
| Think of all the effort that goes into making competitive
| products, from life insurance and cellphone plans to airline
| tariffs difficult to compare. Compound that with advertising
| campaigns that don't inform about the product or service they
| are selling. All that consumes colossal resources and deliver
| effectively negative value for society, for a market to be
| maximally efficient it needs informed consumers that can
| compare offerings.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > In the US for example there's still the vague idea that
| working hard is a virtue of sorts
|
| And easily demonstrable when meeting someone in a social
| setting:
|
| "Hi, what's your name?"
|
| Then the very next question: "What do you do for a living?"
| cedws wrote:
| Yeah. I lived in Tokyo for 6 months as a digital nomad (so
| still working for an overseas employer.) As much as I love
| Japan, after hearing what the work culture is like I became
| pretty sure I didn't want to move there permanently. Not only
| is it an extremely unmeritocratic environment, the pay for
| software engs is rubbish. As a foreigner you'll more than
| likely be treated like dirt and passed up on for promotions.
|
| I think it's a shame because Japan is going through a massive
| tourism boom at the moment. There's surely a huge number of
| incredibly smart and talented people who would like to bring
| their skills in and help lift Japan out of its economic
| slumber. But Japan is still very closed off and shows no signs
| of wanting to modernise.
| adrianN wrote:
| I've heard people argue that Japan stays appealing because it
| is closed off and puts effort into maintaining their culture
| instead of modernizing into a generic western melting pot.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Moving to a different culture and adapting to it is a great
| way of shaking up your brain.
|
| Moving between very different cultures is a challenge, but
| the rewards are accordingly nicer, but it really sucks when
| the new culture doesn't welcome and integrate you into it.
| adrianN wrote:
| It is difficult for a culture to find a good balance
| between openness and conservation.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Some mixing is unavoidable. For instance, here in
| Ireland, an increasing number of Irish natives are aware
| of a Brazilian delicacy called "pao de queijo", thanks to
| the massive number of Brazilian residents. The way
| student visas work here is that they allow part-time
| work, and lots of Brazilians go for food services,
| bringing some of our recipes with them.
|
| Between Hungary and Turkey, something similar happened
| with the pogacza. I brough some cheese pogacza to the
| office and a Turkish colleague immediately recognized
| what it was. We couldn't really figure out which culture
| it comes from, but we agree it's delicious and
| dangerously addictive.
| cedws wrote:
| I think it's possible to open up without swinging the doors
| wide open like we have in the UK. There's also the argument
| that on Japan's current course, there won't be much culture
| left in a century due to population decline. Japan needs to
| very quickly correct course without completely submitting
| to cultural replacement.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| It's worth living in Japan if you can control your work
| schedule, by working for a remote Western employer that may
| not know nor care that you're outside the West, or by having
| your own startup and product. Otherwise I'd agree.
| cedws wrote:
| Yes, those are the only circumstances I'd recommend for
| staying in Japan, but they're only short term (1 year or
| less.) Working holiday is also nice if you're young. I met
| a few people working in hostels doing it, obviously doesn't
| pay much but gives you a place to sleep and a means to stay
| in the country for a while.
| sunray2 wrote:
| Something the article touches on: communication is not just about
| how we express ourselves, it's about this mutual respect that
| that we have to grow into. That crosses any boundary, and is
| something we can always learn.
|
| You can see that, to some extent, in how the article's points
| apply to language and communication in general, not just between
| Japanese and English. While turns of phrase give your repartee a
| flavour that sells your point--like what you're reading now--it's
| also a product of your thinking process, and as the article says,
| could cloud the point you're trying to make. If you can speak or
| write clearer, then your points will also become clearer to
| yourself. That's follows my experience, since I speak a lot of
| German for work. In German, I must think carefully about each
| point I make, otherwise I'll run into a sentence for which I
| don't know the words. I endeavour to respect the language and
| culture, and in doing so put effort into making my points simple
| enough for me to reach for the right words and phrases to show
| this respect (at least, I try!)
|
| For a good example: David Sylvian collaborating with the late
| Ryuichi Sakamoto. You can see them writing 'Blue of Noon' in the
| Brilliant Trees sessions on Vimeo/Youtube. David talks about his
| use of really minimal language to get musical structure and
| points across, since Ryuichi's English wasn't yet as perfect in
| the 80s as it was later on. You see this directly in the session
| videos. What's truly the best about it, is the respect they show
| for each other.
|
| Bad example (potentially): Aston Martin F1 collaborating with
| Honda on the new F1 engine :-) . After several years of extensive
| development and billion-dollar investment, today they're at the
| back end of the grid, more than 3 seconds off the pace. According
| to recent rumours, as recently as November, the Aston Martin F1
| bosses visited Tokyo to discuss progress of the engine that had
| been in development for a few years, apparently having hardly
| visited before, and were shocked to learn that only about 30% of
| the original workforce from Honda's previous venture in F1
| remained. It seems they didn't even know how far behind schedule
| Honda was! For projects as large as F1 car development, it's
| unfathomable that this mutual curiosity, which in effect is a
| form of respect, apparently wasn't there.
| netsharc wrote:
| The Honda collaboration "wrecked" McLaren too for several years
| last decade (incidentally it also featured Alonso, who
| complained about "GP2 engines!"). Damn, they were unbeatable
| for a few years with Red Bull, but it seems those engineers
| moved to RBPT, and they now have a typical Japanese/Asian "non-
| communicative" engineering team...
| mfuzzey wrote:
| "we really need to focus on user-facing touchpoints, because
| there's too much sign-up friction. Like, we need to 10x the
| stickiness of the landing page but also keep it lean,"
|
| Even as a native English speaker I find this type of language
| hard to understand, fluffy and ambiguous. We would all benefit
| from using plain language not just non native English speakers
| founditerating wrote:
| Who the hell talks like this in the first place?
|
| I've worked in Japan for 7 years and majority of the time you
| will not be working with native English speakers, usually
| people who speak multiple languages at all times, if you're
| only language you know is English you are the minority and
| people will have to work with you to understand.
|
| I couldnt even finish the article after that insane ramble of
| gibberish I'm genuinely confused who in the hell would ever
| talk like that.
| birdsongs wrote:
| > and majority of the time you will not be working with
| native English speakers, usually people who speak multiple
| languages at all times, if you're only language you know is
| English you are the minority and people will have to work
| with you to understand.
|
| This is pretty much life anywhere outside of North America
| and the UK (or colonies). In Norway, I don't think a single
| coworker of mine is a native English speaker (I am). We get
| along fine of course, but often I see the resistance they
| feel when having to switch to English. Second (or third)
| languages just take more brain power, and have more friction.
|
| I have learned Norwegian, but English is still is required
| sometimes, as it's the common denominator amongst the mix of
| Norwegian, Swedish, German, and Spanish people. And that
| English is usually functional and as clear as can be.
|
| This is the engineering department though. If you go to
| marketing or strategy it's full of this corpo double-speak.
| Nashooo wrote:
| Would you mind sharing some info on how you found a tech
| job in Norway? I'm from another European country and
| looking for some first-hand knowledge on working in /
| moving to Norway.
| birdsongs wrote:
| Yeah, absolutely. I came from the US, so it was a bit
| harder than a Schengen move. Not sure if you qualify for
| that or need a skills visa like I did.
|
| But essentially I applied, _a lot_ on LinkedIn. This
| started early 2021. Took about 8 months to secure a role,
| I was at 5 YoE at the time, embedded systems / embedded
| Linux engineering, and I would say moderately good at my
| job, nothing spectacular. No FAANG.
|
| Oslo was quite difficult, I wasn't able to secure a job
| there. They are also very keen on grades and transcripts,
| even though it had been a decade since I was in
| University. I had mediocre grades, which may have hurt.
|
| But I applied all over Norway, and got a robotics job in
| a small town on the west coast. They sponsored my skills
| visa, got me here, and after a year I transferred to our
| Oslo branch. Once you're in the country it's massively
| easier to move around. Interview was standard and sane,
| most here have been. Recruiter/manager soft fit check, a
| few technical rounds, then team and upper management
| interviews. Be humble but confident in interviews, don't
| brag excessively, it's very much the opposite of the US
| in working culture (read about "Janteloven"). Pay was
| substantially lower but I am so happy with the quality of
| life here I couldn't care less.
|
| UDI, the immigration department, is steady but slow.
| Everything just takes time. Lots of info here (follow to
| the "skilled worker" portal): https://www.udi.no/en/want-
| to-apply/work-immigration/
|
| I knew no Norwegian when moving. Nearly all tech jobs are
| English hybrid enough you can get by. But I would highly,
| highly recommend learning the language. Socially (private
| life) and professionally it helps so much. And it's a bit
| rare to really learn it, so people are often impressed or
| happy you do speak it. It's difficult though for a few
| reasons, dialect variety, English fluency among
| Norwegians, etc. I would say it took me all of 4 years to
| get to the point I could converse mostly fine at speed
| with someone speaking in a native dialect. Reading is
| much easier, that came after a year or two.
|
| This was kind of an info dump, let me know if you have
| any specific questions!
|
| Tl;dr: use LinkedIn, apply, apply, apply, don't get
| disheartened / give up, and give it time.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > Who the hell talks like this in the first place?
|
| People trying to hide their own lack of knowledge and ability
| numpad0 wrote:
| > Who the hell talks like this in the first place?
|
| guys that aren't sure if the yellow isn't too much
| Klonoar wrote:
| There are definitely companies in Japan that have people who
| will talk like this.
|
| Hell, I've advised some of them.
| atoav wrote:
| This is _The Lingo_. It is something people use when they try
| to say bland obvious stuff while sounding like they are tech
| wizards that deserve a high wage. I know the pattern, I studied
| philosophy, where you also have some writers that express
| simple ideas with complex lingo, while you have others where
| the lingo is complex, but it is needed, because the thought is
| also complex. For the uninitiated telling the two apart can be
| hard.
|
| In this case that just means: _our landing page needs to
| convince more people to sign up without getting too bloated._
|
| This means it implies a linear correlation between amount of
| content on the page and sign ups. More content, more signups.
| But not too much, otherwise it is bad again.
|
| In essence it is a bad take on a probably real problem,
| expressed by a person that needs to hide behind the lingo.
| financltravsty wrote:
| This makes sense?
|
| User-facing touch points: everything a user can interact with
|
| Sign-up friction: self explanatory
|
| Stickiness: less bounce rate
|
| Lean: don't overload with touch points/bloat
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| You're actually using jargon to explain jargon here. Try
| explaining all of this from the user's perspective.
| financltravsty wrote:
| Which terms/explanations are confusing?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Sign-up friction, bounce rate, touch points, bloat
| financltravsty wrote:
| Sign-up friction: how much effort it takes to sign up;
| many times because it's hard to find the sign up page or
| the page itself has too many steps
|
| Bounce rate: a bounce is someone visiting your site and
| not signing up. A bounce rate is the amount of people
| that do this compared to sign ups
|
| Touchpoints: things a user interacts with, like a landing
| page, a nav bar with a sign up button, the sign up page
| itself, forms on that page, etc.
|
| Bloat: too much "stuff" that is unnecessary towards some
| end goal like too much copywriting on the landing page,
| or too complex of a sign up flow, etc.
|
| This isn't snark, but this is all industry standard
| terminology.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Terms of art exist, and none of these are unknown terms to
| people in the field. Jargon is specifically used to
| communicate certain ideas without defining each and every
| single term. If you were in an aerospace field and people
| started talking about various types of engines and
| propellers, you'd be expected to know what it means, but
| for some reason people think computing and UX is somehow
| different, as if a lay person should perfectly understand
| it without learning any new terms.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| None of the terms here are fluffy or ambiguous. They're about
| specific details or strategic categories that you (perhaps
| justifiably) don't find important. The original post's
| suggested rewording is reasonable, but it doesn't include all
| the information: the recipient won't know that the sender wants
| further improvement even though the latest build may be better
| than what's live, or that developers should avoid trading off
| scalability in the process.
| faizan199 wrote:
| Do Japanese people know English?
| cinntaile wrote:
| The average Japanese person doesn't know English.
| frumiousirc wrote:
| The average native Japanese speaker knows more English than the
| average native English speaker knows Japanese.
| photios wrote:
| Yeah. I'm not a native English speaker and I spent significant
| time and effort learning the damn language. It paid off.
|
| What's preventing Japanese engineers from doing the same?
| koito17 wrote:
| > What's preventing Japanese engineers from doing the same?
|
| The fact they don't really need it in their life (or job).
| English is definitely necessary if you work service jobs in
| Tokyo (to deal with tourists), but not much anywhere else.
|
| Japanese is one of a handful of languages where one can
| complete a postdoc entirely within the language. Many
| languages are not like this. e.g. in the Phillipines, STEM
| subjects are almost entirely taught in English, since Tagalog
| simply doesn't have words to describe most of the concepts.
| The result is something like 90% of the coursework being in
| English, with random Tagalog words mixed in. The concept is
| called "Taglish" if I recall correctly.
|
| This is unnecessary in countries like Japan, China, South
| Korea, etc. If you're applying to a graduate school in Japan
| (or China, or Korea), expecting to receive education in
| English is actually the edge-case, not the expectation.
|
| Also, at least in my company, there is an interesting trend
| where people are deciding learning English isn't really
| necessary since AI translation has gotten "good enough" for
| most use cases.
| photios wrote:
| > The fact they don't really need it in their life (or
| job). English is definitely necessary if you work service
| jobs in Tokyo (to deal with tourists), but not much
| anywhere else.
|
| But the linked article seems to imply the opposite. I mean,
| working with an English PM sure sounds like the language is
| one of the job's core competencies.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| The linked article worked at an outlier. Mercari is
| extremely far from the norm.
| zahlman wrote:
| > The result is something like 90% of the coursework being
| in English, with random Tagalog words mixed in. The concept
| is called "Taglish" if I recall correctly.
|
| Spoken Tagalog has always impressed me (though I can't
| really say I know any) for how freely English seems to be
| mixed in (and well pronounced, such that you notice the
| difference in phonology), in varying ratios. I'm quite sure
| there's a deliberate code-switching to it.
|
| > people are deciding learning English isn't really
| necessary since AI translation has gotten "good enough" for
| most use cases.
|
| It's honestly really impressive. Although I'm told it can
| occasionally glitch and treat the text as a prompt instead
| of just translating it.
| smukherjee19 wrote:
| Yes, especially if people living in the city. I have known
| Japanese people who can't speak English well but can read
| technical CS papers and understand well enough to give a
| summary and presentation in Japanese.
|
| Just keep in mind they are usually very good in reading,
| okayish in listening, and kinda needs work on speaking. But
| that's expected. If you live a daily life in Japan like the
| Japanese, you barely need to speak English, or hear it, if at
| all. Even the foreign staff at the convenience store speak
| Japanese good enough for them to carry on their duties.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Standard Japanese public education through to
| college/university include ~1k hours total of English classes,
| changing but still focused on word-for-word translations.
|
| The goal and aim of those classes (I think) is so that 21st
| century Japanese engineers can decode foreign scientific papers
| and encode export user manuals on their own.
|
| And so Japanese engineers can interpret and compose English
| text files as, one would handle C-like code. Consequently
| read/write data rates as well as emotional grasp are closer to
| that for code than speech, and the ability also gets dubious
| quick for anything "platform" specific and not literal. Like,
| even "to pull off" will cause an exception and quick
| jump/return with "achieve". It would be fair to say that
| calling it English literacy is a bit of a stretch.
|
| It will do for many purposes, so in that sense, yes, Japanese
| people do know English.
|
| There are people(not me) from rich or otherwise unique
| backgrounds or educated before WWII who use actual English and
| not that embedded English Lite, they're rare.
| 3371 wrote:
| Do (your country) people know Japanese?
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what this question was meant to convey.
|
| There are many countries (or cities) in the world where you
| can easily get by in English beacuse almost everyone you need
| to / want to interact with can speak English. Amsterdam,
| Paris, Berlin, Stockholm are 4 the come to mind even though
| their native languages are Dutch, French, German, Swedish.
|
| Japan is not one of those countries. Yes, you can survive
| without speaking Japanese with a lot of effort and asking
| friends to translate.
|
| So it's not an unreasonable question to ask if they speak
| English. It's effectively asking, are they liked the 4 cities
| mentioned above.
|
| I was once at a bar in Tokyo and where I met a young French
| woman who was thrilled to be going back to France after 6
| months in Japan. She had wrongly assumed the her English
| would get her by like it had in many other countries who's
| first language was not English.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm are 4 the come to
| mind even though their native languages are Dutch, French,
| German, Swedish.
|
| Berlin is very much an exception to basically everything in
| Germany. Concerning Paris: many French people speak bad
| English.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| No, in general they don't. Anyone telling you differently was
| in a bubble of English speaking Japanese. That's not the norm,
| not even in Tokyo.
|
| Engineers can probably read because the majority of tech,
| computer languages, libraries, their docs are in English.
| Though that might change now that LLMs can make all the docs in
| Japanese removing the need for English skills.
|
| Speaking ability is rare.
| zoom6628 wrote:
| As Someone who has spent decades working with teams around the
| world with varying levels of English from native to none, these
| are good guidelines. I would add to try and talk using the
| simplest and least ambiguous words you can. Breathe. And use
| shorter sentences.
|
| I also have non English speaking family members so I get to
| improve everyday. And yes I make mistakes every day but 99%
| avoidable and the rest I just accept and move on. Multicultural
| and multilingual teams are a joy not a test so enjoy them when
| you have the chance. Might surprise yourself how much you will
| learn about people and communications and build a new level of
| self awareness in the process.
|
| My 2c.
| muyuu wrote:
| I worked in Japan for ~7 years. I don't think I can relate with
| any of this, for starters I think not speaking Japanese
| relatively fluently would completely shape your experience from
| the get go.
|
| Granted, this was a long time ago and even seeing non-Japanese
| around in Tokyo was rare, unlike now. But in the office
| environment let alone in tech, I doubt you can really make it
| work without not just speaking Japanese, but being considerably
| adapted to their culture. I think the chances of the dev just
| moving to Japan to work in tech and be anything other than a
| total outcast are poor. Which is ok if you plan to just do a year
| or two maybe. Even the author himself first got well acquainted
| with the language and culture then moved into development. And
| even so, this is hardly for but a select few to just fit into
| this lifestyle.
|
| For North Americans or Europeans, the intersection of people who
| can make it work and are also incentivised to make it work looks
| infinitesimally small to me, esp. if you can opt for jobs in the
| industry in America or even Europe. It's a totally different
| story for someone from say South Korea or Taiwan, or to a lesser
| extent other Asian countries. For starters, coming in as a junior
| dev in Japan or as a translator won't be a massive pay downgrade
| for them. For South Koreans and Taiwanese the culture will be a
| lot more familiar, although there will of course still be some
| friction. So imagine coming in as mid-manager or higher, wow it
| sounds like quite the experiment to me knowing the place well.
| CEO with capital, maybe. But good luck with that.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I agree with you. The person in the article worked at Mercari
| which I used to go their tech meetups. The moment you entered
| it was as though you teleported into an SF/SV meetup. Mostly
| English speaking people with English presentations in a room
| with an SV like microkitchen, free SV snacks, etc... That's not
| the norm at all.
| BalinKing wrote:
| Minor nitpick, but I didn't think tema ( _tema_ , "theme") was an
| abbreviation--Jisho and Wiktionary (for what they're worth) say
| it's from German _Thema_.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| This article misses some significant cultural differences.
|
| I worked with a talented older group in Japan for a while.
|
| If on a call they said something would be "difficult", that was
| their understated way of saying "never in a million years would
| we do that".
|
| They were also strongly hierarchical and would often defer to
| their leader to avoid any disagreement.
|
| They could teach the British a lesson in understatement...
|
| Even though we had a close working relationship they were very
| much trying to "save face" when issues came up and didn't
| directly admit shortcomings.
|
| Also, never address them by their first names !!
| thadk wrote:
| Since it kind of had an LLM flavor in the original anyway, I had
| an LLM redraft this for my particular non-Japanese intercultural
| situation, and it wasn't valueless. I had to tell it to "Make
| sure to keep the same technology focus of the original."
| Bridged7756 wrote:
| It is the expectation in my country to wait for your turn too,
| and seen as rude or a power display to speak over someone.
|
| I also find that casual conversations are more turn based, and
| people are expected to continue a conversation by asking
| questions (of the other person). So this also means being mindful
| of how long you've spoken, and to ask a question about the other
| person instead, to not keep the other person just listening. The
| gauge is questions (or short responses), and the period is
| silence.
|
| I find that questions pose less importance with US people, which
| might still use them, but not in the way we're used to. There i
| feel like the gauge is speaking (or short responses) and the
| period is silence.
|
| Greetings like "how's it going" and "what's up" were confusing at
| first too, it took me a while to get when people were using them
| as greetings.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Worked for famous Japanese data platform for a few years. The
| Japanese engineers were collegial but some who didn't come in to
| the office were actually Hikikomori focused on very narrow things
| and were very nitpicky about details that wouldn't have
| ultimately mattered. Those that came into the Tokyo office lived
| to work and I saw people regularly sleeping at their desk after
| having stayed out all night for obligatory whiskey outing with
| colleagues and arriving at the office at 6 am as expected. The
| San Fran office was the opposite, very sloppy standards people,
| getting in at noon and staying up late to meet deadlines. The
| impedence mismatch between the two environments was almost
| unbearable.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Make your English more understandable
|
| This entire section is also good advice for working and
| communicating with _English_ engineers. (Especially in a world
| where about 3 /4 of English speakers don't have
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language as their first
| language.)
|
| > Create new meeting strategies
|
| A lot of this is also relevant within English, honestly. (The
| phrase konoRen Shi deHe tsuteimasuka is good to know and I
| definitely wouldn't have come up with it on my own.)
|
| > If you notice that certain members are very quiet at a meeting,
| despite seeming like they have something to say, see if you can
| give them an opportunity. A simple "Does anyone else have
| thoughts on this?" can go a long way in making sure everyone
| feels heard.
|
| This in particular also seems like something I've seen
| recommended in many other contexts.
|
| > Lastly, be aware that some katakana words are commonly
| abbreviated differently in colloquial Japanese, often becoming
| unrecognizable to English speakers. Here are some examples: ...
| Topic/theme (of a meeting): tema (te-ma)
|
| The others check out, but
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%83%86%E3%83%BC%E3%83%9E isn't
| an abbreviation. It's just.. a loanword that English speakers
| might well not recognize, because it comes from German _Thema_
| (in turn from Latin and Greek; so ultimately the same source as
| the English "theme", but by a separate path). Also because we
| don't often _use_ the word "theme" this way, but yeah.
| chickensong wrote:
| Have a strong liver.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Most Americans / Brits I've interacted with don't know what a
| phrasal verb is and don't realize they're hard to parse.
| Canadians and Kiwis too, but they've often got much more
| experience interacting with non-native English speakers.
|
| Take out vs. Take up vs. Take in vs. Take on, etc
|
| I try to avoid using phrasal verbs wherever a simple verb will
| do. And if I have to use a phrasal verb, I try to keep it
| together: "let's take on this task" vs. "Let's take this task
| on". The latter requires an extra effort to parse. But obviously
| "let's take this task" works too and is simpler.
|
| The worst is when Americans use baseball idioms without even
| noticing they've switched away from "base-level English".
|
| > If we get this shipped by the end of the month it'll be a
| homerun, and if by the end of the week then I'll consider that a
| grand slam.
|
| So... ship soon = good then, got it.
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