Will Miss #325 - great feats of strength and endurance

One of the things I often see in Tokyo are relatively slender, average-looking men carting around or hauling enormous loads up (or down) stairs. The amazing thing about it isn't necessarily that they perform back breaking labor without overt concern for damaging themselves and then suing their company for the injury, but that they will haul what must be  hundreds of pounds up a huge flight of

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Won't Miss #303 - pointless placating steps

If you've ever called tech support and been asked a string of stupid questions before you can get to the heart of the issue, you'll have some idea about the point I'm about to make. In Japan, I've experienced a lot of situations in which I had to "make a show" or someone else had to take pointless steps before the real issue could be addressed. In my former company, there was always a problem

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Will Miss #239 - a culture of gaman

One of the character qualities that Japanese culture encourages and builds into it citizens is something called "gaman". It can mean slightly different things, but it essentially means to practice tolerance in the face of hardship rather than to complain, act out, or be confrontational. The manner in which this manifests in life here is that (the vast majority of) people tend to be patient with

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