THINKS YOU WON’T SEE IN KANADA

March 5, 2013 By 2 Comments

A store in Tokyo is filled with unique finds .. most in Japanese and indecipherable to the gaijin.

Condensed milk in a tube. Purchased to make a Vietnamese coffee at home.

condensed milk

An individually wrapped prune goes well with your Cream Collon (tube cookies with a creamy center). You can’t make this stuff up.

prunes

I was speaking with someone about how healthy Japan is. But a fellow in pharmaceuticals said that the cholesterol and diabetes drug markets are growing rapidly in Tokyo. This is why; the only thing I will eat in McDonalds is an egg mcmuffin but I won’t eat that. Obesity on a bun. Hey McDonalds, “Big Canadian” could go there too (unfortunately).

cholesterol

In Tokyo there are safety men everywhere. I mean everywhere, with their hands waving to ensure you don’t crash into a truck or workmen or any of 1,000 other things going on near the roads.

But automation is on the way …. A bit hard to see, but the LED safety patrolman.

image

A butcher skinning something on the street. What is it? No idea, but he had a big crowd.

image

You never know what you will see next.

Update: adding one more. Sitting in the doctors office I saw an add for this brand of baby diapers.

20130311-144603.jpg

Filed Under: Our Asia Adventure Tagged With: , , ,

THE GARBAGE

November 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

In Canada it is progressive when a city incorporates composting. There is still a large debate on the economics of recycling beyond the most basic in a resource rich country.

In Japan, they take garbage sorting and distribution very seriously, as you would expect as the country is land and resource constrained. But for a newcomer, the garbage system can be quite daunting. We had to cut this out and put “cheat sheets” on each of the 4 different bins that we have in the apartment.

image

And to be clear, make a mistake and you could face a fine. This is serious stuff and required many re-reads before we got it right (smile). At least it is in English.

Candidly, I admire them and am glad to do my part. Canada should do a lot more of this.

Filed Under: Our Asia Adventure Tagged With: , , , ,

HOW TO BUY IN THE US or CANADA FROM ABROAD

November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

Living abroad you face many challenges; such as accessing websites to maintain your subscriptions and being blocked because of where your IP address is (i.e Japan) and buying things in another country that are not available locally or way over priced (In Japan, most frequent is “not available”).

The simplest way to re-sign for subscriptions is through a VPN service like StrongVPN which make it look like your PC is in that country via a local IP address. Relatively simply and one I use all the time.

As for buying things, that really comes down to how often you travel home. In my case, going to Canada is an “almost never” scenario. But the US is more frequent due to a US based HQ. But that doesn’t fully solve the problem as many websites require a US billing address. A few examples:

  • Try to sign up for a on-line service out of the US (i.e. a music service ) and you will be out of luck unless you have a US credit card and billing address.
  • Several websites will require US billing and shipping address when buying goods due to fraud concerns.

Very difficult, or so I thought. Turns out that you can change your billing address on a Canadian credit card to another address for a period of time (30 days, 5 days). I did it with Amex, changing my billing address to the hotel I was staying in for 5 days to process the orders. Voila, order away and when I arrive at the hotel my goods will be waiting.

I will also use this trick to renew a few online subscriptions, opting to pay the entire years fee in one lump sum.

Neat trick.

Filed Under: General Thoughts Tagged With: , , , ,

THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF EXPATS

May 23, 2012 By 4 Comments

 

As many of my friends know, our family is planning a move – to Tokyo. We have often talked about Asia and it has been a personal career goal. As with all goals, if you set your mind to it, it will happen.

This will be very different from our “ex-pat lite” experience of living in London primarily due to language. I do not say due to culture because moving to London was a huge culture shock. I personally didn’t think it would be – but I was very, very wrong.

In retrospect, it was those cultural differences that made it such an amazing experience and one that I continue to reflect on fondly; I love the UK. But that requires a certain mindset. What I came to realize as I lived there and mingled in the expat community, is that there are three types of expats:

1. The ‘check-the-box’ expat:  This expat knows that they will only be here for a short while and are looking forward to promptly returning home and therefore decide that they are going to do it all. This generally means an insanely packed schedule with day trips and holidays that are so jam packed with sightseeing that they really don’t experience it. These are people who go to The Louvre and only schedule 1 hour.

2. The ‘I do not want to be here’ expat:  This is the executive who has to do this role for career reasons and is dragging along a spouse who does not want to be there. They are usually counting the days until they can move back into the house that they kept in North America and resume ‘normal’ life. This family shops at the butcher shop in Virginia Water who stocks all kinds of US foods like crappy Skippy peanut butter and constantly complains about everything that is different than at home. Surprisingly, there are quite a few of these people.

3. The ‘make it memorable’ expat: This family may or may not know when they are going home but are there to love every minute. The nuances of the culture, the little differences that are frustrating for family No. 2 become charming. They mix with locals and take trips that are not jam packed sightseeing trips, but also filled with casual brunches at a cafe on a side street. They love the differences and every experience, big and small.

In the UK, we were number 3 and it is best illustrated with cream:

  • Family number 2 looks at cream as an irritant. It is called pouring cream, comes in tiny little containers and expires in roughly 4 days versus the 3-4 month expiry on your 1 litre container in North America.
  • Our family laughed about cream. First thing, it took us 3 weeks to figure out that pouring cream is cream that can be used in a coffee as many shops don’t carry it. The fact that it only lasts a few days is one that we still wish we had in North America, as one has to wonder how our cream lasts for so long – what is in it?

It is all about mindset. In our case we will re-institute our weekend rule – “Do one thing different every weekend”. I cannot wait. Time to blow the dust off my camera …..

Filed Under: Our Asia Adventure Tagged With: ,

BE A BETTER MANAGER: LIVE ABROAD

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

From the HBR article with the same title:

Travel and living abroad have long been seen as good for the soul. What’s perhaps less well-known is that they’re also good for the company. People who have international experience or identify with more than one nationality are better problem solvers and display more creativity, our research suggests. What’s more, we found that people with this international experience are more likely to create new businesses and products and to be promoted.

For example, we ran an experiment in which 220 MBA students from Northwestern’s Kellogg School were asked to solve the famous Duncker candle problem. In this behavioral test, individuals are presented with three objects on a table: a candle, a pack of matches, and a box of tacks. They’re asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall—using only the objects on the table—so that the candle burns properly and does not drip wax on the floor.

The correct solution demands the ability to think creatively: Empty the box of tacks and use it as a candleholder. The solution is considered a measure of “insight creativity” because it involves making the “aha!” discovery that the box is not just a repository for your tools but a tool itself.

We found that the longer students had spent living abroad, the more likely they were to use the box as a candleholder. In fact, 60% of students who had previously lived abroad solved the problem compared with 42% of students who hadn’t lived abroad. Interestingly, time spent traveling abroad had no effect on creativity.

Seven years ago I may not have understood this article, but I do now. Living in the UK was a remarkable experience that changed me as a leader/manager. I naively went into the UK thinking that Canada and the UK were similar and that the cultural integration would be easy. I could not have been more wrong. Those two years taught me how to work with people who were not like me, how to grasp the nuance of corporate and geographic culture and how to adapt.

It will be interesting to see how corporations view moving people around in the future. I was speaking with a neighbour who works for a global bank that is renowned for their international program. She mentioned that they were slowly closing down the program as ‘local talent was now getting strong enough that they don’t need to import people’. That may be the case, but it misses the point that the above article makes – it isn’t just about bringing in good talent – it is about growing the talent pool worldwide. I would argue that there were broader benefits beyond my development or my leading a turnaround – the entire UK team that I worked with grew, changed and benefited. We did it together.

Filed Under: The Leaders Journey Tagged With: , , ,
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