Kyoko, A Story of Japanese Business Woman

Her name is "Kyoko". She joined in one of leading insurance company in April 1985. When she started her career, there were not so many women managers in Japanese companies. She graduated from a women's college. In late 1980's, many Japanese companies measured women's college graduates to be "two years after high-school graduation". Companies did not respect women college graduates regarded as high-school graduates.

She was a hard-working, smart, friendly, and flexible employee. After five years of working as an insurance planning specialist, her supervisor gave her an opportunity to take an examination for becoming a management candidate. She studied hard and passed the exam. She was then, officially, one of management candidates among five men and two other women. She was the second woman promoted to be an assistant manager.

10 years have passed. One of two other management candidates' women married and resigned the company. Kyoko and the other woman married, too. They did not quit their job. They kept working. Both of them became section managers. The other management candidate woman decided to leave the company when she became pregnant. Kyoko had a baby, but she kept working.

Kyoko's husband was an X-ray engineer in a medial institute in Tokyo. When Kyoko's husband studied abroad for one year, Kyoko decided to stay in Japan for her work and career. She was very close to being promoted to Department Manager.

Her company gave Kyoko promotion to be a department manager just right before the year 2000. She was then working with 30 people in her department. Her staff consisted of men, women, university graduates, college graduates, and high-school graduates. She was happy and comfortable with her business career. She worked even harder than before. Her department kept growing. She became the candidate of a division manager. People started to talk about her being even a candidate of director, executive director, or vice president.

It was summer in 2005. Kyoko's mother became ill. Kyoko was the one who took her mother to the hospital nearby. After intensive health examination, doctors diagnosed her mother type-one diabetes. Her mother needed intensive care and attention around the clock. Kyoko's father has been passed a long time ago. She was the only child of her mother. Her mother's illness shocked Kyoko badly. Her mother was extremely important for her. Kyoko was very close to her mother.

Business career was equally important for Kyoko. She wanted to reach as high as possible in her company management. She could not choose one, her career or her mother. Her husband offered her that he could leave his company and take care of her mother. When her mother asked her not to abandon her career for her sickness, Kyoko decided. Kyoko resigned her company 2006. She is concentrating on taking care of her mother hoping her mother's full recovery soon.

Life is a full of hard decisions. Japanese society must be more liberalized so that a businesswoman like Kyoko does not have to sacrifice her business career for private affairs.




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Now Is the Best Time to Start Our Own Business

It was only twenty to thirty years ago, the office environment was totally different from home. Offices looked nothing like home. Offices were with working desks, computers sitting in the corner of the office for everybody to share, and lots of telephones. I remember office telephones were different from home phones. Push phone started from offices when still analog dial phones were the main streams of home ones. People did not take memory sticks to home for work in their computers at home on preparing a document or a presentation.

At home, people could not do what they could in their offices. The time spent in the office was entirely separated from one at home. The people who had their own offices were supposed to be rich. It started from arrival of laptop computers. People started to carry laptop computers back home to continue to work from home. Some people bought desktop Computers so that they could bring only disks and memory sticks back home, not a whole laptop PC's. Now, the majority of people have computers at home. They use computers for their entertainment such as watching movies or playing online games. They can use them to work, too.

There were days when cell phones were expensive, and only companies could supply them to workers. Now middle school students carry cell phones. The cell phones, which those students carry, are more powerful than before.

Wide Area Network is available even in the remote area in a beach or a forest. One would work in his vacation on the beach or in mountain, if he wished to do so. Only he should do is carrying necessary device such as a smart phone or a laptop computer. The prices of computers are coming down so rapidly. An ordinary family can purchase a powerful gig byte smart phone.

Working time is invading people's private lives. It is true. It is unclear when and where people are completely away from their work. Is the situation that awful? Now all the office equipment are available in lower prices than ever before. Computers, cell phone, business style phone, printer, scanner, copier, or software. One would notice the computer, which he is using at home, was 10 times faster and more powerful than the one in his office five years ago. Instead, the price is one-tenth.

Since all the necessary tools and equipment were available, now is the best time for everyone to start his own business. If one was working, he would not have to quit his job. He would separate his work in office from his own business home. Opportunities are everywhere. Is now not the time for trying one's own business?






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Zen Bistro, Artistic Neo-Japanese Cuisine in the San Francisco Airport Area

My family lived in the area near San Francisco International Airport for a long time, almost 10 years. Although we lived in Burlingame for most of that time, we lived in San Mateo for seven months. The San Francisco Airport area (SFO) has five cities, including Burlingame, San Mateo, Millbrae, San Bruno, and South San Francisco. This restaurant is in Millbrae.

We were on our way home from exercising at the gym one Saturday afternoon. My wife wanted to buy fresh fruits at a grocery shop in Millbrae. We found this restaurant across the road from the grocery store. The name of the restaurant is Zen Bistro. As a Japanese national, I was a bit tired of ordinary Japanese restaurants with California rolls and sushi bars, so I was interested in checking out this restaurant. It looked new and was decorated in an interesting way with a dark wall color and black interior. It looked like Zen Dojo for meditation. A modern style of indirect lighting gave the building an interesting combination of traditional and modern atmospheres.

We decided to have lunch there. Walking into the restaurant, we found that the dining room was more like a contemporary bar than a Japanese restaurant. When we sat at a table, our waitress brought us marinated Japanese vegetables that were good. My wife ordered an eel rice bowl, and I ordered "Tonkatsu" (breaded fried pork). All Japanese eel bowls have some image. It is usually a red lacquered wooden bowl or box with rice and grilled eels on top. However, the dish my wife received surprised us.

It was quite different from our presumption. Their rice was placed on the center of a flat, white ceramic plate. Avocado slices were placed like a surrounding wall to support the rice in the center, and eel was placed on top. More vegetables were placed on the edge of the plate. It was a unique presentation. In addition, as my wife ate, she found pieces of eel meat hidden inside the rice. It was delicious.

My Tonkatsu came with three separate plates. One was for fried pork, another held vegetables, and the last one was for rice. Since they were all separated, the fried pork did not get wet from the vegetables, and the vegetables stayed fresh. Although I had thought it would not be easy to eat rice from a flat plate (because rice in Japan is always served in a bowl), I found out that it was not so bad. Both dishes were excellent.

We took our friends there, and they loved it. The restaurant provides a cozy dining area, which is a comfortable place to stay for a relatively long time while enjoying conversations with friends over our meals.


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Martial Arts Paradox

Skills and Spirits of Martial Arts always carry a paradox. When one starts practicing a Martial Art, he will soon find that his master asking you conflicting goals. His master will ask you such as "Fast, Strong, and Accurate". These are three elements to be skilled in Martial Arts. Unfortunately, however, these three cannot coexist without sacrificing each other.

For example, if a martial art fighter hopes to be fast in speed of hitting, kicking, or swing of a sword, he needs to relax his muscles. Thus, his stroke cannot be so strong, though fast speed creates some force.

Trying to be fast, one needs to sacrifice the accuracy. One can never be accurate if he goes fast. When he hopes his motion to be strong, he needs to focus on the power; his shot cannot be very fast. When one intends to strike strongly, he cannot be fast or accurate. If he wants to be accurate, he cannot be fast or strong in the same way.

The length of stroke affects all three elements. If a fighter takes long stroke for his choice of attacking technique, the strike is strong. However, it could be neither fast nor accurate. When he takes short stroke, the attack is fast. It can be accurate, but it cannot be strong. It does not make sense, even if the attack is long stroke and powerful, if it is not accurate enough to beat his opponent. It is not effective strike, even if the attack is accurate with short stroke, if it is not powerful enough to damage his opponents.

Although Kan Fu movies like flashy skills such as high kick jump kick, or fast and long stroke attacks, these long stroke skills tend to destroy the balance of the striker. This is another danger a fighter should consider. These techniques belong to long stroke strikes. Thus, they have all problems which long stroke strikes do.

Is not there any solution to these issues on each technique? There are some suggestions a fighter can keep in mind in fighting.

1) Practice long stroke skills more than short stroke ones. Long stroke skills require more strength and flexibility. They will give him sharpness of short stroke skills.

2) Be flexible. Skills were designed for some situations. Be flexible to take appropriate technique on the occasion.

3) Use balance sense. Depending on a fighter, one is good at long stroke skills. The other is skillful on short stroke technique. However, do not adhere to one's favorite. Please use balance sense to use different techniques on different occasions. The combination of both techniques provides a fighter of variation of fighting style.

Despite of movie favorite, in official tournaments or wide-area-base games of martial arts, short stroke technique typically wins a fight.





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Love Your Enemy

Everybody has someone to whom he continues to be resentful. It might have been a long time ago when it happened. The person, who caused one resentful, had long gone. The one did not need to meet that person every day anymore. This person, still yet, is in deep inside of his mind, occasionally pops up to remind how angry he was. The one does not feel it was past. His anger is fresh, and memory is vivid. He hopes to leave this person behind and move ahead. However, he cannot push this person out of his mind. He may shrug it off. It may not be a big deal having several people to whom he continues to be angry.

Is it not terribly serious? This could be dangerous, if this resentment is so powerful that it affects the one to enter into a new relationship. It could be serious if one could not trust his spouse or partner due to his resentment. It could be more serious he could not trust anyone because of this experience. This distrust might be subconsciously affecting the one's relationship with others. If his resentment is in one's subconscious, it might have been affecting his academic achievement, job career, and even success in life.

The one does not know why he cannot chase this memory out of his mind. He has tried to ignore, leave it behind, and shrug off, but he has not been successful. If this is happening, the one should consider this is somehow traumatized in his subconscious. Therefore, this is deeply affecting his daily life as well as his social activities and his life. His resentment and hate is too large for him to leave it behind. Some like him may suffer from chemical dependency. Some other may become isolated from society and friends.

Western culture, centered on Christianity, has the message of wisdom for curing this sick state of mind. It is "Love Your Enemy". Everybody knows that it is difficult. It is, however, clearly only method to leave traumatic resentment and hatred behind.

"Luke 6:27-36 - Passage Lookup - New International Version" "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."

If one can love his enemy and can pray for his enemy's sake, his anger and hatred will surely disappear. It is natural because he is no longer resentful to the person. Everyone should remember that resentment and hate do harm not only to his enemy, but also to himself. Since the person, who caused one's resentment, is not aware that one is still resentful, it is harming him more than the person.



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3 Tips for Writing Articles

It was right before I started to write articles in "EzineArticles.com", when I had started talking with many bloggers, authors, and writers. Many of them are Americans. There are some Japanese and others. It seemed that everybody has a common problem and a big headache. How they can select a topic? Many expressed their problems that they were out of their topics after one to two weeks of writing articles every day. I used to have the same problem. I woke up in the morning and trying to find a topic of my article on that day. My problem was that the harder I tried to find a topic, the more difficult it got to get one. My writing friends agreed to it.

One interesting fact is that when I was looking for a topic, it had never come to me. Instead, a topic always hit to me, when I was more relaxed and enjoy doing something, for example, watching TV program, reading, or talking with my family. So I decided not to pressure myself too hard to find a topic. The fact of the matter was that I still needed a topic. I decided to pick one from my daily life. For example, this is my third article about writing an article. This topic came from one of my daily activities, not from special occasion or experience. The first important matter would be that one could pick a topic from his daily life.

The second would be easier. Once one selected a topic, he could start thinking about conclusion. More precisely, the writer could think about conclusion sentence. Please be noted that three to five conclusion sentences could be wrote from one topic. For example, as this article is the third article about "writing an article". The first one was "I am grateful that I start writing articles." I entitled my second one "Writing an Article in Nonnative Language". I realized that one keyword could generate three to five topics depending on how one views it.

The last point is not so easy as the first and second. The writer should not let his brain drifted away from the topic until at least he finished to write topic and conclusion sentences. All are busy in their daily lives. Do not let anything disturb you until you write down the topic keyword and topic conclusion sentences. Once one's brain drifted away from the topic thinking, it would be gone. You stay tuned in the topic until you feel enough.

The followings are the summary of how to find a topic in your articles:

1. Anything can be a topic if you wanted it to be your topic.
2. Once you selected a topic, you think about conclusion.
3. Stay in the same kind of topics until you feel enough to write about it.





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A Little Consideration Goes a Long Way in International Relations

This is a story of my ex-colleague from my previous job. He was an assistant manager in an export office in Tokyo. His name is Mr. Fumio Ito. An assistant manager's role included hosting visitors and customers from foreign countries. He needed to choose and book a hotel for visitors coming from all over the world. Providing transportation was his responsibility, too. He arranged to pick up the visitors at the airport, to take them to their hotel, and to pick them up again for a business meeting at their hotel. In other words, he did all the groundwork so that his visitors' business meeting would go well.

Above all, the most important task was arranging business dinner for foreign visitors. Most of the cases, he arranged to take his visitors out to a Japanese restaurant. Sometimes, he used a sushi bar. He took his visitors to a tempura restaurant on another occasion. He wanted visitors to enjoy Japanese food. Because he had lived in Hong Kong and the US for 1-2 years, his choice of restaurants and dishes were excellent. He could satisfy visitors with his selection of Japanese foods.

One day in his office, he checked the schedule of a visitor who was soon to arrive for a relatively long time. When his subordinate suggested to Fumio a sushi restaurant, his favorite, Fumio did not make an immediate decision. He was still checking his visitor's schedule. His visitor that time was from Spain. The visitor was originally from the Basque region in Spain. After Fumio checked the visitor's schedule, he called his office friend who had experience of being stationed in Madrid. He finished his call and asked his colleague to find the best restaurant for Basque cuisine in Tokyo. His colleague is puzzled. He asked Mr. Ito why he did not choose Japanese food this time. Fumio grinned and told his staff that he would soon understand.

It was not easy for his colleague to find a restaurant that served Basque-style food in Tokyo. When his colleague found a restaurant, Mr. Ito took his colleague to assess the restaurant. He invited his friend who had experience in Spain. He made sure that the restaurant was fine. Mr. Ito's visitor arrived. The business meeting in the daytime went okay. Fumio took him to the Basque restaurant. The visitor was a little surprised that Japanese company took him to a Spanish restaurant. The visitor loved the food and enjoyed the restaurant. He confessed that he left his country about two months ago and missed the types of dishes that he was used to.

Mr. Ito was checking the detail of his visitor's schedule even before he landed in Japan. He knew that he had been away from his hometown for a long time. I thought that we should learn the spirit of hospitality from Mr. Ito's small but significant consideration.





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Writing Articles in Nonnative Language

What would be the most difficult part in learning a nonnative language? Is it fluency in speaking? It is difficult for a nonnative to keep up with native speed of speaking. It is not easy to catch the contents of conversations in native pronunciation. How about writing? Are you confident in writing in the appropriate language with correct composition? As one's language study progresses, the difficulty changes. As a nonnative writer and speaker of English, I always had a problem in writing.

You can speak as you wish. Even if you make a mistake, it is okay as long as you could make yourself understood. Writing is different. Your mistakes would stay there and keep you embarrassed on the mistakes you made. I did not like writing because of this reason. I did not like reading whatever I wrote in English, because it would embarrass me later. I did not like even proofreading my own writing, because either the contents or the English would bother me.

However, I discovered that writing is the most effective way to push up your language level to a higher stage. Native speakers would not correct your English in a conversation, as long as they understood you. You might end up making same mistakes for a long time without being corrected. Instead, you can ask your native friends or colleagues to proofread your English. Thus, you could clearly know the mistakes you made. You would be given an opportunity to correct the mistakes you made, possibly forever.

You would not be able to brush up your language skills without trying. Many people are afraid of trying because they are afraid of failing. You need to go over this barrier, first. It would help if you expected to fail. Failing is one of the learning processes. Therefore, you do not have to be afraid of or embarrassed by failing. It is natural. It is not only you who makes a mistake. Everybody does.

I describe the sequence as follows:

T: Trial

F: Failure

C: Challenge (Continue Trying)

P: Progress (Make Progress)

Blogs are popular these days. I do not recommend blogs for language improvement. Nobody will comment on your language in your blog. It is rude. Nobody will comment on your language.

I recommend using article writing and submitting sites, such as "EzineArticles.com". What is the most important part is that they have an approval process. Your articles could be approved and posted or rejected and sent back for corrections. Thus the author must be serious to use proper English to have their articles approved. There are some websites, which help you to correct your language with reasonable cost.

If you try this way of writing articles in your nonnative language, you would find later that it is not only your writing ability which improves. Your speaking, reading, or even listening capability would be improved, because you are improving your language ability as a whole, in this way.



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The Weak Is Strong, Zen Paradox For Marketing Strategy

Zen seeks for the ultimate status of mind, which is close to awakening, or Epiphany. It uses a training method to discuss paradox questions. The most famous one is; "Nothing is everything. Everything is nothing." As many of them are highly spiritual, it is a surprise to find a paradox question, which is helpful in the modern daily lives. One of them is; "The strong is weak because of his strength, not because of his weakness. The weak is strong because of his weakness, not because of his strength."

One can prove this statement is true taking an example of Japanese Beer market. A company, who has top market share, should be careful in its strength not weakness to keep the top market share.

Kirin was the top share maker in Japanese beer market about 20 years ago. Kirin had been top share beer maker for about 10 years, then. Their lager beer was so popular that no competition could beat them. Kirin was so proud of their strength in their lager beer. They did not have to bring new products for a long time. The lager beer was Kirin's strength in Japanese beer market. Sapporo was the 2nd market share beer maker. Asahi was the 3rd.

Sapporo took a brave strategy in their effort to gain No.1 position in the beer market. They analyzed Kirin lager and found that they will never defeat Kirin in the beer market. Sapporo threw a stone into the market. They started to market and sell an entirely new product. It was Sapporo Draft Beer. They advertised the weakness of Draft Beer. Sapporo advertisement was; Sapporo Draft is a spoiled and demanding beer. Enjoy its crispy and clear taste during a short time of freshness.

Sapporo attacked Kirin's strength taking advantage of weakness of Sapporo Draft Beer. At that time, Draft Beers were only in the bars and restaurants. People did not believe they could drink Draft Beer home. People jumped into Sapporo Draft. One year later, Sapporo became No. 1 market share Beer Company. The weak defeated the strong by attacking their strength with their weakness.

Several years later, Asahi took the same strategy attacking Sapporo. Asahi came with a new concept of beer, Dry. Asahi's slogan was; it tastes like a beer, you feel like drinking a beer. Their alcohol content was 2% higher than others. Their message was "a real beer for a real beer drinker". Since people started to like lighter alcoholic contents drink, they used reverse marketing to regain the market. Asahi became No. 1 share with Asahi Dry.

Kirin recovered its No. 1 position with a new concept of Draft Beer. That was "Kirin Ichiban". They competed exactly as this old Zen paradox statement. The weak is not weak because of his weakness. The weak can win with his weakness.




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An Experience in Article Writing and Submission

It was a big and significant decision for me to participate in an article submission site in English. Being a nonnative English speaker, I originally thought it is too much to take part in an English Article site. But, I liked writing an English Article, I decided to join in an English article site. They regularly host article submission event writing one article in one day every day. When I tried in summer last year, I failed miserably. I gave up in the earlier stage. I was sick in the early July. Even after recovered from my sickness, I did not feel up to writing articles for a long time. Suffering from a sense of failure, I did not have the courage to write another one.

It was middle of September, 2010, when I received an email invitation to the next event. My first reaction was negative. I thought there is no way I could participate in the challenge, again. I had not thought about it for a couple of days. Then, I received a personal message from a Japanese friend on Facebook. She wrote that she had noticed that I had been writing articles in English. She introduced herself, saying that she studied English by herself, dreaming about making friends with people in the world. She said she had enjoyed my articles, especially the ones which talked about Japanese culture. She wished to write her own articles some day. She concluded by asking me to continue writing articles in English.

It was beyond my imagination that my Japanese friend sent me an encouraging message like it. Her message was helpful. I started to feel fortunate because I could write articles in English. Suddenly I remembered that I had not written an article for one and a half months. Needing some motivation to start writing articles, I decided to take part in the next event of article writing.

During the event, my account was suspended for about two weeks because one of my articles was rejected too many times. It was October when I got a new project to create a website for a Japanese client who hoped to have his site both in English and Japanese. I became busy working on my new web development work. This new project took much of my time. When I found my own time to start writing articles, it was already past midnight. However, I did not want to give up this time. I decided to wake up at least one hour earlier than before to start designing my new article of the day.

When I finished this event on December 29th, 2010, I felt so relieved and happy. This time I had done it. When I received a congratulatory email from the site owner, I was proud of my accomplishment. I was glad I started to write and submit my articles in English.





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