When I was transferred to Osaka, I wrote a series called the Shin-Osaka Report (新大阪活動報告) in Japanese. This time, I am going to do basically the same, launching a new series to record my time in a brand new stage.
My first week at the firm was generally positive. The office is one of the best in Tokyo, nice and clean. I can choose wherever I want to start my day. Dual monitor setting is the standard. My only complaint is that there is no cafeteria inside the building so I have to go out for lunch.
The most wonderful part is that the office is pretty close to my home. My commuting time is compressed to a stunning 15 minutes by train and 20 minutes by walk. This is a huge advantage that many people ignore. By keeping commuting time short, I can spend more time on productivity or just resting.
I have had short meetings with most of the members in the team. From the executives to the support team in Okinawa, everyone is decent. By far, I haven’t met anyone particularly difficult. Born overseas, studying in a foreign country, etc. They all have some kind of international background, living abroad for a long time.
I think this is also an important element to make my work even easier. Nearly all my former colleagues were Kansai people, and many of them rarely leave the Kansai area in their life. In such a monocultural environment, I realized it was hard to let people understand me and it was extremely easy to make myself isolated. One of my former colleagues frequently and unreasonably criticized my Japanese language ability.
The workflow is quite different with what I have experienced before. Although I have a supervisor, anyone can be my “supervisor” because it depends more on what project I am involved in. It seems as long as I can effectively contribute to certain projects and don’t make other people uncomfortable I will be fine. In my former position, people were usually evaluated on things that have nothing to do with productivity, and the portion may be very dependent on the personality of one’s supervisor.
I have to admit that it may be too early to conclude, but my gut feeling is quite good for now. Sometimes you just know whether things will work out on day one. When I was forcibly transferred to Osaka, I immediately felt that it would not end well, which turned out exactly as I imagined.