Tom (Wolf Creek Knives)
I have a Mississippi friend that graduated from an Electrical engineering school here in the US; Went to work for a Major chip manufacturer here in the USA. He became the chief Quality Control engineer for one division. One product was negotiated to be manufactured at a plant about 10 miles from where I lived in Osaka. He would come over regularly for checking on mfg plants in Japan and stop by to see me. After one negotiation in the US on the construction of a unit, there were problems in the design that showed up in the US but not in other countries. My friend came over by himself to do some engineering changes and negotiations. After a day of frustration, he called me and asked if I could come pick him up from his hotel and spend the night with us. I said sure. As we talked, he said, these engineering guys have been easy to deal with before, but now they are hard to negotiate with. I asked, "When you went over the designs and negotiations and contract signing with this major Japanese company, you were in the USA, Right?" He replied "yes."
Me: "Well, welcome to Japan". "You do not come here on their turf and tell them how to fix the machines that they manufacture. That is an insult to them." I suggested: "Tomorrow, start over and tell them the problem you have, but don't tell them HOW to fix it. Instead ask them - How can you fix this, and see what they come up with." Next day I took him to the place around 8 AM. By 10:30 he called me and said: "It Worked just as you said, And they came up with the same solution that I tried to negotiate yesterday." Me: "Cultural differences".
When the earthquake and Tsunami hit in March of 2011, I had just returned to the US 3 months earlier. I heard of the earthquake and tsunami on Saturday here in the US. I went to a church Men's breakfast on Sunday morning and had not heard the latest news. Two men mentioned the nuclear plant just NE of Tokyo. Both said the same thing, and it was the way that they said it. Something to the effect: "Everything seems OK at this time." I said, "I haven't seen that, but if the news caster from Japan said it that way, that means there is extreme danger ahead. Statements like that are political statements of cover-up of a major calamity coming." I had a similar dialog with an engineer on another forum. He said that in his reading of engineers reports that the nuclear plant was going to be OK. I wrote back that the engineers there only give what the politicians allow. He replied that engineers don't do that. I said "In Asia, they do and say what the politicians tell them to say."
Yes, we live in a different world here.