In July, I gave a keynote speech at the 2009 annual conference of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) in Kyoto, Japan, that focused on the communications barrier facing computer security incident response professionals in their cross-cultural dealings with their Asian counterparts. This was the first and, thus far, only time I’ve [...]
I gave a keynote speech at the 2009 annual conference of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) in Kyoto, Japan, that talked about my observations of Japanese business operations, highlighting the differences that become barriers to communication. This morning, I had the privilege of seeing a write-up of the talk in IT [...]
Homeward bound. I’m on my way from Japan to visit my family in Oklahoma for the holidays. Even though I usually avoid traveling on major holidays like the plague, this year I decided to forgo my usual concerns and make a surprise trip. I was able to travel in real lux this time around, as [...]
One thing’s for sure: I don’t find Japanese easy to learn. The grammar seems reasonably straightforward, but my inability to read very many kanji, which are the Chinese characters used in most Japanese writing, means I can’t read books very quickly, even with the aid of good dictionaries. However, I have found one really good [...]
Today (2008-10-08) was an auspicious day, as my Japanese language class graduated from the 初級 (beginning level) class to the 中級 (intermediate level) one. After having had a couple of weeks off to decompress and prepare, the day started with an introduction to the faculty for the intermediate level course. Some of the instructors are [...]
Learning a foreign language is hard. I studied French for several years, including while I lived and worked in France, and that taught me how important it is to always keep going. But nothing has taught me perseverance in quite the same degree as learning Japanese. I’m currently studying Japanese full-time at the YMCA Japanese Language Institute in Osaka. It’s a fantastic program, but I’m not sure that any system can fully prepare a westerner for learning an ideographic language: you have to just jump in the deep end and keep your head above water.
