Sylvia's Journal

There are some twenty five twenty-somethings in the class. A few are quite a bit older, they are the career changers, and some are in between. But most are fresh out of school or on their first jobs. Several are with the Japanese branches of the big consulting firms and a few with government agencies.

During the introductions I asked them why there were in this class. The responses were heartwarming and would make one believe that the next generation is going to make this a better world. Of course there is a good dose of naiveté in all this about what is possible and human nature, but still…

Before we did any introductions T started the class off with a few of her relaxation exercises. I watched the faces of some of the people – the puzzled looks were priceless. But this is Japan: when the teacher tells you to do something you do it even if you are clueless about why or wondering whether you are in the wrong class.

In the morning we talked about leadership and the leaders they see around them and what they do that earns these leaders their high approval ratings. I am finding that the notion of what leaders ought to do is quite universal – the amalgamated pictures of the best qualities and behaviors of their examples produced some sort of super mensch who would do away with such noxious things as inferiority complexes, confusion, aimlessness, revenge, or feelings of disillusion, abandonment, poor self-care, the total absence of self-awareness and the loss of hope.

I had the class study the management and leadership competencies that my organization expects of its staff and we compared this with the UN approved competencies. Interestingly the competency of ‘managing the money’ was missing in the UN list. We know about the importance of this as we have gotten burned a few times. One would think that the UN would have burned itself more than a few times.

In the afternoon we did a variant on the Barry Oshry Power Game simulation with as task for the temporary organizational system the creation of origami products. To determine who would be tops, middles or bottoms we had people line themselves up according to their position in their current work hierarchy. Not surprising everyone was crowding around the lower end, fighting for positions at the very bottom. The winners of this contest we put in the top position. There was an expression of shock on their faces when we announced that their push towards the bottom actually had put them at the top.

I don’t think I could introduce the origami variant of the simulation anywhere else in the world. Here paper-folding is a bit like singing in South Africa – it is in the genes. Everyone was able to create complicated things like balls and cameras from pieces of paper no larger than a sticky note.

The mass production of certain prototypes created stress in the system. The Japanese workers were sliding into the habits of Chinese mass producers resulting in uneven quality of the products. This created more stress in the system. The salaries consisted of candy – high quality and large for the tops, small and cheap for the bottoms. Bonuses were freely provided to increase production output.

As in experiences elsewhere, the middles felt useless, the tops were clueless and felt powerless and the bottoms were without direction. We spent most of the afternoon talking about this.

By 5:30 PM one would expect a class to be exhausted and anxious to go home, especially since we are doing this on a Saturday – their day off from work. But no, we couldn’t get them to stop talking about their experience in the simulation. Never has a debriefing of a simulation been so self-generated. Although we stopped at 5:30 many didn’t leave until after 6 PM.

In the meantime Axel had gone on a breathless tour into the innards of Japanese religious life, guided by a friend of T who happened to go to a shrine to hand in her good luck face for last year and get a new one. She comes from a line of priests and took Axel on a trip to the country side, into Buddhists and adjacent animist shrines and more.

He lucked out on rituals that happen only 4 times a year and received the fortune that is of the highest ‘luck’ grade. It was as if some invisible hands pushed him into the path of experiences that are rare and unusual for a foreigner to see. And then to think that I had nearly let him sleep in in which case he would not have met his guide at breakfast, invisible hand indeed.

For dinner we had yet another culinary adventure (I believe it is called shabu-shabu), a variant on Mongolian hotpot. We were served thinly sliced strips of raw meet (pork and richly marbled beef) on slatted wooden platters. The meat was balanced by a large plate piled high with Japanese greens, Enogi mushrooms, carrots and turnips, leeks and other vegetables I didn’t recognize.

All this we dipped in a broth of collagen (yes, indeed, the stuff that makes your skin look good), and then mixed with all sorts of ground spices, pastes and sauces, neatly served in dainty little dishes with tiny bamboo spoons.

At the end a plate of noodles was dumped into the remaining broth and we slurped these from our lovely pottery bowls. The meal came to an end with a small scoop of green tea powder ice cream and a cup of tea – everything once more served in artful ceramics.

I am sorry that we have only one more culinary adventure left. Axel too has only one more day left of exploring (modern) Tokyo. Departure is tomorrow afternoon.