Joota Japani, MBA Hindustani: a Japanese student on journey to IIM A

An old Raj Kapoor song came to mind when Yasuhiro Masse, a Japanese national who chose to do an MBA (PGPX) in India at IIM Ahmedabad (IIM A) shared his journey with us. The song ‘Mera joota hai Japani, ye patloon Englishstani…phir bhi dil hai hindustani’ is a famous song from the movie Shri 420 in which Raj Kapoor shares how his shoes & clothes are from all over the world, but his heart is truly Indian. In the same vein, as a Japanese national, the shoes Yasuhiro walks in, i.e his outlook to life has been shaped by Japan. His MBA at IIM A though is truly Indian. We felt his journey would make a great read for students outside India exploring an MBA in India. Yasuhiro’s first article talks of his experiences on arriving in India for the first time which played a critical role in his eventual journey to IIM A’s PGPX.

Part 1

By Yasuhiro Masse

An Intoxicating Chaos

While I came to Chennai as an expatriate in 2010, my introduction to India had started in 2007 when I had visited India for a one week sightseeing trip and visited Delhi and Agra.

Since the 2007 trip was my first visit to India, I read some travel guidebooks to gather basic information on India. Somehow, all guidebooks mentioned the difficulty of using taxis or autos for foreigners and recommended visitors to ask their hotel to arrange a car to pick them up at the Delhi airport.

Going with this advice I requested the hotel to arrange a car for me at Delhi airport. The hotel informed me that a driver, with a board mentioning my name, would wait for me at the exit at the airport. (After the opening of New Delhi’s spanking new Terminal 3 International airport, one can use metered taxis and these problems are pretty much history)

To my surprise, when I reached the exit of Delhi airport, I found that two separate drivers were waiting with a board mentioning my name! I guessed that one of them was the genuine driver from the hotel and the other person was just someone who had transcribed my name looking at the other driver’s board.

[pullquote]At Delhi airport, I found two separate drivers waiting with a board mentioning my name! I guessed that one of them was the genuine driver from the hotel and the other person was just someone who had transcribed my name looking at the other driver’s board![/pullquote]I was scared thinking, “What will happen if I choose the wrong driver? Which place will he take me to?”. Fortunately, I was able to solve the mystery. I asked one of the drivers his name and the name of the hotel and chose the correct driver. However, the experience was fairly scary. I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if the two drivers were waiting away from each other and I found only the wrong driver?

After an impressive entrance lobby at the Delhi Airport, I faced more impressive scenery when I reached the city area of Delhi. Numerous people were walking around and kept talking to each other, cars honked horns frequently and a lot of construction activity was going on.

New Delhi: the capital of India is a bustling metropolis

This was a totally different scenery from what I had seen in Japan or even in China and Thailand. I could feel how vigorous India was and how rapidly India was developing. While I visited only a few cities such as Delhi and Agra, I was overwhelmed and fascinated by the growth potential of India. What I saw in India seemed like chaos but an intoxicating chaos.

I left India after a one week trip with a dream to work in the vigorous developing country in the near future.

A painful start to a beautiful journey: 17 Injections

The opportunity suddenly came when in 2009 our firm decided to send a Japanese CPA to Chennai from July 2010 to start business for Japanese companies, since more than 100 Japanese companies had already set up subsidiaries in Tamil Nadu at that point of time. I immediately applied for the position and was fortunately selected.

As many of you may know, there are a lot of procedures to follow when you shift base to a foreign country: getting an employment visa, searching for an apartment with appropriate facilities and contracting a car lease etc all had to be managed.

The Taj Mahal at Agra

One of the most memorable procedures was the immunization procedure. There are certain geographical difference between India and Japan. Since Japan is a narrow island country, while it is still difficult to conquer some types of disease, it has been accomplished. Annihilating certain diseases from India is still quite difficult considering its large territory. One example is rabies. Since dogs obviously cant swim to reach Japan from a foreign country, rabies is already extinct in Japan and may not re-emerge again.

So, to come to India I was required to take many immunization injections to prevent certain diseases.

When I went to a reputed medical clinic in Shinagawa, Tokyo, the doctor recommended that I take 17 injections to immunize me against 7 diseases! Since immunization injections use a small amount of virus, one can not take multiple injections at one time. So I went the clinic every week and finished all injections over 2 months.

After all procedures were finished, I finally started working in Chennai from July 2010.

Read the air 

Thanks to the support from my Indian colleagues, settling down in Chennai went off smoothly.

Soon after starting work in Chennai, I noticed that often there is miscommunication between Indian people and a Japanese people. While the main reason of the miscommunication is the lack of fluency in English among Japanese people, I soon realized that there were certain differences in communication style too which contributed to the confusion.

As we later earned in the management communication class at IIM A, the role of words is less important than what we imagine. Facial expressions and body language have similar importance as the spoken word. In my personal experience, Indian people rely more on spoken words while Japanese people rely more on the unspoken.

I think this difference in communication styles might stem from the level of diversity in each society. Since Japan is a small island country, has uniform culture and has basically only one language, Japanese people can communicate with each other based on the assumption that people have a similar back ground and will understand them. Additionally, Japanese people use more facial expressions in communication. We frequently understand the feelings of the other person not based on words but based on facial expressions, body action and even the mood of the person.

Japanese people usually believe in a concept which loosely translated in English means ‘read the air’ – the ability to understand the other person’s feeling from what you observe rather than spoken words. This is a very important aspect in communication for Japanese people. On the other hand, since India is a large country, has diverse cultures and has multiple languages, people need to express their thought clearly in words. Such difference of communication style would sometimes cause misunderstanding between Indian people and Japanese people.

The lack of fluency in English among Japanese people can also cause an interesting effect in communication. When we speak a foreign language in which we aren’t fluent, we tend to first think in our mother tongue, translate it into the foreign language and then speak. Since we first think in our mother tongue, what we speak in the foreign language is unintentionally affected by grammar and meaning of our mother tongue. Such an effect can cause misunderstanding.

For example, the word for ‘a little bit’ in Japanese language is ‘Chotto’ and the word for ‘difficult’ in Japanese language is ‘Muzukashii’. When a Japanese person says, “Chotto muzukasii” (a little bit difficult), it means “almost 100% impossible” instead of, say, “20% difficult but 80% possible” which is what most others would understand from the words “a little bit difficult”.

Since communication styles would be affected partly by the level of diversity in the culture of a nation and the level of English proficiency is determined by the education policy of each country, we personally can do nothing about these differences which can cause miscommunication. However, if we are aware of differences in communication styles and the impact our mother tongue can have on what we intend to say, we can understand the possible cause behind the miscommunication and can prevent the misunderstanding that would usually follow.

The next article from Yasuhiro will explore his experiences at IIM A’s PGPX.

Contributing blogger Yasuhiro Mase is an MBA candidate at IIM Ahmedabad and a part of the One year MBA (PGPX) Class of 2013-14. Prior to joining IIM Ahmedabad, Yasuhiro worked for 7.5 years in a Big 4 accounting firm in India and in Japan as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Yasuhiro has a keen interest in the field of Accounting, Tax and Corporate Finance.