It has been a busy quarter and I was
occupied with a lot of things. Many of you may think that I am obviously
exaggerating.
Instead of exhausting you with a single
very long essay, I will break my blog into several long essays.
I have observed that Indians are the best
in the world in understanding rules, knowing the limits and breaking rules by
staying inside the limits. Once I went to a mall in Tokyo with my family where
outside food was not allowed. We planned
to dine in a Japanese restaurant even if we had to struggle in explaining that
we were pure vegetarians. But I was awe-inspired by an Indian couple. They too,
like us, had a small baby in a pram. Their baby pram had so much food that I once
thought they were going to sell it. But that's that, from that point of time,
we have never worried about any place not allowing outside food. We freely used
this technique with 100% success.
In a very methodic country like Japan,
people are amazed and confused when we think like above. Another simple example
is prepaid mobile phone. When buying the phone, it comes with a sim and a
handset. If you ask the executive if you can use this sim in any other handset,
he will be confused, will run here and there for 20 minutes and then say no, it
is not possible. But frankly, it works fine even with Indian models. They are
just not prepared for such questions. Why should a person ask about changing
handset even before buying it? And then they give us those skeptical looks.
That's how we are. Prepare for the worst
and ready for the best. The first question while taking a credit card is – what
is the annual fee, can you waver it? What is the penalty for late payment? The
first set of questions which we think is really enough for anyone to get
suspicious. I am not complaining, in fact we can be very creative if we focus
this energy in the right direction.
The confusion just multiplies
exponentially when there are about 10 Indians, staying in the same region and
clarifying the most amazing doubts at least for the Japanese. We now have a
good community here. More than 10 associates. A few of them are very probing by
nature. So much so, that the local Japanese team have started asking RBEI team
for information about Japan!!!
When I came here first, my Japanese
colleague introduced me to one Indian restaurant in Higashimatsuyama and said
he loved Indian food and visits there often. Just before golden week I gave him
a list of five Indian restaurants in Higashimatsuyama, how to get discount in these
restaurants, a list of 4 Japanese restaurants which serves vegetarian food(only
on demand-please refer my name) and one Italian pizza joint. He is still in hospital with shock.
Our guys have the best information on:
- The cheapest way to travel to Narita airport. Any Japanese
can vow that it is not possible to reach Narita for under 3500 yens. We can do
it for 2000 yens.
- The best mobile, internet, pocket wi-fi deals.
- Usage of express and faster trains with local pass.
- The cheapest way to travel in Tokyo for sightseeing.
- The best online Indian grocery store, a point to point
comparison chart.
I think there are more than 1012 points
to be added above. So don't bother.
This is turning out to be an awesome
blend. The PDCA, Kaizen, Kanban mixed with creativity, adaptation and
aggression. We can definitely see the synergy flowing.
