This article is from dannychoo.com .reason why i take it was because the article was very good and inspiring
full article is taken from here
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Today I'm going to talk about how I discovered Japan, how I learned
Japanese and how I ended up in the land of the rising sun after finally
starting to live a passion that I only discovered in my twenties.
I will share my experiences of learning Japanese and many of the things I
did to build my career before and after I arrived in Japan. Wasn't too
sure where to begin but thought that "day one" would be a good start.
The post is a bit long so you may want to read while you having a poo or
something. When I get a wee bit of time, I'll pull out all the bits about
how I learned Japanese and stick that in a separate post.
This article is split up into the following events in life.
Day one
How I discovered Japanese Culture
How I started to self-study Japanese
How I started to earn myself money
Setting my first destination in life - living and working in Japan
How and where I met my wife
My first full time job at Japan Airlines
How I made it to Japan
How I began my career in Japan
Why being comfortable is dangerous
Life at Amazon Japan as Website Manager
How I started to make money online
Why we moved to Seattle for 5 months
How dannychoo.com started to gain readership
How I started a side business
Why I left Microsoft to start up my own company
Living with illness
What my company "Mirai" does
The best thing about my job
Its still day one
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Day One
Was born and raised in the East end of London - this photo taken in
Victoria Park Hackney while I was still living with both parents. Parents
are both Malaysian Chinese.
Later on in life during my early years, times were tough for my parents
who both worked hard day n night. As they were both busy trying to make
ends meet, they decided to put me in various foster homes which I lived
in for most of my childhood. In some of the homes, I wasn't treated
incredibly well but didn't say anything to my parents as I knew they were
having their own financial and other problems. I ended up living with a
white, black and then with an Indian family for what seemed like an
eternity.
As luck would have it, one of the foster homes had guardians who would
take my clothes and consider it theirs while their kids would constantly
bully me - was easy to pick on the boy who had no parents. I was made to
feel as unwelcome as possible in their house.
I remember a particular evening where we came back to the house to
discover the front door open. We walked in to discover that the place was
a mess - burglars had got in. I was scared and started to cry. The eldest
child of my foster family shouted at me:-
"What are you crying for?! This isn't even your house!"
Other memorable moments in one of the homes was when I was strangled
until I had red patches around my eyes. When asked the next day at
school, all I could think of was saying that I put cups on my eyes ^^;
Another unforgettable time was when I was beaten with car racing tracks -
a bit like these ones but were made of rubber with an orange strip down
the middle. Was left with lovely bright red marks all over. Remember
looking in the mirror after the beating session and still remember
exactly what I looked like back then down to the green jumper that I was
wearing.
The only thing I had in life back then were the occasional weekends with
my parents. Dad would come to pick me up for the weekend and I would
either stay with him or he would drop me off at mums. But at times he was
just swamped with work and couldn't make it. The phone would ring and my
foster parents would pick up and hand me the phone.
After hanging up I would sit crying on the stairs looking out at the
small window above the door. I couldn't even go out to cry because I
wasn't allowed out on my own apart from going to school. All I could do
was go back to my room which was a small stock room with a bed. I would
have dreams of my only friend Buck Rogers coming to visit me with his
trusty robot Twiggy.
Mum and dad were paying my foster parents to house and feed me and not to
particularly care about how well or bad I done at school. My childhood
was school > go home > eat > occasionally watch TV > go to room > repeat.
The TV was my first encounter with Japanese anime where I watched
Gatchaman (called G-Force in the UK). I didn't particularly know it was
Japanese - not that it was important at the time anyway.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
This photo was taken during the time I was staying at one of the foster
homes. Didn't have much fun in school either. Was constantly bullied and
most of my memories were of being dragged through gravel, gang beaten up,
having my possessions burned, football constantly aimed at my face, and
having the big guy in the school playground say to me "If I smash your
head with this bat and kill you then I would go to jail. But it would be
worth it." I remember having to ask the same person to punch me so that I
could be part of his posse.
Memories attached to emotion are easy to remember as the brain releases a
chemical which helps the memory to be stored for longer. This is why we
easily remember moments of joy, sadness or embarrassment.
If you think back to your childhood, many of your memories with either be
a mix of these emotions. I have no memories of happiness during my
childhood apart from one of when my parents still lived together. It was
Christmas and we were sitting in front of the Christmas tree in the
living room back in Blurton Road Hackney.
Used to be quite depressed when I thought about my childhood until I
started to think about what some other kids go through as a child - I had
it easy compared to them.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Completely unmotivated throughout my school term, I ended up taking
subjects because of what others in class took - I had absolutely no idea
what I wanted to do in life. With no destination in life or passion for
the subjects that I studied, I didn't do well in school at all with
average grades of D or E. Now you know why my English grammar is terrible
^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Cant remember at which point in life but I started to live with my
parents again - with dad for a couple of years and then with mum until I
moved out. This photo taken with mum last year. I want to be able to buy
her a house somewhere so that she doesn't have to live in that council
flat anymore. Love her to bits but she's as stubborn is as stubborn does
and wants her own place and not one where I pay the rent for her ^^;
Don't have the cash quite yet after I nearly went bankrupt in 2009 but
have been able to recover a wee bit of late. Getting a place for mum now
would pretty much use up all of our savings and also mean that I would
not have enough cash flow to continue to run the company which is not a
good thing.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
This is mums place in Hackney. Lived here until I moved out to live with
wifey. Was veeeeeeeeery depressing living here. The neighbors would play
thumping reggae music all day and night. The floor boards literally
shook.
Mum got mugged in Hackney 3 times - once she was left unconscious after
somebody hit her head. After getting a call, I ran to the hospital to
find her with dried blood down her face and bruises on her arm where she
tried to hold onto her handbag.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I started to make real friends outside of school by meeting other folks
who also loved Kylie Minogue! I made friends by waiting outside the BBC
or Kylie's recording studios Stock Aitken and Waterman. More photos of my
groupie shenanigans in the Kylie Minogue post.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
And this is what my room looked like back at the time ^^; I bought nearly
every magazine or newspaper that Kylie was in and plastered her all over
the walls - and yes there are some Jason Donovan ones up there too ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I discovered Japanese culture
Somewhere in between, I discovered the Sega Megadrive - a Japanese 16 bit
games machine on import. I wanted to know more about the up n coming
games for the machine and sought info through magazines at Japanese
bookshops in London.
Without the Internets back then, these shops were my only gateway to
getting hold of Japanese material. The Japan Center was one of the book
shops that I went to where I would discover more Japanese culture on each
visit - culture like manga, anime and idols.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
At this point in life, you can see the transition from "Kylie" to "Japan"
- Kylie posters on the walls with a small bunch of Megadrive games.
You can just about make out Macross on the TV screen here - t'was the
Cantonese version that I picked up from China Town in London. Was the
first time I saw anime with the awareness that it was Japanese. The
animation quality, story, music, mecha and cute girls overwhelmed me - I
needed to watch more of this.
To make money at the time, I did things like make and sell laminated
cards of Kylie and Jason which I put together from magazine cut outs.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I started to self-study Japanese
The discovery of Japanese culture captivated me and I started to feel a
passion and desire that I've never felt in my life. I wanted to deepen my
knowledge of Japanese culture and in order to do so I knew that I needed
to be able to understand Japanese and so decided to start learning on my
own.
I didn't have an opportunity to attend Chinese school when I was younger
so had to learn the Japanese language from scratch. I got myself
dictionaries and text books like "Japanese For Everybody" where I picked
up much of my basic grammar.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Started to pick up a lot of Japanese from manga like Ranma 1/2 and Crayon
Shin-chan. What I would do is read them on the train and when I came
across some word I didn't understand, I would fold a dog ear in the
corner of the page.
After getting back home, I would look up the word but keep the dog ear
folded. When I read the manga second time around, if I remembered what
the word was then I could unfold the dog ear - if not then I would have
to keep it folded and repeat the process until I understood the whole
manga.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
No Internets at the time = no YouTube either. I discovered a Japanese
bookshop at St Pauls renting out video recordings from Japanese TV. I
couldn't afford to be a member but the lady who ran the store knew how
much I loved Japanese culture. She decided to sell me the old recordings
that the local Japanese folks weren't watching anymore. It didn't matter
at all that I was watching recordings a few months old - I just needed to
hear and see Japan.
The TV shows included commercials too and whenever I was at home, I would
just let the video play in the background - it was as if I was in Japan
especially with those commercials in between. I watched TV shows like
Naruhodo The World, Sekai Marumie TV and dramas like Hitotsu no Yane no
Shita! I also recorded the sound from the videos onto cassette tape which
I could listen to on the walkman while out n about London - constantly
streaming Japanese into my brain - but I wanted more!
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Studying Japanese on my own, I made a point of giving myself constant
homework. These are the Kanji charts that I wrote out on A3 sizes of
paper and plastered on the walls all over the house - mum not too pleased
^^;
Writing a language that one is learning is something that I feel to be
very important. Humans have been learning language for centuries through
conventional means such as writing and conversation.
The Internets have been around for normal civilians to use for just a wee
bit over 15 years now. The brain has evolved to learn languages using
conventional methods. While there are many websites where one can learn
languages, don't rely on them completely and make sure to keep a healthy
balance of language learning by using your body to learn through writing
(with pen) and speaking.
When storing items in your memory, you need to let your brain know
whether the information is important or not otherwise its dumped into
your subconscious making it very difficult for retrieval.
The best way I found to learn kanji or new words was to give them a
mnemonic - its like a label that you attach to stuff to help you find it
later.
Just as an example, the word "Miru" [見る] means "to look." To remember the
word you can make up your own label like "Look at this gorgeous Meal!" -
"Meal" sounding similar to "Miru."
Some books may provide mnemonics to remember kanji but its always best to
take a few seconds and be imaginative to think of your own - no matter
how cheesy it may sound. When you say or hear something cheesy, you
encounter an emotion where your brain stimulates a chemical reaction
which can also help you remember words much more easier.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
This is a photo of a place called Angel in London - took the photo last
year. Famous for 20 buses coming in a row after you have waited an hour
and also famous for the never ending roadworks.
After a while of self study, I wanted to be able to speak Japanese with
others. I took a Japanese class at Angel which was once a week in the
evenings.
After a while, I told the teacher that one of the things I wanted to do
in life was to maybe live and work in Japan. He told me that it was not
possible for a foreigner and that I should forget about trying to do so.
I was completely and utterly confused and bewildered as to why a Japanese
language teacher would say such a thing to a student. Was wondering maybe
he wanted me to stick around and continue to pay for his classes? @.@
My destination was clear and I wasn't going to stick around to let
anybody demotivate me and tell me to give up my dreams. I quit those
Japanese classes and sought alternative methods of speaking Japanese with
others.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
By this time I had collected a load of Japanese magazines from the stores
and as you can see - a fair share of 2D and 3D girlies ^^; I didn't have
a PC Engine at the beginning but liked the 2D girls on the cover of PC
Engine Fan which is why I bought em ^^;
When I first started to learn Japanese on my own, I did so without a
dictionary and worked out what the Katakana sounds were based on the
English name of games.
I was completely confused about 1 katakana sound however and that was the
sound "N" [ン] and "So" [ソ] which looked the same to me in print. I was
absolutely sure the Katakana read as "Famikon" [ファミコン] but my self
deciphering of Katakana was also telling me that [ファミコン] read as
"Famikoso" ^^;
Got most of my magazines from the Japan Center. Back then they had a
classifieds board - paid something like 3 pounds to stick up a message
which was something like:-
Japanese and English language exchange partners wanted!
I'll speak to you in English and you speak to me in Japanese.
If you are interested please call Danny on 123 4567-8910
At the time it was OK for folks to leave their phone number around in ads
like that ^^; Sure enough I got some calls and got to befriend and speak
to Japanese folks for the first time. It was a great learning experience
where I got to practice and improve my spoken Japanese. I remember my
first spoken Japanese which I put together - I'm sure the grammar was
correct but she laughed at me - must have been my pronunciation ^^
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
My heart leaped when I saw this magazine cover at the Japan Center one
day - her name is Hikaru Nishida and was the cutest thing I've ever ever
seen!
I had to know more about her which meant that I needed to learn much much
more Japanese! She was a singer too so I got all her CDs to sing along
too. A great thing about Japanese CDs is that they usually come with a
lyric sheet too which makes looking up words easy. Hikaru in action
below.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
While I was fickle and liked other idols too - Hikaru Nishida was the
main girl of my dreams at the time. I cut up magazines and made large
posters by photocopying sections of the cover onto A3 paper and sticking
em together. As I was staring at the magazine covers all the time, I
learned all the kanji and words off by heart too.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Studying on my own, I needed to set hard goals for myself. I applied for
the Japanese Language Proficiency Test and would self study for a whole
year with the goal of passing that exam in December. I passed Level 4 and
then Level 2 the following year.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
This photo taken recently and is pretty much all that I have left back in
the UK. Lingering in here are some Japanese language learning tapes
called linguaphone that mum bought for me. I would set them to play on my
cassette deck at early hours in the morning at a time when I thought I'd
be having my light REM sleep. I noticed that various sounds around me
could be heard in my dreams and the idea was to listen to the tapes
during these periods of shallow sleep. I cant say for certain that this
worked but am pretty happy with the speed that I picked up Japanese so
maybe it did ^^;
To discover what times you fall into a shallow sleep, experiment with
playing something to yourself at certain times throughout the night by
using a timer. If you remember hearing the sounds in your dreams then
that's probably when you want to try to continue to brainwash yourself
^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
After having an exam for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test one
evening, I saw two Japanese blokes standing outside the test center
handing out leaflets. The leaflet was for some sort of language exchange
club in the West end of London. I went along to see what it was all about
and saw something like this - a class full of local and Japanese folks
together in conversation.
The club was run by an English fellow married to a Japanese lady who were
accountants. They had this office but they didn't need all the space to
run their operations so they decided to use the rest of the office to run
this language exchange club called Axel. They charged a couple of pounds
per week which was too reasonable. You can see me in the middle of the
photo.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Axel had a Japanese electronic typewriter that they used to process
documents for their Japanese clients in London. I asked if I could use
the typewriter to type out kanji charts for myself which I would print
out onto A4 paper and then blow up to A3 size - and then stick them up
all over the house ^^;
I also made miniature ones which I laminated and carried around with me.
You can see at the top of this chart that I've branded it with [西田ひかるちゃんの
恋人] meaning "Hikaru Nishida's lover" ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Also made this sheet of adjectives which I photocopied and also carried
around with me all the time so that I could read it while waiting for a
bus or train. I also had these in the loo so that I could learn Japanese
while peeing and pooing too - just wanted to make sure there was no down
time at all in the learning process.
If you think about it - it makes sense because peeing and pooing is
something that you just have to do but don't necessarily learn much from
the experience which is a waste of time.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I made many good comrades at Axel and we would often get together outside
of club hours to mingle and have dindins. Meeting like-minded folks
through sharing your passion will enrich your life with friendship and
opportunities like it has done for me.
Language is based on culture. The more you understand a culture, the
better it will help you to understand a language and why things are said
in certain circumstances. By mingling with native speakers, you will
learn more about the culture which will in turn help you pick up the
language faster.
I dyed my hair brown because I wanted to look like a SMAP member at the
time ^^; I also made my own T-shirts from scans of Japanese magazines.
My Japanese friends at the time were the best friends I ever had. We
could often sing Karaoke while munching on snacks at my place.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
By this time in life, I had a burning passion for anime and manga and
really wanted to do some sort of work related to my interests. At the
time, there was a company in the UK called Manga Entertainment releasing
anime titles such as Ghost in the Shell and Project A-KO. I contacted the
CEO and told him of my passion for anime, manga, the Japanese language
and expressed how I would love to do something/anything for him.
The CEO decided to set up a fan club magazine called "Mangazine" which
you can see pictured here that I was to write for as an editor.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Here are some of the tapes that I was sent as part of my work for
Mangazine. I would watch and review these anime before they were released
in the UK. My Japanese was still a bit fuzzy at the time which gave me
even more motivation to study more. Even though I wasn't paid to write
for the magazine, just having the experience to do so was priceless.
I come across many folks who want money for any little thing they do
including fart. I've reached halfway point in my life journey and through
the experience, I can say that in many cases doing things for free brings
much more reward in the long term. Thinking long term is key to building
a successful life.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I started to earn myself money
This is the Metropolitan buildings in Dalston Hackney. It's an old
hospital where my dad rented out some space to build his business. I met
Kylie Minogue here!
The best thing that my dad has ever done for me was to let me achieve and
earn on my own. He did pay for the foster homes to look after me and I
did get a few pounds now and then but I was pretty much on my own since
college when I started to live with mum - good thing college and
university was covered by a government grant back then. If I wanted
pocket money then I had to earn it and I did so initially by working for
dad part time here at the Metropolitan.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Photo snapped last year.
While working for my dad, I learned everything about the shoe design and
the manufacture process. I could design, cut patterns, stitch and last
Uppers too.
I also worked with fashion journals such as Elle and Vogue to get them
samples for their model shoots and attended many of the fashion shows.
While the work was interesting, I knew that this wasn't something that I
wanted to do in life.
As I continued to learn more Japanese and discover more of the culture
through anime, manga, games and spending time with my Japanese friends, I
found a purpose in life at last which was to pursue my knowledge of Japan
- I knew that I couldn't do that while working part time for my dad. As I
was living with my mum, I didn't see my dad for a few years after I left
the studio.
BTW, recently made a pair of sandals which you can see in the Black Rock
Shoes post ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Not working at my dad's studio anymore meant no more income which is
generally a bad thing ^^;
I signed up to a talent agency called Richard Starnowski. Whenever Asian
looking folks were needed, I would be given a call and have been in TV
dramas, commercials and documentaries - although all the parts were
minor, each job paid quite a bit of cash.
A memorable moment while on a shoot in the sticks for a documentary about
fireworks for the Discovery Channel was when a bi-plane flew by the cast
and camera crew at low speed and altitude. It was a clear blue evening
and the sight sent a tingle down my spine. Was an inspiring sight that
made me want to do something with this life.
This photo here is for a publication called "Let's Oshaberi" which
teaches basic English phrases to Japanese families in the UK - I found
part time work with the publisher to translate English to Japanese.
At this moment in life I was taking a business course at the Elephant and
Castle - fees which were also covered by a grant.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I also started to work part time at a Japanese restaurant called
Benihana. Not as one of the chefs who threw around knifes which
occasionally hospitalized customers but as one of the waiters who ran
around the halls taking orders and serving food. I chose Benihana for a
few reasons.
One of the reasons was so that I could speak Japanese with the many
Japanese customers that Benihana had.
The other reason was so that I could save enough moolah for a ticket to
go to the land of the rising sun. I wanted to travel to Japan and absorb
as much of the culture as possible.
I remember my first paycheck - worked a tough schedule only to see a
couple of digits. But I knew not to expect too much at the beginning. It
took a year to save enough cash for a ticket to Japan with some money
left over to spend. I would come back to the UK and continue to work at
Benihana to save enough money for a trip the following year.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
And then I was in the land of the rising sun. I had seen it in anime,
manga, magazines and drama and now I was experiencing it for the first
time. My heart was pounding as the train left Narita and passed through
some small towns. I could see Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji on signs. I
was in Japan.
It was such an emotional time for me that I remember nearly every day of
my first visit. Senses were overloaded - the touch of sensors on
convenient store doors, the taste of tempura, the smell of the moist
Summer heat and the sound of Japanese language everywhere.
I was lucky enough to have made a load of good Japanese friends back in
the UK - they invited me to stay with their family in places like
Tagmagawa, Saitama and even Hiroshima.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
And this is where I would sit in Shibuya watching the Hachiko crossing
all day long dreaming about living here while listening to the bustling
sounds and conversations.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I wanted to take some of Japan back to the UK with me and some how
preserve the time I spent there so that I could re-live it. Video cameras
at the time were the size of rocket launchers and cost a bomb too. I got
myself a Mini Disc (do they sell em these days?) and a microphone which
you can see pictured here.
I would record the sounds of Shibuya and capture all the hustle and
bustle of the crossing which included conversations of folks standing
nearby waiting for friends.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Setting my first destination in life - living and working in Japan
Back in the UK, I set up speakers around my room and played the
recordings of Shibuya and closed my eyes - I was transported back to
Shibuya instantly.
I knew I could not be in Japan for another year until I saved up enough
money at Benihana but listening to the sounds of Shibuya motivated so
much and I would always play it in the background while I continued to
self study Japanese.
Pictured here is my first desk - an old speaker with a bit of glass on
top.
By this time in life, I had been to Japan a couple of times. Living and
working in Japan wasn't only a dream - but a dream that I just had to
make into a reality. The poster on the wall is of a sunset over Shinjuku
which I would look at and say to myself repeatedly everyday:-
"I must make it to Japan"
"I must make it to Japan"
"I will make it to Japan"
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
My kitchen wall back in the UK with some pictures of Nishida Hikaru
surrounded by photos that I took in Japan. I wanted to be motivated for
every waking second which meant that I had to see Japanese wherever I
went in the house ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Another photo of our kitchen. On the wall is a poster of a sunset on
Hiroshima. Underneath that is another one of the kanji charts that I
made.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
In Japan, one day while waiting in line for a Nishida Hikaru concert, I
saw a chap also waiting in line who was holding the concert brochure. I
decided to reach out and introduce myself. We had something in common
which made it easier to speak to him - we both loved Nishida Hikaru! We
became good comrades and after he would introduced me to his comrades, my
network of Japanese friends started to grow overnight.
The world is indeed small and I caught up with him many years after when
I found that we were working in the same building when I was at Amazon
Japan @.@
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Some of the stuff that I bought while in Japan. The photos are called
Nama Shashin [生写真] and can still be found in Harajuku.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I liked Hikaru Nishida *a lot* - drew this of her and I standing in a
streets with shops of Tokyo as I remembered it - its got bits of
Akihabara and Shinjuku.
Meeting Hikaru was also another one of my dreams. While in Tokyo one
year, I waited for Hikaru at the backstage entrance of Kousei Nenkin Hall
in Shinjuku and managed to pass her some presents of Marylyn Monroe that
she liked.
That night, I got a bunch of flowers and waited outside the hall for her
concert to finish. I had rollerblades on and the plan was to chase after
her car and catch her at a traffic light to hand her the flowers.
However, the guards at the hall didn't like the look of me and just
before her car came out, 7 or so of them rushed and pinned me to the
ground until her car was out of site.
After Hikaru's car was off and away, the guards left me in the middle of
the road. I got up dizzy after being hit and kicked. The flowers still
looked decent so I nabbed them and skated in the direction of Hikaru's
car as fast as I could. Fate was on my side and her car was stuck at some
traffic lights. She winded down the window with a sorry look and accepted
my flowers. I don't think it was her decision to set the guards on me -
or at least that's what I like to think ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I tried the same thing the following year at the same time same place but
this time I hid well out of sight. Unfortunately this time round fate was
not on my side and the traffic lights were greener than green - I
remember chasing her car on my roller blades through Shinjuku in the
middle of the road with this bunch of flowers until my lungs started to
burst - my asthma got the better of me.
I retreated to sit in front of a pachinko parlor crying my eyes out until
a lady came up to me and asked if I was alright. I said I was fine and
offered her the flowers - this was the photo I took at the time.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I felt that I needed to go to university to learn academic Japanese as a
step to get me closer to working in Japan.
Up until now, I had been learning Japanese on my own through self study.
My Japanese speaking ended up being rather colloquial and I don't think I
would have gotten far in Japanese society without having it polished up
at university.
I took a Japanese language BA degree at SOAS (School of Oriental and
African Studies - University of London). It was a 4 year course but my
Japanese was proficient enough for me to pass an entrance examination
that got me straight into the second year.
Listening to my partner Chris talk about how he's still paying back his
student loan made me feel grateful that education in the UK back then was
covered by a grant.
I also took a Korean language course at the same time. Had been
fascinated with the language and as the grammar is like 90% similar to
Japanese that I already knew, I decided to learn it at the same time.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
This was some of my homework at the time. Its very important to write
Japanese as much as possible and learn through writing rather than
typing.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How and where I met my wife
During most of my term at SOAS, I was still working part time at Benihana
although it did feel like full time work - worked from Monday through
Friday and on many weekends too. Hours were from about 5pm through
midnight at times. Still had to find time to do homework and study so
would often do so during the staff meals where I also got to speak
Japanese to other members of staff.
Benihana was also where I met my wife - she was working there as a
waitress too. If it wasn't for my interest in Japanese culture, I
probably would not have taken a job in a Japanese restaurant and probably
would not have met her.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
While my mum and dad spoke to me in Cantonese, I didn't get the
opportunity to go to Chinese school as a wee lad so didn't learn to read
or write Chinese. After meeting wifey, I decided that I wanted to learn
Chinese to communicate with her family and I done that through more self
study using Japanese language books on learning Chinese like these ones
here.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Before getting married, wifey and I decided to live together and this was
the place that we lived in at Earls Court. The place was so small that
the futon took up most of the room when laid out so we had to fold it
every day.
The room already had other guests in the form of bugs which would crawl
through the floorboards and bite the hell out of me - funnily enough they
didn't find wifey tasty at all and left her alone ^^;
The landlord didn't want to do anything about it and we were stuck in a
contract for the year. We ended up paying for these other floorboards to
cover the bug ridden floorboards underneath. Here I am hammering down the
floorboards which we picked up from the home center down the road.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
On the right was our kitchen where we also done the laundry in the sink
and on the left was our shower room. The place was small and cramped but
was all that we could afford at the time. The important thing was that we
were together *^^*
I would study at SOAS during the day and meet up with wifey at Benihana
after classes. We would work past midnight and then head home - she was
on the bicycle while I held onto the back of the saddle on my
rollerblades.
One night while blading home with wifey, an old man suddenly grabbing me
and pushed me to the floor - "You menace!!!" he shouted. I was left
trembling with anger but I knew that it wasn't worth following up.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
After a year of living at Earls Court, we decided to move out and get a
cheaper place. It was nice to have our own crib but it was costing quite
a bit so we rented a room in one of our friends house in Whitechapel
London. We shared the kitchen, bath and toilet with the other folks that
were also renting rooms in the house.
With the cheaper rent, we could afford to take out a loan to get a
computer pictured in the back - it cost something like 1600 pounds!
It was a Windows 95 machine with a 4GB HD and a 56K (or 256K - me
forgets) dial up modem. This is where I picked up my computing skills. I
did take computer Science back in college but failed it.
At the time, I wanted to use Japanese but there was no multi-lingual
support. I had to learn how to partition the HD with FDisk and install
Image Magick so that I could use English and Japanese Windows. If you are
using a multilingual system, you may want to set the systems default
language to the language that you are trying to learn. This forces you to
learn new words as you go about your daily computing life.
I also installed Chinese and Korean windows 95 in different partitions
too which helped my study of these languages.
It was the first time I had access to the Internets and was able to
discover and learn a lot about Japanese culture including moe 2D girlies-
our first phone bill was scary ^^;
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
During my later years studying at SOAS, I quit Benihana and got a part
time job at another restaurant near Oxford street called Ikeda. I only
worked there for a few months before moving on but had memorable times -
such as the one where the boss screamed at us saying that she would
deduct the cost of a plate if we didn't handle them properly.
I also remember that we had to scoff down staff dinner in 5 minutes flat
before opening time. Seriously though, restaurant work is a great way to
prepare oneself for society. It can be hard stressful work with more
politics than you can imagine. There is also however a lot of fun to be
had at the same time and is a place where you can meet new people.
These days after I eat at a restaurant, I usually wipe the table and
stack up the dishes for the waiter/waitress as I know exactly what it's
like to serve in the halls.
This photo taken at the bus stop where I would catch the night bus back
to Whitechapel.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
After Ikeda, I managed to get a part time job at Japan Airlines. One of
my teachers at SOAS was handing out leaflets at the end of a lesson - the
leaflets were from Japan Airlines who were looking for students who had a
good command of Japanese and English that could guide Japanese passengers
around Heathrow Airport.
I went along to the interview and got the job. As I was still at
university at the time, I would often wear my uniform to class and then
head to Heathrow straight after. Kinda liked the suit as I didn't have to
think about what to wear for the day.
I learned so much from the experience and met many Japanese folks who I
would chat to while leading them from one terminal to the next. They
would use new words that I looked up in the electronic dictionary that I
stuck to my clipboard. The journey to the airport was long but enjoyed
reading manga like Crayon Shin-chan that you can see in the photo.
This lady here is Reiko. We hated each other at the beginning but became
good comrades after. The key was communication. A lack of communication
always leads to misunderstandings and when folks become stubborn and
refuse to communicate - both parties loose out on a friendship that could
enrich our lives.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I remember shouting "Woooo Hooo!!" and jumping around in the corridor
with excitement. Wifey and I went to SOAS to check the results on the
board which I had to double check to see if it wasn't some mistake.
Wasn't too sure what to expect as I'm sure I did bad on my last
assignment! Also heard that only 10% of graduates in the UK achieve the
First Class Honors.
One of my teachers told me "you've got the First Class Honors - you don't
need the JLPT level 1."
Looking back into the past, I think I tend to perform a wee bit better
while under the pressure of time. Throughout my term at SOAS, I'd been
working part time at restaurants or the airport which didn't leave a lot
of time for study but also helped me to want to work/study more
efficiently and thus get more done. I think another important thing was
that the part time jobs I had enabled me to learn Japanese on the job.
No job is better than the one where you get to live and practice your
passions. If you are looking for a part time job while studying, try to
seek one where you can also do the stuff that you like - the money will
feel like an extra perk.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
My first full time job at Japan Airlines
After graduating from SOAS, Japan Airlines offered me an interview for a
full time job. They knew of the computing skills that I had been self
teaching myself and asked if I would like to join them as a Computer
Engineer for their computing division called JAL Avionet.
Went for the interview and got the job. Was over the moon but remember
being very nervous as it was my first full time job in society as a
salary man.
This is a photo of the office in London Hammersmith - you can see my
workspace in the bottom left corner with the Empire Strikes Back Probot
on the desk.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
My responsibilities at JAL Avionet were to maintain Japan Airlines
booking systems across Europe and also look after other Japanese clients
that they had including Marubeni, Mitsui Kaijo and NTT Data.
During my spare time at work, I took the initiative to learn HTML and
started to create an Intranet site. Needed to learn how to do buttons so
learned how to use graphical packages like Paint Shop Pro.
This photo was taken in Italy where we spent a few days maintaining some
JAL equipment. As you can see, the terminals were retro! Some of them had
been running for many years and were filled with black electrical soot.
Opening the unit was incredibly dangerous too where we had to wear rubber
gloves.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I made it to Japan
I was content at JAL Avionet. T'was my first job and it was with a
Japanese company. Some of the staff were Japanese and I got to speak a
lot of the lingo too.
But I still wasn't in Japan and I never let go of the Japanese Dream that
I had which was to live and work in the land of the rising sun.
I started to do the milk rounds looking for jobs online and I found
something that caught my eye on a recruitment site called Peoples First.
The job was based in Tokyo and the description was something like "Web
marketing in SE Asia. Require native English speaker with good command of
Japanese/Chinese and who could do the Internets."
Hmmm. I can do a bit of the Internets! I immediately applied for the job
and ran home all excited. I told my wife when I got home "we are moving
to Japan!"
Wifey gave a smile ^^
A few days later, I got a call to meet the general manager (David
Swinbanks) of Nature Japan who had come to the UK to do interviews. I met
with him for an hour and the interview included a task to read a
scientific article in Japanese ^^;
David didn't expect to find somebody who could also speak Korean which
was rather handy as Nature Japan covered Korea in their marketing too.
After the first interview, I went home and stayed up through the night to
make a mock up of a simple Nature Korea website which you can see here -
they didn't have one at the time and during the interview I discussed how
it would be strategically important for Nature to have one. I saved the
files on a floppy, printed out a screenshot and found out which hotel
David was staying at through the recruitment agency. I got to the hotel,
slid the goods under his door and left.
That night, I got a call from the recruitment agency who said that David
wanted to meet me again and that "he was surprised by your delivery."
Met up with David who said that he wanted to send me to their Tokyo
office for a week of tests and interviews but that he wasn't guaranteeing
me a position just yet. He was going to pay for just the ticket and hotel
and leave the rest to me.
Headed to Tokyo and spent a week at the offices of Nature in Ichigaya. I
was doing forecasting which I had never done before and had to think of
an algorithm that made sense. I used excel to plot some forecasts based
on previous years data but I didn't take into account external factors.
Without the experience to understand how things such as seasons affect
sales, my forecasts were off but I tried my best to come up with the
numbers.
Luckily David was looking for somebody with the willingness to try rather
than somebody who knew it all.
I was also doing translating of scientific articles which they don't
quite teach in university ^^;
A week packed with intensive tests and interviews had come to an end and
I was sitting at Davids desk. "Thank you for coming to Tokyo. We will
give you a decision after you get back to the UK."
I started to imagine the pain of sitting on a plane for 12 hours worrying
about his answer and said "I probably won't have any finger or toenails
left after biting them all off through worrying about whether I got the
job or not - I would love an answer before I go back ^^"
David laughed and told me that he will call over the weekend.
I went back to the hotel and was distraught with stress but knew I done
absolutely *everything* I could. Everything. I had prepared for a chance
like this for the past few years learning not only Japanese but also the
technology. I was given the opportunity and did my best. I wanted to be
in Japan so so bad. I just had to be in Japan.
That night, I broke down and cried myself to sleep ^^; lol
The hotel phone rang on a rainy Sunday morning - it was David.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
One Way Ticket
The result of that call was that in July 1999, wifey and I packed up
stuff from our friends place to dump at mums place (^^;) and picked up
our one way tickets to Japan.
My dream came true. I was going to live and work in the land of the
rising sun. All the hard work over the previous few years paid off.
Discover and live your passion and the rest will just follow - it always
does. Never give up. Don't make barriers for yourself and especially
don't let barriers that other people put in your way stop you. Listen to
your heart and forge forward.
We had saved enough money in the bank to start out our new life. All we
needed to do now was to pack a couple O suitcases and goodbye to dad.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Photo taken with dad, his wife and my younger sister at his studio in
Connaught Street London just before I moved to Japan 13 years ago.
My younger sister now lives in San Fran studying interior design. We
occasionally Skype where I would tease her by speaking as loud as I can
to wake up her room mate ^^;
And for the folks who are wondering - I have no intention of taking over
dads business - I already have my own company and I love what I'm doing.
Besides - could not bare the thought of working in a field that has zero
2D girlies! My company generates enough money to provide my wife and I
with a comfortable life and to grow our business - that's all we need.
I have no idea if I'm going to inherit anything but if I do then its
going to go to building schools for some of the less fortunate kids in
the world. Actually, come to think of it, the money should go to
developing cyborgs which shoots poo in the face of playground bullies.
Did I mention I hate playground bullies?
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I began my career in Japan
This was where I first sat at the Nature Japan offices. It was such a
great experience and I learned so much. I was given a Mac and I
absolutely hated using it! I looked after marketing and also done tasks
such as process subscriptions, build portal sites, check translations and
launch journals in the region.
Unlike the JAL offices back in the UK, the Nature offices in Japan had a
lot of visitors like the guy who delivers the daily post n parcels. I
started to learn office terms that I didn't hear back i the UK like
"Otsukaresama desu" [お疲れさまです] - a greeting to colleagues and folks from
other companies.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
The first place we lived in was a small apartment on the outskirts of
Tokyo in a place called Higash Fushimi. As we didn't have much space, we
used the cupboard as a table like this.
A year after moving to Japan, I set up the the domain dannychoo.com on
some shared hosting service. The main purpose was so that I could have
something online where I could experiment while I self study technologies
such as MYSQL, HTML, CSS and so on. I also started to use a load of
graphics packages such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
The Comfort Zone
Nature was a fantastic company to work at. It was the first Japanese
working environment that I worked in which exposed me to many Japanese
society terms, mannerisms and customs. I learned a lot about publishing,
marketing and technology and was satisfied with the salary that provided
me with a content life.
I achieved many goals for the company too and launched many scientific
journals in the region which was also rewarding.
But then I started to realize that I had fallen into one of the most
dangerous situations that one can ever be in - in something that I call
the Comfort Zone.
Humans have basic needs such as food and shelter and being comfortable
means that they are in a position where they can fulfill these needs.
There are many folks out there who want to pursue their passion in life
but end up not wanting to get out of the Comfort Zone because there is a
risk associated that could take these basic fulfillment's away. The
Comfort Zone makes it very difficult to change.
Humans act on necessity and if there is no need to do something, humans
generally don't. If the basic human needs are fulfilled, there is
generally no need to do anything.
But realizing that one is in the Comfort Zone is a good start and that
realization helped me to get out and do the milk rounds by talking to
recruiters all over Tokyo. Went for many memorable job interviews - like
running around in the rain wearing a suit during absolutely sweltering
Summer days and also got laughed at in interviews because I didn't know
how to write up a resume.
This leap out of the Comfort Zone was the first step to a career in Japan
that would completely change my life within the next few months. I had
reached my destination of being in Japan but I wanted more.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
During my milk rounds, I found a Japanese recruitment site called Job
Dragon where I chose what type of job I was looking for and submitted my
resume. Got a call from the CEO of Job Dragon (Mark) who requested a
meeting with me. Turned up for the meeting and was surprised to see print
outs of my website that Mark had with him.
"Did you really do this?" Mark says referring to the designs. The above
screenshot was what he had printed out. I was really embarrassed!
The blue objects were all made and rendered in 3D Max and the rest made
using layers in Dreamweaver. It was this experience where I learned how
important it was to have an online profile. To this day, my online
profile is the one tool that I have used constantly to build my career
and I recommend everybody to seriously consider making their own profile
- even if its just a Linkedin account.
People are not going to guess your abilities if you don't tell them.
Being quiet about your abilities is a bit like waiting for somebody to
knock on your door and say "Hey! You are the person who has all the
skills we are looking for - you are hired!" - Its just not going to
happen.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
The CTO (Nick) then came in to have a chat and then discussed the
possibility of me working for them. Amongst the conversation, I suggested
how a mobile site would be beneficial for Job Dragon to help increase
usage of their service.
From 1999 through to 2001, wifey and I decided to save money and not get
a mobile phone but then thought it was time to invest in a pair as I
wanted to make a mobile site for Job Dragon - to prove to them that I
could do the job. Don't have a screenshot of the Job Dragon site that I
made but this was the dannychoo.com mobile version which I whipped up at
the same time.
Nick seemed to like what I did but wasn't convinced until I did further
tests online - he sent me a link to a site where I was required to take
tests in HTML and Dreamweaver. Passed both tests and soon after I was
offered a full time position working for Job Dragon as a Contents
Producer.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
It was tough, very tough handing in my resignation to the man who
believed in me and brought me over to Japan - David. While I didn't have
any experience in marketing, through the time I spent during that week in
Tokyo, David thought I had the potential to do well at Nature.
I left David with increased sales of the Nature Journal in Korea, a
Korean website, reduced costs and delivery time of the Nature journal to
Korea, launched Nature Genetics, Nature Molecular Cell Biology and Nature
Neuroscience in SE Asia and also launched Nature Immunology in Japan and
Korea to drive subscription circulation to be the highest worldwide.
This photo taken at my desk in the offices of Job Dragon at Omotesando.
About 3 months after I joined Job Dragon, they hit a spot of financial
bother and had to let me and a few others go. It was my first experience
of being laid off. The CEO Mark lead 3 of us to a room to give us the bad
news. Mark cried and I was pretty much in shock - I left a stable job at
Nature only to be laid off a few months afterwards at Job Dragon.
But everything in life happens for a reason and every event is a piece of
a jigsaw puzzle that one collects during their journey in life.
As Job Dragon was a recruitment agency, they also had many contacts in
the industry and they weren't going to leave us strung high n dry.
My resume was sent to tech companies such as eBay Japan and Amazon Japan.
Had a load of interviews and got 4 simultaneous offers ^^; Had a few
interviews with Amazon at their offices in Shibuya and over the phone
with various Program Managers at HQ in Seattle. At the end of the
interview loop, my boss Anne flew over to Japan to make sure that I was
the one to fit the role.
So here is a question I was asked when interviewing for the position -
how would you answer. There is a correct and incorrect way of answering
and you do not have to be technical to get it right. Just because you are
in an interview, don't answer in a way that you think others want you to
answer. How would you answer?
You are currently working on rolling out a site feature and your
staff is all occupied with the rollout.
A business owner (lets say it was Marketing) tells you that they need
a website feature built urgently and that they can expect thousands of
incremental users leading to millions of dollars in sales. What do you
do?
I ended up using that same question on everybody I interviewed at Amazon
from then on ^^;
Anyway, after Ebay and Amazon offered me a position, my recruiters got
them both in a bidding war - the more they paid, the more the recruiter
gets which is about 30% of my annual salary. eBay ended up offering
*much* more but I chose Amazon. I felt I was more familiar with
e-commerce rather than auctions.
Job Dragon hired me, fired me and placed me - and the 30% that they made
from introducing me to Amazon more than paid for the salary during my
time at Job Dragon.
Amazon was the correct choice - one reason was because Ebay Japan folded
and exited Japan. I kept in contact with the HR manager at eBay who ended
up asking me to hire her staff - I took two on board.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Life at Amazon Japan as Website Manager
When my headhunter Rusty said "I'm sending your resume to Amazon for the
position of Website Manager", I blinked several times and stared at him.
I then replied "yeah right."
Within months of leaving Nature, I found myself on the management team at
Amazon working with the General Manager Jasper Cheung to run the company.
I was managing all aspects of website deployment and had a fantastic team
of about 30 heads to help me.
A few months ago I was in a Comfort Zone and then all of a sudden I found
myself earning triple my Nature salary with a load of AMZN stock options
running one of the biggest websites in the world.
I joined Amazon as the youngest member of the management team as Website
Manager. The new environment was a huge challenge. The Amazonian
technology was incredible which felt completely alien. I learned that I
was a people manager and started to learn new Japanese terms as I was
working with many departments including Vendor Management, Buying,
Merchandising, Finance, Legal, Retail, Marketing, Web Services, Public
Relations, Human Resources, Supply Chain / Operations and IT. A list of
all the shenanigans that I got up to in Amazon in the Working at Amazon
and Microsoft post.
I did work in an international environment at Nature but not on the scale
of Amazon where every quarter I would travel to either the UK, France,
Germany or the US to meet the other Website Managers for our website
planning process. I also got to experience corporate company politics
too. Being the youngest management team member, some of the other members
would question my people management skills. A few of the other management
members even got HR to interview my staff to see whether I was capable as
a manager.
But it did turn out that I was a people manager and I continued to work
hard to schedule projects so that my staff could go home at 6pm - while
some of the other management members kept their staff back until the
early hours of the morning. The turnover rate for the Web Production was
the lowest in the organization with high morale too. We launched all
projects that we committed to on-time and to-spec.
Danny's Oppai
As a manager at Amazon, I drew a pie chart that my staff started to call
"Danny's Pie" which if you say very fast could be made to sound like
"Danny's Oppai."
The pie is divided into three - each piece is 8 hours. Presuming that you
work 8 hours and sleep for 8 hours then you have 8 hours remaining which
is one slice of the pie. I then start to cut up the remaining piece.
The 8 remaining hours is needed for things like personal hygiene,
nourishment intake, health care (very important), cleaning, commuting and
other chores which are important in life but generally don't contribute a
whole lot to your career or personal development.
If you subtract the time needed for all the above from the final piece of
the pie then all you would have left each day is 4-ish hours which you
need to use on spending with friends/loved ones, entertainment/recreation
and personal development - learning a new subject, beefing up current
skills, researching etc.
Now imagine that you spent more than 8 hours at work. In order to do the
other stuff, you would either have to sleep less or start to drop some of
the other stuff. Some folks with long work hours drop "personal
development" which I consider to be crucial to the development of an
employee's life, career and well being.
Outside of work and sleep, if you are not getting your 8 hours then
perhaps its time do something about it? Could it be the lack of your 8
hours that your Japanese studying is always put on the back burner?
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
The new and improved paycheck enabled us to rent a place in central Tokyo
and this is what my work area looked like back then. I was still a
Windows believer. My staff used Macs and I used to say to them "Apart
from mail and web, what on earth do you do with your Mac?!"
As you can see, at this point I started to get influenced by Gundam and
built a handful of kits.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I started to make money online
In 2003, Amazon launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) - an API which allowed
any developer access to Amazons catalog data in XML format. With AWS, one
can build online shops filled with Amazon products.
I worked with the AWS teams in Seattle to localize and launch the service
in Japan. In order to test the service efficiently, I took the
opportunity to build in my time outside work the first AWS powered site
in Japan called Mitsukatta pictured above. The top folks in Amazon liked
the site so much that they decided to use it as an example in the press
conference when the service officially launched in Japan. The service was
still young and I wanted to work with AWS more to help improve it.
I started to learn things like server side caching and Search Engine
Optimization - things that potential AWS users would be learning too.
With permission from the Finance Director, he allowed me to place an
Amazon associates tag in the links to products on the Amazon site - this
means that if somebody purchased a product through one of my links then I
got a commission from Amazon.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Initially I thought it would be cool to earn enough to pay for the phone
bill which was about 6,000 yen per month. The more I started to learn
from Google Sensei about the technologies that I needed to optimize the
website, the more I started to earn. I fed these learning's back to
Amazon and I went from earning enough to pay the phone bill every month
to earning much more than I imagined.
The 28 million yen figure that you see above is how much revenue I
generated for Amazon over the course of just a few weeks. As a "thank
you", Amazon paid me 1,857,732 yen (about 23,090 USD at today's rate) as
a commission for this period.
I started to realize that if I had more of these websites then I would
automatically make more money so I built around 30 or so websites all
running on different designs which all ran different experiments that I
was trying out.
My job at Amazon was a management position - meetings > email > meetings
> repeat which meant that I couldn't program at work at all. Hours
outside of office was all that I had to work on the sites where I also
picked up unix skills to manage the Apache servers.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Why we moved to Seattle for 5 months
I began to realize the potential of Amazon Web Services to be used as an
internal tool too and started make working prototypes of the Amazon
website running purely on AWS which I was able to do in my own time over
the weekends. What would normally take months to do with hundreds of
staff could now be achieved by a single developer over the course of a
few days. The prototypes became an eye opener for many tech folks in the
organization which proved just how powerful AWS was.
A direct report to Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) called Diego Piecentini
took notice of my work within the organization and offered me to work
under him in Seattle building internal tools. I accepted his offer and in
July 2004 we packed up everything and moved to Seattle. Even though we
love Japan, wifey and I felt that this was an important career move which
is why we accepted the offer.
This photo taken outside the Amazon headquarters in Seattle at PacMed
where I worked on competitive monitoring, selection analysis and ASIN
(SKU) metric systems. Spent a lot of time working on search technology
with the Alexa team too.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
While I loved the work, I didn't quite get used to life in Seattle. I did
try to get used to the way of things in the US but it just wasn't for me.
Time seemed to have ground down to a halt - I guess I was used to the
fast pace of life back in Tokyo.
The biggest factor about me not getting used to life in Seattle however
was that It wasn't until I left Japan that I discovered just how much I
loved the land of the rising sun. I remember watching the Japanese
channel all the time in Seattle and watched Lost in Translation over and
over again and again. I had to be back in Japan.
After many months of considering what to do next, I prepared to hand in
my resignation and head back to the land of the rising sun with wifey. It
was an extremely tough decision which meant quitting a senior position
and paying for ourselves to get back. But life is not about being
financially comfortable - its about living a passion which was not what I
was achieving in Seattle. Time to take another leap of faith.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
So what does my wife think about all this moving round from the UK to
Japan to Seattle and back to Japan? Well its a question that many ask her
and she always answers the same - it doesn't matter where we live as long
as we are together. We've been together for 14 years now. My wife has
lived in more countries than I - China, Japan, UK and the US.
This snap taken just before we left the US. We probably would have made
much more of the time if we knew that we were only going to be there for
half a year. One of the regrets I have is not documenting our lives when
we lived in the US - hardly have any photos of our time over there. Now
that I blog, I take photos regularly and keep a record of what I do in
the A Week in Tokyo series. I do this mainly for myself but it also
enables me to share what life is like in Tokyo with folks around the
world.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
I told Diego how I felt about wanting to be back in Japan and apologized
for letting him down - I handed him my resignation and was going to
prepare for our move back to Japan. Diego wanted me to stay with the
company and Amazon was to look after us on our journey back.
My new responsibility in Japan was to manage a website that Amazon had
just acquired - a Chinese shopping website called Joyo.com where I
oversaw Website and Software development. I left Seattle with internal
tools that are still used today by vendors and buyers.
Thank you Diego for looking after me at Amazon.
Wifey and I arrived back in Japan in November 2004 and it felt incredible
to be back. I still remember the day we arrived as we walked to our new
apartment that Amazon put us up in around the Azabu Juban area.
I and a few management members at Amazon remotely managed the teams in
China with frequent trips to the Beijing office. Here I'm with a few
colleagues who worked on the Joyo.com site.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How dannychoo.com started to gain readership
I built some blog functionality for dannychoo.com back in 2004 while I
was still in Seattle but it wasn't until 2005 when I started to blog
regularly. Back then, I mainly blogged about Gundam, figures and life in
Japan - Otaku x Japan.
When I built the blog feature, I used the leanings that I gained from
making all those AWS sites and made sure all the templates were search
engine optimized which helped bring in many incremental users. I also
invested in a digital SLR which I took on photo walks and to events like
the Wonder Festival - the photos further attracted more users from around
the world and readership started to grow overnight.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Used a lot of the Amazon affiliate earnings to buy a house with a wee bit
of land attached. My daughter introduces some photos taken around the
house in this post.
And for folks who constantly ask when I'm going to have a real daughter -
unfortunately the good lord has not blessed us with kids yet.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
How I started a side business - the beginnings of Mirai Inc
While working for the corporate companies, comrades would introduce folks
who wanted me to websites build for them. Even though I was working with
the web, I didn't think there was money to be made from making websites
for others. I was also content with my current job (and the side income)
which kept me busy so wasn't interested in the requests. So I threw back
a "OK if you really want a website then its going to cost you X million
yen."
To my surprise, the first company who requested a website said "yes
please." I was not about to say no to a few million yen (1 million =
about 10,000 USD) so programming until the early hours of the morning was
the norm for the next few months where I was also able to beef up the PHP
programming skills - thank you Google Sensei.
I banked a few million yen in the bank for a single website which was
just shy of my annual salary at Nature. More requests started to come in
which was proving to be a bit more for me to handle without it affecting
my full time job. This screenshot is of one of the first sites I built.
With the help of Google Sensei again, I then started to seek developers
in overseas countries and ended up with development teams in India,
Romania and the US. Zend was a site where I found a few of them.
I would work remotely with them over phone, email and IM. I required half
of the payment from my clients to be paid upfront which I used to pay my
developers. I would then meet clients after work to understand their
business needs which I then fed back to my developers.
Was my first experience managing my own remote staff where I had
memorable moments like the developer who just dropped everything and
disappeared ^^;
With all the extra income, I would have been crazy to declare just my
earnings with the annual tax return - I needed to declare my expenses too
as I was effectively running a company on the side so I founded my first
business entity which was a sole proprietorship.
A sole proprietorship enables one to declare not only their earnings but
also their expenses too. For example, If I use 25% of my home as an
office, I can declare 25% of my rent/mortgage. I use my Internet
connection for 90% of my work so I declare 90% of the cost as an expense.
By declaring your expenses, the amount of tax you pay is reduced as you
only pay tax on the profits.
If you make 1000 USD a year and don't declare your expenses then you will
pay tax on that 1000 USD. If you declare your expenses as being 800 USD
and assume that your total income was 1000 USD, then you only pay tax on
the difference which is 200 USD.
Anyway, by this time I knew that I wanted to have my own company later in
life and gave myself a goal of setting up a company by the age of 35. The
sole proprietorship was the beginning of everything and it was to be our
future. I called it "Mirai" [未来] which means "The Future."
Wrote up something simple about starting a sole proprietorship in Japan
in the Japan Proprietorship post. Most countries have the same system and
anybody should be able to start one - costs nothing to register and
anybody making money on the side would be crazy not to have one - unless
you like being taxed.
It is important to understand that this is not a form of tax evasion but
a legitimate way to declare your expenses which you need to generate
earnings. As far as I know there is no age limit to setting up a sole
proprietorship.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Microsoft
In 2005, I left Amazon. Amazon was a fantastic experience where I was
truly able to discover my strengths and weaknesses. Life is like building
a jigsaw puzzle. As one goes though life, they will find pieces of their
jigsaw puzzle and as they start to piece the puzzle together, they will
realize why events have perspired as they have and why they met who they
met. All these pieces are needed to be collected and pieced together to
get a better understanding of the bigger picture.
I had collected all the pieces that I could find at Amazon and it was
time to move on.
After Amazon, I spent some time helping some friends do some web
development before I went for an interview at Microsoft Japan.
One of the reasons why they hired me was because they had interest in
what I had done with dannychoo.com and how I had built an online
community. They hired me as a CGM Product Manager where I took
responsibility to manage Consumer Generated Media services like blogs,
favorites, maps and so on - this photo is of my first desk.
Working in a corporate company is great experience. Most companies have
internal politics and the ones in a corporate entity are the most
challenging to deal with.
A corporate company will (depending on your self initiative) help you
grow a great deal within a short amount of time. If you are going to join
a large company, you and the employees already have something in common -
you all work for the same company. Despite this, I see many people just
going about their own business and end up only working with people in
their own department.
Take the initiative to mingle with folks in all areas of the company.
An important thing about working in a corporate company (or any company
for that matter) is to understand what opportunities there are within the
company to help you grow. For example, you have been working in web
development department for a while and now want new challenges - maybe in
the supply chain? Are there positions available?
Also, never let yourself get too comfortable and fall into the Comfort
Zone as it can be difficult to get out. Always have a grasp of your
achievements and how much you want to grow within a company. If you feel
there is no more room to grow then it may be a prompt in life that there
are no more pieces of your life jigsaw puzzle to be collected where you
are - time to move on.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
To live one's passion means to be prepared to take a leap out of the
comfort zone which is certainly not an easy thing to do. But there is a
method which may help you do this easier. Take a look at yourself in the
mirror. Now think about all the things that you could be doing. You are
now looking at the one person preventing you from fulfilling your passion
- how do you feel about that?
Many folks "wait for the right timing" before making a leap but there is
never a right timing. What these folks are actually waiting for is a
"comfortable exit" and there is no such thing. Living a passion is not an
easy thing to come by and is only rewarded to those who take risks.
Taking a risk willy nilly could be a bad thing but there is such a thing
as a calculated risk.
The calculated risk that I took when I decided to leave Microsoft was
simple - the moolah that I had saved up from my years at Amazon and
Microsoft, the affiliate and the website development income was enough to
enable me to incorporate a company in 2007. A foreigner in Japan needs to
invest 5,000,000 yen in capital to be able to sponsor their own Business
Investor visa.
I had the moolah but didn't necessarily have a load of clients lined up
and didn't have a concrete vision at the time but knew I should start off
doing web consulting - but that was enough for me to take the leap.
Work eventually came from the network of contacts which I had been
building up over the years through attending tech meetups and connecting
to other web folks in Japan through social media. Ended up consulting for
companies like Disney Japan and Columbia Japan.
We used the room on the 3rd floor of our house as office space and this
is what it looked like at the time.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Living with Illness
As long as we live, we will encounter illness. Some of these illnesses
come and go like the common cold but some of us have to live with these
illnesses for the rest of our life. And then there are some of us who are
born with illnesses.
Not sure whether I was born with Asthma (both parents have it) but
remember carrying around an inhaler as a wee lad. Hardly use the inhaler
these days though. Also remember a time where I had my chest pumped to
get rid of some sort of fluid which accumulated in my lungs.
The illness that I wasn't born with however was Spinal Hernia which I was
diagnosed with back in 2008.
A few discs in my lower back region have ruptured and are sticking into
the nerves which extend from the spinal cord. This causes pain which goes
down to my legs. The pain used to come and go but for the past year its
been permanent. The discs in the spine wear away anyway but mine are
kinda already screwed ^^;
As you can see from my MRI scans above - most of the discs are dark in
color where they should be white. As the discs wear down, the spinal cord
starts to get affected which causes pain where in some cases it leads to
the inability to walk.
I was devastated when I was diagnosed with the illness and remember being
depressed about the prospect of not being able to walk one day. But then
after brooding about it for quite a while, I made the decision to just
keep living, working and playing as hard as I could until I maybe
eventually end up in a wheelchair. If I've only got a certain amount of
time left then I'd rather enjoy it instead of waste it being depressed.
I remain optimistic and am aware that not all Spinal Hernia leads to the
inability to walk and many folks with the illness don't experience pain
anymore after rehabilitation. My rehab however doesn't seem to work but
its not something I get depressed about anymore as i've learned to live
with the pain - but sneezing is a killer! I guess its like sailing a boat
with a damaged rudder - still sails though ^^
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Through continuing to share Japanese Pop Culture, many media folks in and
outside of Japan started to pick up on my photos and writings and contact
me for interviews. Was also invited to speak at conventions around the
world on the subject of Japanese Pop Culture or Consumer Generated Media.
Photo above snapped at Trend Day in Berlin back in 2008 where I was
talking about social media and explaining what Otaku is to an audience of
executive types.
Many folks mentioned that they like the photos I've taken but all I do is
press the button! Nikon seemed to think otherwise and asked me to be in
their commercial which featured some of my photos. Popular photo series
are the "A Week in Tokyo", "Places to visit in Japan" and the "Living in
Japan Guide".
I know exactly what it's like to be living outside of Japan and wanting
information about everything Japanese. Not only do I love sharing Japan
but also feel that its my duty to do so for fellow comrades who also have
a goal of living in Japan one day. My writings on Japan up until now can
be seen in the Japan category with the rest in the Japanese Pop Culture
category.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
What my company "Mirai" does
By 2009, I teamed up with fellow Brit engineer Chris Gaunt to continue
work on a platform that I started to develop many moons ago called Mirai
Gaia. Through my experience of having a bunch of different code for each
and every website that I made in the past, I knew that doing the same
thing was going to end up with us in a spot of bother which would require
a load of staff and money to maintain.
My vision for Mirai Gaia was to have a single platform that could do
everything from e-commerce to communities to publishing. This means that
the only difference between client A and client B's site are a bunch of
settings and some CSS and PHP templates.
However, things didn't go as smooth as I would have liked and before
Chris came along, we spent a load of moolah developing Mirai Gaia which
nearly left me bankrupt.
Apart from our own websites, we only had one client and in order to build
the companies profile, I did a lot of work for free for high profile
companies. While there wasn't much cash flowing into the company, I knew
that one day it would pay off and would only do so if I continued to
believe in what we were doing.
"Identify and live your passion and the rest will just follow - it always
does" is something that I would preach to myself when I got down in the
dumps and when I didn't know what to do, I did anything as "something
always leads to something. Nothing always leads to nothing."
I think there could be something about optimism which brings about good
fortune. After a while, we started to gain more clients and are now
working with anime, game and figure companies such as Good Smile Company,
Kadokawa, Bushiroad, King Records, Dentsu, Sega Sammy and Ascii Media
Works.
Our job is simple - to share Japanese culture with the world and provide
a bridge and means to do so. We use various media such as web, TV and
conferences. We also help Japanese companies expand their business
overseas which is another form of spreading Japanese culture. An example
of the work we've been doing of late can be seen in the Summary of 2010
post.
Ah, another thing I nearly forgot to mention is that we do character
development for companies like Sony. Our own mascot character is Mirai
Suenaga.
Other bits n pieces that we do are listed up in my profile page.
Business Japanese
While I don't actively study Japanese full time anymore, I'm still
learning new phrases on the job and always make a point of looking up a
word or asking the meaning when in conversation.
Being able to negotiate in Japanese without the need of a translator is
an absolute key to doing successful business in Japan. So many nuance and
feelings are lost in translation leading to lost opportunity and
misunderstandings. If you are running your own business then being able
to speak with your business partners directly also saves costs in many
ways.
If you have that tingling feeling that you will be running your own
business that will involve Japan in some way, I recommend to you remain
completely focused on your goal and continue to study Japanese with a
passion and just immerse yourself in the culture just like I did when I
was back in the UK.
I only recently learned from a linguistics professor that the method I
used to learn Japanese was called "Immersion" where one learns a language
in the environment of the target language. In most cases, Immersion means
to actually live in the country of the target language and study the
language there.
Given my situation in the UK, moving to Japan to study wasn't an option
for me at the time so I created what would be called a "Virtual
Immersion."
I plastered the walls at home in Japanese, had Japanese TV playing
whenever I was at home, read manga, listened to tape recordings of the TV
when I was out n about and mixed with Japanese folks at Axel, at work or
when we would get together.
There are so many things that you could be doing to immerse yourself in
Japanese and hope that some of the things that I did will inspire you to
think about how you can do something to fit into your daily workflow.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
The best thing about my job
The best thing about my job is that I get to meet folks from all over the
world and have mostly been able to do so through the communities that we
run and through social media tools like my Twitter and facebook.
This photo taken at last years Anime Expo together with comrades and you
can see more of our comrades around the world in posts tagged "meetup".
It also pleases me to know that through the web communities we run, many
comrades have befriended others who share the same passions.
The important thing is to keep on sharing your passions because by doing
so you will meet other folks who share the same interests - these new
friendships will enrich your lives with new friendships and opportunity -
just like it has done for me.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
My line of work requires me to meet new folks everyday from all walks of
life which makes this job so much fun ^o^ This photo snapped with some
high school students during their after class Kyudo activities which you
can read more about.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
One of the most happiest moments in my career was when the Japanese
government recognized my work and asked me to speak at one of their
conferences. Spoke along folks like brain scientist Ken Mogi and AKB48
producer Yasushi Akimoto.
Since then I've been working with the government on various projects.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
Sharing information about Japanese culture though the web and conferences
has it limitations. I wanted a visual medium outside of YouTube and came
up with the concept of a TV show which was to be aired not only on
Japanese TV but also across the world. The show was to be called Culture
Japan and would feature not only Japanese Pop Culture but also the more
traditional Japan too.
Was a new concept so looking for sponsors to cover production costs did
take a while but we got there in the end. We made a single pilot episode
which was aired in Japan on Tokyo MX TV in June 2010 and was also
broadcast across Asia on the Animax Network.
The pilot episode proved the concept worked and we managed to get
sponsors to cover production costs for a full season - thank you Aki
Takanori, Takaaki Kidani and AmiAmi!
Trailer for Season 1 of Culture Japan below and you can read more about
how it all started, how we made it and see all the shenanigans we got up
to during filming under the Culture Japan category. Folks who have a
Crunchyloll account can also watch the whole of Season 1.
Season 1 was warmly received and I'm in the middle of preparing to film
Season 2 which will not only be broadcast in Japan and Asia but across
the United States too. Am currently working to get it broadcast in more
continents around za warudo.
And for folks who have a wee bit of spare time on their hands can watch a
1 hour digest version of season 1 below.
How Discovering Japan Changed My Life
It's still Day One
For the previous fiscal year, the total gross income that my company
managed to earn was still less than my annual salary at Amazon or
Microsoft but why do I feel much more wealthier than before?
Wealth is relative to our values. Before I used to write about how
important money was to do what you want to do and buy want you want to
buy. I don't have much money but have learned how to fulfill these two
needs.
Just like many comrades that work in the anime field, I get most of the
stuff that I like and want for free as part of my work. But because I
also work in the tech and TV industry, I also get much of the equipment
that I need for work for free too ^^;
As for the "to do what you want to do" part - I'm already doing that and
have learned over the years that you do not need to have heaps of money
to do the same. As long as you have a computer and an Internet
connection, you are already setup with everything that you need to learn
and share and that's all I did - learn the tools and gain the skills that
I needed to share my passion for Japanese culture - and the rest just
followed.
It's still day one for me but what with all the new clients who came on
board within the past few months, the profit and loss sheet for the next
fiscal year is on target to look much better than before. The extra
income will enable us to invest in growing the business and perhaps I'll
have a wee bit more time to watch anime or play some Valkyria Chronicles
3 ^^;
For the foreseeable future, I want to continue to share my passion for
Japanese culture. Discovering Japan has been the best thing that's
happened to me. Certainly wouldn't have met my wife if it wasn't for the
interest in Japanese culture.
I know that many of you share the same passion as I do for Japan and hope
that the experiences and leanings that I've shared in this post will be
of some use to you as you journey to your destination.
Your journey wont always been plain sailing but should not be deterred
when you come across rough seas. Tackle those storms head on and you will
be a much wiser and stronger person after the storm - and there is always
an after-the-storm where the seas are calm and skies are clear.
Monday
What day of the week do you dislike the most?
I ask folks this question from time to time and more often than not, the
reply is usually "Monday."
When asked the reason, most would say "because I have to go back to work
or school."
Typical answer yet interesting. If one dislikes Monday because of school
or work then why does one continue to go back to work or school? I
believe that folks like this are probably in the wrong job or studying
the wrong course and probably should look for something that enables them
to enjoy Mondays - and every other day for that matter. Those who
genuinely enjoy work or school probably wont give "Work or School" as the
reasons they dislike Monday.
Quality Not Quantity
I watched an extremely moving documentary about a girl called Ashley who
had a medical condition called Progeria where her body aged 13 times
faster than a normal human being. The condition is said to affect 1 in 8
million newborns.
A person with the condition normally dies at the age of 13. She just had
her 14th birthday and she knew that she was going to die any day. She
said that she was prepared to die and that she had lead a great life up
until now - it was all about her experiences, the friends she was able to
meet and being happy. Living a longer life was not important. The quality
of life over quantity was what mattered.
Death Is A Reality
We watch the news and see people dying left right and center - people
being stabbed, run over or just plain dying in everyday accidents. Many
folks who see/read about others dying don't usually think much about it -
and the folks who died probably didn't think too much about it either.
I was talking to my estate agent at the time we purchased our house - I
asked him how I should go about writing my will - he looked at me as if I
started to grow horns and said that people don't usually write their will
until they are about 60. I was thinking to myself "apart from being a
liar, this estate agent is an idiot too."
This may seem the obvious but the thing is, none of us have been given a
guarantee that we are going to live until we are golden. One could live
in the "safest" part of the world, be healthy and still have their life
cut short by a knife, bullet or drunken driver. None of us know when we
are going to die but there is one thing that we do know for sure - we all
will die someday - could be in another 30 years time, could be tomorrow
morning. Death is a reality that we must all understand - its the final
piece of our jigsaw puzzle that we all will collect.
The Jigsaw Puzzle
Life is a jigsaw puzzle. You don't know whats going to go where, you
don't know where the pieces are but you do know that you need to keep
looking for the pieces and figure out where they go. All events that
happen to you is a piece of your puzzle. if you are stuck in a rut at
school or work and keep asking yourself the "what if" question then its a
sign telling you that there are no more pieces of the puzzle to be found
where you are.
Time's nearly up
Given today's technology, one can put wo/man on the moon, split the atom
and even replace the keyboard with a single wheel. But what humans have
not figured out is how to sell bottles of time on the shelf. Just imagine
- you walk into a store and say "Gimme the usual bottle of an hour."
Time is not on your side - its a friend for the duration for life but it
never sides with you - never be under the assumption that time will favor
you.
Taking the leap from safe comfortable steady ground into an unknown void
is not something that comes easily. Humans basic instinct is to protect
itself and places priority on food and shelter and taking risks could
affect these necessities.
But life is not just about being comfortable - its about living your
passion.
You can spend most of your life doing something you dislike to bring in
the money which pays the bills which enables you to go back to work
another day to bring in the money which pays the bills which enables you
to go back to work another day to bring in the money which pays the bills
which enables you to go back to work another day to bring in the money
which pays the bills...
Life is short. One may not appreciate just how short it is while we are
young but really start to understand as we get older. I'm in my late 30's
now and am under no illusion whatsoever that I'm going to die at old age
- I could die anytime like any of us. I want to ensure that I died while
living a life doing what I love most. Don't want to live forever and am
happy with the time I've been given - will make sure I make the most of
the rest of my life and I hope you do too.
As for me - hopefully you can tell that I just love Mondays ^^
