We dont have nail clippers in the UK.

[IparryU]

Did they really have to stay in the room and watch me undress and escort me to the bathroom every single time i needed to go, for 4 weeks on site?

Nope didnt need to but they probably took it in turns to do it for the sheer perve factor. Maybe there was even a roster of volunteers. Are you cute?

If overfed wino's are considered cute, then yes.

you mexican?

[Taro Toporific]

...What really annoyed me was that any attempt to "personalise" my attire was quickly dealt with. Being a bit of a rebel, I put my hat on backwards, until somebody kindly corrected it for me. I then turned my collar up, but once again i quickly felt someones hands on my person to correct my foolish ways...

When I worked at Hitachi, I used to always have fun with their dorky uniforms. I used to wear the factory workers' gray cloth cap with my businesses suit at the headquarters. And if cute OL* complimented my necktie, I would make her swap her floppy uniform bow-tie with mine for the day.

Office-Uniform-2012.jpg

blue-flower-bow-tie.jpg

*Has anybody else noticed that the term OL doesn't
show up in Japanese news articles anymore?

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

*Has anybody else noticed that the term OL doesn't
show up in Japanese news articles anymore?

It was "outlawed" (as were obligatory uniforms) when revisions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Law came into effect in, I think, 2006 or thereabouts.

[Coligny]

*Has anybody else noticed that the term OL doesn't
show up in Japanese news articles anymore?

It was "outlawed" (as were obligatory uniforms) when revisions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Law came into effect in, I think, 2006 or thereabouts.

So now how are they supposed to be called ?

Just "bitch"
or SD (Spunk Dumpster)

In France the term is "le Yucca" like the tree since they also only have decorative purprose...

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

So now how are they supposed to be called ?

Wherever possible, use gender-free terms...for example, nurse changed from kangofu （看護婦）and kangoshi （看護士）to kangoshi（看護師）.

OL thus became office worker, jimuin (事務員), but if the gender absolutely had to be specified, it became female office worker, josei jimuin (女性事務員).

Like political correctness everywhere, it's fucking meaningless. Although OL or gaijin may no longer be referred to in polite company, the reality is that such people remain OL and gaijin, though worse in a way because thanks to well-meaning but imbecilic desk jockeys, they now become unmentionable, too.

[Papa-Lazarou]

I have just been working in Tokyo for a month and was wondering if my experience working with a traditional Japanese company was in any way common?

The 75 year old boss of the company knew more about my home country than i do, even though he has never been there. For some reason he felt duty bound to tell me "facts" about the UK a regular intervals. Every single one of them was flat out wrong and each more ludicrous than the next. The 1st week started off with crime etc but by the 4th week it just got bizarre. During 1 meeting he pulled out this incredible steel object from his pocket and began to explain what it was, apparently we do not have nail clippers in the UK, that's a fact. I explained that this was not true, but I was over ruled, I was mistaken, you do not have these in the UK.

Is this a "face" thing then? Is this how the Japanese work?

Just tell him with a BIG smile on your face that you Brits don't have nail clippers because you don't have nails. It was only after you started to eat the excellent Japanese food that they started to grow on you.

He will get the point.

And if he is not too much of a moron, he will appreciate the humor.

Aahhh, reminds me of the time I just arrived in Japan two decades ago when my boss taught me that the tap water in Holland was not drinkable, because he had that experience when visiting Spain...

Gave me a lot of stress at the time, but I should have told him that in Holland no water comes out of taps, only beer, because we are a rich country. Alcoholic as he was, he would have appreciated that one.

To be fair, he knew his stuff. He knew every GoGo, beerbar, massage parlour and wanking booth in town. I could not fault him at all.

Is it normal to discuss visiting prostitutes with strangers in Japan?

[Russell]

Only if those strangers are gaijin...

[cstaylor]

Probably something like this...

Dude, where's his robe?

[cstaylor]

The systems i reviewed were the most ridiculous things ive ever seen. Whereas outside of Japan, most companies use 3 firewalls and maybe 8 servers, these guys were using 12 firewalls and 30 odd servers to do the same thing.

Hint: are the firewalls and servers from the same company, like Hitachi or Fujitsu? If so, your company got rolled big-time, and 10-to-1 nobody in your company has the admin passwords for those firewalls.

protip to working IT in Japan: Never recommend suggestions unless you want to own any problems that will come afterwards. Who knows what boneheaded network rules those "consultants" put in place when they jerry-rigged that monstrosity.

And I thought you pomes lacked dentists, not nail clippers...

[Coligny]

The systems i reviewed were the most ridiculous things ive ever seen. Whereas outside of Japan, most companies use 3 firewalls and maybe 8 servers, these guys were using 12 firewalls and 30 odd servers to do the same thing.

Hint: are the firewalls and servers from the same company, like Hitachi or Fujitsu? If so, your company got rolled big-time, and 10-to-1 nobody in your company has the admin passwords for those firewalls.

protip to working IT in Japan: Never recommend suggestions unless you want to own any problems that will come afterwards. Who knows what boneheaded network rules those "consultants" put in place when they jerry-rigged that monstrosity.

And I thought you pomes lacked dentists, not nail clippers...

The "more is betta" school of clueless consulting...

We had a projectmanager subcontractor who wrote (end of the 90') that every workstation had to run at least 2 antivirus software to be allowed to be be connected to the newly installed network...
Mac OS9, Win 95/98/NT4, even the unix behemoth... Finally it was agreed to buy the licenses anyway but only install what was reasonable... and nothing on computer used to run lab equipment...

(it was one of those supersmart ploy to get rid of Macs, because one higher up fuckhead in the administration didn't like them and could push more consultancy billing if the park unified to win/nt with the according amount of backshish)

[cstaylor]

The "more is betta" school of clueless consulting...

In this case I think the customer (Papa's company) was the clueless one. Most of these young sales guys working for the big IT shops are clever enough to know what buttons to push during the sales cycle:
- "Isolation of responsibility" = more servers/firewalls
- "Independent administration" = more server/firewalls
- "Cloud ready" = more servers/firewalls

Commissions galore and now each visit to the customer means they touch more servers, which means more billables. The CEO gets to brag about his huge server farm, and Papa's team pulls their hair out trying to wrangle 30+ servers into a manageable network.

[Papa-Lazarou]

The systems i reviewed were the most ridiculous things ive ever seen. Whereas outside of Japan, most companies use 3 firewalls and maybe 8 servers, these guys were using 12 firewalls and 30 odd servers to do the same thing.

Hint: are the firewalls and servers from the same company, like Hitachi or Fujitsu? If so, your company got rolled big-time, and 10-to-1 nobody in your company has the admin passwords for those firewalls.

protip to working IT in Japan: Never recommend suggestions unless you want to own any problems that will come afterwards. Who knows what boneheaded network rules those "consultants" put in place when they jerry-rigged that monstrosity.

And I thought you pomes lacked dentists, not nail clippers...

I asked to check the config of a L2 switch they had.

"hmmmm i think its not possible"

Ok lets try and telnet to the IP address

"hmmmmmm, seeems like we can, but we dont know the password, its a Japanese switch"

Try username 'admin' password 'admin'

"hmmmmmmm i think it will not work"

Just fucking try it

Of course this was the login.

Yamaha switch from 1999.

Never patched.

[Papa-Lazarou]

The systems i reviewed were the most ridiculous things ive ever seen. Whereas outside of Japan, most companies use 3 firewalls and maybe 8 servers, these guys were using 12 firewalls and 30 odd servers to do the same thing.

Hint: are the firewalls and servers from the same company, like Hitachi or Fujitsu? If so, your company got rolled big-time, and 10-to-1 nobody in your company has the admin passwords for those firewalls.

protip to working IT in Japan: Never recommend suggestions unless you want to own any problems that will come afterwards. Who knows what boneheaded network rules those "consultants" put in place when they jerry-rigged that monstrosity.

And I thought you pomes lacked dentists, not nail clippers...

The "more is betta" school of clueless consulting...

We had a projectmanager subcontractor who wrote (end of the 90') that every workstation had to run at least 2 antivirus software to be allowed to be be connected to the newly installed network...

HA!
There are PCI DSS QSA's earning $3000 a day who insist that all mainframes must run antivirus software.

Even if such things do not exist.

[Coligny]

Yamaha switch from 1999.

Never patched.

Were they like NEC switches ?

i/e Cisco switches with another sticker on front and bottom...