Yesterday after work a few of my students from last term dropped by the classroom to chat. I have been lucky to have visits from quite a few of my ex-students this term, and it has made the afternoons a lot more lively than they were before. Today’s students wanted to talk about their recent business trips, as well as try to get some inside information on some of their coworkers who are taking my class now. We went over to the break room and talked out in the open in English, and they were really enjoying it.
Between classes I was surfing the web and found this interesting article on a large corporation in Japan called Rakuten that has made it a policy to conduct all formal meetings in English. Even if all participants happen to be Japanese, they will do the meeting in English. As the article mentions, it is part of their strategy for overseas expansion, and they are also hiring a lot of non-Japanese both inside and outside Japan to help with this expansion. This isn’t new in Japan – other big companies also have made English the language of business within the company (i.e. Nissan) but this is the first time I’ve seen it in the implementation stage. I wish I could be a fly on the wall during their first meeting in English.
It seems my complaining about the heat brought about some change – today the rain came, and it looks like it will be here a while. Ick. But I still had an iced coffee this morning out of protest.
