Bodhi Bum

Well, I’ve just got to say that this last week has got to be the one of the strangest weeks on record for me. Not for the number of countries I’ve touched down in (which was 4 - Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, China) which isn’t all that unusual for me. And not for the actual work (which was pretty standard one-day audits). It’s just one of those times when you suddenly find yourself looking around with a moment of clarity and thinking, how the hell did I get here?

That moment for me was Monday morning, 9:55am, fresh off the red-eye in from Singapore, half asleep in wrinkled dress clothes, and finding myself bowing stupidly and repeatedly to 12 Japanese businessmen in $1,000 designer suits in the company boardroom who all seem to be playing how low can you go as they present me their business cards. Japanese business men don’t just bow once, they kind of bob up and down as they hold out their cards to you at arms length like they are offering up a gift to the Gods. My first mistake was bowing lower than him, and the poor guy started a game of Limbo, bobbing up and down until he was practically on his knees with staring down at the ground. Now that truly does something for the ego when I’m standing in wrinkled dress pants and shirt, no tie and no suit jacket, and these guys are wearing more money than I’m going to make on this whole contract and bowing to me like I’m the Emperor of Japan. However, my crowning moment was when everyone finally had a chance to give me their business card and sit down, I smoothly pull my laptop out of my bag and out comes my socks and underwear along with it. Twelve Japanese businessmen, me, and my underwear on the boardroom table. I think that’s when the epiphany hit. What the hell and am I doing here?

That really was a strange, strange day. On a normal audit, you go to the site, meet the manager in charge, and get stuck in some out of the way room to do your work. But not in Japan. No way. I should have clued in when my contact who picked me up at Yokohama City Airport Terminal told me that this company was a very traditional Japanese company. Nothing could have prepared me


for that though. I figured that the 12 Japanese businessmen who put on such a formal spectacle of greeting would go their own way while I got down to doing the audit. But no chance. When I ask to begin the walkthrough of the site, they all dutifully rise and off we go, all 13 of us, traipsing through the building. Now many times I wish I had a camera, but this was something truly special and worthy of saving for posterity. There’s me with 12 Japanese suits trailing behind like the Pied Piper. Every time I come to a door and turn around, they all stop and bow and won’t move or stand up until I’ve gone through. I swear I could have stood there for an hour and not walked through the door and they would not have budged an inch or looked up. So for almost two hours me and my band of merry Suits made our way through the building while I asked the questions, and waited while they did their best to translate into semi-coherent English. But in all fairness, even though the Japanese seem to be space-aliens in terms of the amount of formality and ritual they go through, I’ve gotta say that no one even comes close to these people in terms of efficiency and design.

You should have seen this building. It was straight out of a sci-fi movie. It was built three years ago and houses the data centres for companies all around the Tokyo area. The building is pure minimalist and totally automated. The whole thing is run by a mainframe that actually talks to and recognizes all the employees by sight and speech patterns. I forgot to swipe my visitors badge at one of the doors and at the next one it actually got angry with me and started jabbering away in angry sounding Japanese and wouldn’t let me through. But after twenty minutes of being there I started to wonder why they even sent me there to do the audit. This place was audit proof. Everything I asked for, two or three of them would go scurrying away and be back in two minutes with the documents copied and indexed. I’m used to getting some lame excuse and vague promise to get back to you. But overall it was a little much and to be honest it was more than a little intimidating being faced down by a horde of business men who despite bowing to you in an embarrassing show of respect, you know that it is purely a cultural ritual and you can’t help but wonder what they really think of this completely out of place foreigner they’ve been told to clear their schedules for. By the time it was over I was more than glad to get the hell out of there.

But the show going was even better than the coming. They lined up all at the front door and started their bouncing bows again and didn’t stop until I was out the door and in the car. Or so I thought. When I turned around a good full minute after we left the parking lot and were pulling out onto the highway I looked back and there they all were, still lined up and still bowing away. For all I know there still there at it. Strange, strange day.

But the fun wasn’t over yet, even though I seriously needed some sleep. My colleague drove me into Tokyo and dropped me off at the Hilton in Shinjuku. I dropped my stuff off and headed right back out to find my way on the subway to the next audit site in Tokyo. Of course I didn’t have any cash so I had to find an ATM. No problem there, as there’s dozens of ATM’s in Shinjuku station. Only problem is they only take Japanese cards. So after two hours of running around the station and trying every bank in the area, I finally grab a cab back to the hotel and get directed to the Post Office of all places which has an internation ATM. That problem solved, so I manage to get to the next audit site and complete that with no issues.

Now that last time I stayed in Tokyo was just over a year ago when I was here on my own. It was my first time here and I stayed in the Shinjuku area at that time as well. But my accommodation was a little more modest as all I could afford was to live in a Capsule Hotel. Now it was an experience, but one I don’t quite want to repeat ever again. This time I was staying in the Hilton International and at $195 USD a night a little bit of a step up on the social ladder. My room was on the 32nd floor and as I opened my window and looked out over the Tokyo skyline at night it was an exact duplicate scene out of Lost in Translation. It’s funny how sometimes life mirrors the movies, but you don’t get any closer than that. The whole feeling of living in a big lonely hotel in a big lonely city, just that kind of twinge of sadness that comes across so well in the movie is a really strange experience to so accurately come across almost like déjà vu your own life.


I couldn’t resist getting up late and going down to the bar (unfortunately, this hotel’s bar was one the ground floor and not the top) for a drink. Sitting there alone sipping on my Suntory,… er, I mean my JD and coke and listening to the red hair (no joke) lounge singer was a little too strange so I just went to bed. I swear I got a smile from the singer as I was walking out of the bar, but as I hadn’t slept in 48 hours I wasn’t about to play the Bill Murray pick up act.

The next day I worked from the hotel room and caught my flight out to Shanghai at 6:30pm.