Business as Unusual

In other realms, there is a massive communication blitz in the making claiming that here in the Kanto area, it is "Business as usual". It is spearheaded by foreign concerns that have good reasons to stage a communication blitzkrieg, a propaganda powwow : they are in need not only for business continuity and recovery, but also with some for trust recovery and rebuilding. Yes, today's sky in Tokyo is a (windy) blue tempest. But calling the situation Business as Usual is lame, to quote it mildly. You have to face it instead : it is not that business has stopped, it is business as unusual. Shops are often dimmed as they take part in the national call to save electricity. The results are dismal : a dim shop is a closed shop. So they have staff outside, standing and making noise, appealing to the passersby. A rotating lamp of some taxi like LED signs set outside meaning "yes we are open" will appear sooner than later.

It is not business as usual, otherwise the newspaper would not be awash with BCP stories, those who did good, those who did really bad, especially because they had no BCP. I queried the net for hints at BCP for professional independents and found a small choice of lame, superficial cool articles that adorns the sites and blogs focusing on freelancing. Why do they so often make freelancing sound lacking seriousness. Why is seriousness not cool? Anyway, we will be discussing and try not be lame about BCP for independent professionals next month at the monthly meeting of the professional network Freelance France Japon here.

In the meantime, I wrote down an sent a message to all and sundry clients, past, current and maybe future about the state of Business as Unusual, a calling of arms I never did before (of course) besides the season greetings. Does it sound lame? I don't know and would appreciate feedback although there is no way to betterize it for this time, until the next big one.

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Dear Clients and Friends,

Thank you very much for so many caring messages following the
11.03.2011 devastating earthquake and tsunami here. We are lucky to
have been living in Tokyo where the jolt was fabulously frightening
but generated few casualties. Everyone around has a story of having
seen buildings jolting like jelly. Everyone has stories of having
walked X hours back to home, X being a matter between 2 to 8 hours or
more, because trains and subways came to a halt.

Then the media frenzy crashed in. One newspaper title read "Japan is
destroyed", whereas it should have read : "Tohoku region is crushed",
that is the northern part of the main Japanese island. The fact is
that Tohoku, especially the sea side facing the Pacific Ocean, is a
mangled mess. But Tokyo and Western side of the country down to
Okinawa, but also Hokkaido way up in the North are not crushed.


Some advices and commentaries.

Business is bruised but back. Most trains and subways in Tokyo are
running at 80 to 90% of standard schedule. Many now runs at 100%.
Shinkansen fast train to Osaka and further destinations South never
stopped running. Most Tokyo business districts are free of planned
power cut.

If you are back planning your next business trip to Tokyo and most
parts of Japan, you are welcome. I would advise to extra check
information about issues being cleared up pretty fast. I can help with
that.  In remote areas or even outskirts of Tokyo, gasoline may still
be an issue but things are quickly catching up. Bring your disposable
batteries with you as those are still very scarce right now. Water is
an issue at the moment if you extra fret about Sievers. Based on
international standards and faith that information is not manipulated,
there is no fear, as of today. But there is concern.

Bring your encouragements and warm support to your clients, prospects
and partners. If you are still procrastinating about coming, at least
send encouraging messages and pledge of standing by them. Getting
involved with donations, despite the fact that Japan is still a rich,
advanced and highly organized country, is a valuable investment in
trust, or trust recovery management.

I spent three days as a volunteer interpreter around Sendai city with
the French international rescue team of more than 100 firefighters.
This was not moved by any calculation motives of course, just by the
will to do something to help. So many people including outside Japan
want to "do something for Japan". Now safely back in Tokyo, and while
not bragging about having been there and seen what you saw on TV, this
small amount of volunteering time has had tremendous effect on my
Japanese business partners. The confusion and thanks are overflowing.

Now, the conclusion is this :

- I am in Tokyo and never moved except for a short stint in Tohoku.
- I am open for business.

I provide the usual but also extended services related to
communication that are crucial due to the circumstances:

- Interpretation in situ and remote (meetings through phone,
videoconference, etc. If your Japanese partners are not used to these
tools - so many are not! -  I will set them up).
- Business and Trust Recovery conscious interpretation and liaison
with your partners, clients and prospects. It is not time for
interpretation as usual.
- Agency for remote business and trust recovery action when you are
not ready to visit here. I act as your trustee envoy, go and visit the
people you can't meet face to face, massage your message by applying
the necessary vocal redundancy, scoop worries and concerns from them
and transmit these back to you in more details than a standard direct
exchange of emails.

Communication that is caring, minute, sustained, humble, warm and
trust building (or rebuilding) is key. I can help on all these
dimensions.

One last thing : please forward this mail to businesses, big and
small, you deem potentially interested by my services in Japan.

Best regards.

Signing clothes, increasing visibility, being put to use

Police, firefighters, ministers and agencies staff all had some clear markings on their clothes, usually the back of the overcoat, telling what they were and giving them authority. We, a bunch of volunteers had none, except a small paper badges in plastic hanging from the neck. I am looking now in Tokyo for services to mark some essential overcoat I might be using again, to tell the world around my role, increase visibility that would lead to a better usage of services in situ interpreters can offer granted they are identified as interpreters.

Fingers as

Although and unfortunately too brief, the stay in Sendai with a rescue team has shown a few obvious, nay, trite things I want to list up here.

- There is no note, no note taking, in windy, at times snowing environment, forget everything about note taking.

- But there is mind note taking for sure. How to take notes with fingers, a future book.

- Is helping the talker better formulate a question the role of the interpreter? I dare say yes. Example.

- Can you provide us with protective sheets?
- Yes, maybe. How many do you need?
- How many do you have have?
 Interpreter suggestion to talker : tell him how many you need, minimum and best situation

This refocusing suggestion - none was rejected by any side - I found essential for the sake of dialog efficiency.

- Rescuers asked a lot, really a lot of questions of any kind about "this country", "these people". You need to have answers, and it doesn't come naturally. Living here is simply not a competence. 

- Rescuers have a mood, a dynamism of their own. I also met with Korean rescuers. There were all immensely sympathetic, caring, positive. It is a good and mentally precious thing to adopt there demeanor if you are somewhat a shy guy. I am but acted as they did and it helped at many levels.  

Refugee in Tokyo

Thank you very much Unprofessional Translator for profusely citing me in your latest post and the support it means.  I am back from Sendai where I had a sort of "baptême de feu" of interpretation at war, that is, after the war, on the battle ground smashed and tormented as hell, but devoid of the liquid enemy that pummeled the outskirt of Sendai along the coast, a coast that is flat and deep. Sendai itself is seemingly lightly bruised. The periphery is like the pictures, like the newsreels I never watch on purpose, only you as the viewer look at it from inside the picture. I was one of the group of volunteer interpreters who raised hands when the news came to willingly assist the French professional rescue team that visited Japan, a visit too brief that ended after 48 hours in situ by a tactical retreat to the northern part of Japan to end up air lifted to their country of origin [Correction, March 18th : it seems that they are still in Aomori]. We, on our side headed back south to take refuge in Tokyo. I was the only one professional interpreter (still unsure about the validity of the qualitative) while others were unprofessional. The job was not extensive as the interaction with local authorities was rather short, in situ. I won't go deeper into the characteristics of the place. Suffice to say that the awfulness of the torn and crushed places is but one aspect of how the lifeline of a whole region has been put to its knees, even if it doesn't show at first sight. A queue of hundreds of private cars waiting in the middle of the night for the potential opening of a gas station within 8 hours of more was the impressive visual number one. Besides that, this is Japan and you have to go deeper into despair to start seeing the worst part of humanity popping up.

Therefore, I won't go into the details and won't do the journalistic stuff. I received close to a dozen of emails mostly but also phone calls begging for a fixer to the region, or me giving two minutes of my own "testimony" on the situation. The best defense to the media crap and the awful tendency to ask some local national, not the locals, about how ugly feels ugly was to say no to all. I did my own on the spot interviewing by request of the rescue team heads, calling stunned visitors of void or crushed and mangled spots that was earlier called home. I am sorry to say that it was not the most difficult side to start a conversation, all Japanese people met everywhere showing sorrow and bowing at the circumstances that have been making so many foreign teams looking for lives and corpses in the muddy dangerous rubles. Keeping countenance, showing empathy while containing emotion at bay was the delicate balancing issue. One of the unprofessional interpreter, a lawyer, told me that he escaped the duty of talking with locals and would have not been able out of fear to speak with people alive about their grieves, death of family members or friends. One young lady when asked about whether she knew personally someone close by that was still unaccounted for showed fear and sorrow and begging the Japanese way - restricted expression of despair - about a girl friend of her, 21, who had lived on the opposite side of a canal she was pointing at. The location was out of the district allocated by the local authorities to the team so they would not meet expectation to go there and try and find that anonymous 21 year old, granted she was to be found inside the empty plot that now was a vanished house. Showing compassion the local way, which differs to the way the rescue team's culture set the mood in such situation, that is, adapting words and body expressions, adding much more to the original inquiry, was the most challenging, unprepared side of the experience. Enough with it. I am back in Tokyo, "where there is nobody in the streets" as I read a few hours ago from the written words of a local correspondent of a major French daily who has been taking refuge in Kyoto, 500 km from here. I don't see any ghost city from my vista here in Tokyo. Was he referring to the same place?

Going North

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. A few things happened and are still underway in Japan. If you read French, you will understand that the picture refers to the article intro, stating that French nationals living in the Tokyo region are invited to leave. A few minutes later, they modified the title and the story - thanks to the daily Libération - but "le mal est fait". Tokyo is not like this, at least for this time.

We don't watch TV so we are safe of redundancy, or call it loop syndrome. But the reading of personal messages over the radio asking for specific people whereabouts does not leave you untouched. 

In the meantime, all work has vanished or is about to thin out in the atmosphere like a deadly cloud. The only possible work so far is to accompany foreign TV crews. They want to go North. They are scrambling to find "language helpers". Some dare ask for interpreters.