Hello everyone.
This is a post with the same content and timing as
the Japanese blog (←click).
Finally, September has come.
While September is a happy month for my birthday, it is also a bit nerve-wracking for business.
Students may be a little nervous with the start of a new semester, but I hope that you can get through it with a little less fuss at first.
Typhoon No. 10, what a way to move!
Many weather forecasters may say “global warming” because that is what they are allowed to appear on TV, but their analysis is too easy.
It is true that sea water temperatures in the seas around Japan have been higher recently, but there are no statistics showing that the number and strength of typhoons have increased compared to the past when the sea water temperatures were lower.
In any case, I would like to express my deepest sympathies to those who have suffered from the heavy rainfall and other damages.
Last Sunday, I was not able to do the 2-hour walk wearing a total of 6.5 kg of weights due to circumstances, but I did it today.
It was cloudy and the temperature was not too high, so I thought it would be easy, but it was not at all.
The humidity brought by the typhoon was so strong that the sweat I had worked up did not evaporate at all. It felt like heat was trapped inside my body.
I would rather have sunny days with high temperatures so that the sweat would evaporate.
I used to participate in a famous citizen's marathon event in summer called “Tomisato Watermelon Road Race,” and I remember well that it was very dangerous on cloudy days.
On cloudy and humid days, we should be more careful about heat stroke.
Until 15 years ago, I often went to Europe and the United States on business trips.
Back then, I often felt that Westerners would place more importance than Japanese on “person-to-person” flesh-and-blood relationships as far as possible when it comes to money exchanges.
Whether it was cash or credit, there was a definite human communication between the payer and the receiver. In other words, the important thing is not to rely on machines.
A symbolic example of this is when I was having a drink at a bar and I pull a crumpled one-dollar bill out of my pocket and hand it to the bartender to get another beer.
I wonder how it is done now.
I prefer the Western way of doing this.
I've always thought I was good at self-checkouts in supermarkets, but recently there have been many different styles that have appeared and I am often confusing, and the displays are sometimes too small to read the text.
Supermarkets that have always been human-operated checkout centers are suddenly switching to self-checkouts in 90% of registers. This may be going a bit too far.
The home improvement retailer Comeri recently converted 90% of its ergisters to self-checkout.
I have a smart phone membership card, so self-checkout is a hassle. I think this is a bit excessive.
As expected, there are many customers who don't know how to do it, and a dedicated “instructor” is always on duty. This is a complete reversal of the original plan.
Self-pay machines at 7-Eleven and Yamaya also turn heads.
When a customer pays, the clerk just stands there looking embarrassed.
It would be faster to hand over the money to the clerk. What in the world is the self-service payment machine for?
Yamaya's payment machines are small, clumsy, and difficult to understand. Customers are always confused because it is difficult to use, so the clerk is always asking them to press ****.
I feel that if that's the case, you should do it yourself.
Whether it is Seven or Yamaya, the clerk sometimes says, “If you like, I can put them in your bag. but this does not seem to be the default.
I believe it is a personal decision made by the clerk who cannot bear it in remorse.
In conclusion, unless the clerk does the bagging, the total time will be shorter with the old method. Or, even if they do, the old method may be shorter.
This year we seem to be able to catch a little more saury, so I just bought some grilled saury at the supermarket and am eating it right now. With sake.
It's not as fat as it used to be, but it's delicious!
Well, I've preface this article too long.
Japan now has more holidays than any other countries in the world.
Just for long vacations, we have the New Year holidays, Golden Week, summer vacation, and Silver Week (though not this year).
And there are three consecutive holidays every month.
And the problem is that many Japanese, especially large and medium-sized companies, take these holidays all at the same time.
And since it is a three-day holiday every month, they often take another day of paid vacation while they are at it.
For those of us who work in small businesses and for us sole proprietors, there is nothing more annoying than the parade of these holidays.
To put it bluntly, it's a meal-trap.
The core of the problem is not so much that the holidays are too many, but that they cause business to stagnate.
Not just stagnant, but fragmented.
Japanese people often hear the phrases “by the end of the year,” “before the Bon Festival,” “at the beginning of the year,” “after the Bon Festival,” and so on.
It is a good thing to summarize and review our business by breaking down the milestones. However, it is a big problem that most Japanese people make a break at exactly the same time, and regardless of the circumstances of each business.
Large and medium-sized companies are likely to have some strength and continue to do reasonably stable business, so they will not be fatally damaged immediately even if they all break off at the same time during the above-mentioned holidays.
And since salaried workers in large and medium-sized companies receive a certain salary regardless of such factors, it would be difficult for them to notice the nature of the problem.
More to the point, it is not just a matter of business being split up all together.
In the Bon vacation, for example, the week immediately before the Bon vacation is a slow-down period for the break, and the week after the Bon vacation is a slow pace, like a warm-up period for business to resume.
In other words, the three-week period, including the week before and after the Bon vacation, is a period of stagnation.
Not only is there stagnation, but the organic bridge to business resumption is lost, and business resumes only on each person's own terms, in a three-way process.
We do this many times a year.
Moreover, a similar thing happens on a small scale even during the three (or four) consecutive holidays each month.
If they do this, it is no wonder GDP has not increased for 30 years.
In the past, people were quite free to take their summer vacation at any time of the year.
Now, however, they all take their vacations in the same week. This is a big problem.
In fact, it would be best to reduce the number of national holidays and spread out the time off according to the convenience of each individual.
However, it would not be easy to abolish holidays.
At the very least, they should be rotated so as to break the habit of taking long periods of time off all together, so that business does not stagnate.
It is good for individuals to take long periods of time off, and we should try to strike a balance between that and not letting business stagnate as a whole.
