JAPN303: Japanese Business
Course Description:
This course develops functional use of Japanese language for various types of situations and events that occur in the daily business environment. The types of situations include formal introductions, basic business rules, business etiquette, honorifics, and how to write business documents and email. It also presents and expands on cultural perspectives and concepts as they impact the business world. Taught in Japanese. (Credit/No Credit Available) (Prereq: JAPN 202 or JAPN 300)
How It Connects:
MLO 1.1:
This course was a major change for me in coming back from Japan. It was the first course I had at CSUMB that was taught entirely in Japanese, with little to no English support. Now, coming back from Japan, I was used to the immersion-like classroom but this one was different in that the material was focused on one theme: the world of Japanese Business. At first, the adjustment was a little difficult. However, my teacher was insistent on making sure that we could understand the concepts, even explained in Japanese. In each class, we were challenged to communicate with each other only in Japanese, and in keigo specifically. We learned the difference between talking to someone at work in a professional setting and talking to them outside of work as friends. I know my Japanese was rarely perfect, but it had reached the point that I was able to create sentences and concepts with the collective information I have and build into coherent sentences. At the end of the semester, we broke into groups and created a movie project designed to show the difference between good office behavior and bad office behavior. (Here's the link to the script and the final video).
MLO 1.2:
Although this was not immediately designed to be a comparative course, it was more of an automatic reaction to compare Japanese business practices with American practices: due to the nature of Japanese business practices, this included becoming highly aware of how I interacted with people, what I said, how I said it, and what answers I received in response. For instance, the idea of kushoun kotoba, or 'cushion words' was, at first, a rather difficult concept to put into practice. While I fully agree with the idea of politely letting someone down, the Japanese practice seemed excessive in its use of soft language. Very often, in class, when simulating conversations, I would forget that I needed to soften my language until the words were already out of my mouth. It took major conditioning for me to finally put the words to practice, but by the end of the semester, I managed it. As a joke though, my character in our final video has trouble with polite language.
This course develops functional use of Japanese language for various types of situations and events that occur in the daily business environment. The types of situations include formal introductions, basic business rules, business etiquette, honorifics, and how to write business documents and email. It also presents and expands on cultural perspectives and concepts as they impact the business world. Taught in Japanese. (Credit/No Credit Available) (Prereq: JAPN 202 or JAPN 300)
How It Connects:
MLO 1.1:
This course was a major change for me in coming back from Japan. It was the first course I had at CSUMB that was taught entirely in Japanese, with little to no English support. Now, coming back from Japan, I was used to the immersion-like classroom but this one was different in that the material was focused on one theme: the world of Japanese Business. At first, the adjustment was a little difficult. However, my teacher was insistent on making sure that we could understand the concepts, even explained in Japanese. In each class, we were challenged to communicate with each other only in Japanese, and in keigo specifically. We learned the difference between talking to someone at work in a professional setting and talking to them outside of work as friends. I know my Japanese was rarely perfect, but it had reached the point that I was able to create sentences and concepts with the collective information I have and build into coherent sentences. At the end of the semester, we broke into groups and created a movie project designed to show the difference between good office behavior and bad office behavior. (Here's the link to the script and the final video).
MLO 1.2:
Although this was not immediately designed to be a comparative course, it was more of an automatic reaction to compare Japanese business practices with American practices: due to the nature of Japanese business practices, this included becoming highly aware of how I interacted with people, what I said, how I said it, and what answers I received in response. For instance, the idea of kushoun kotoba, or 'cushion words' was, at first, a rather difficult concept to put into practice. While I fully agree with the idea of politely letting someone down, the Japanese practice seemed excessive in its use of soft language. Very often, in class, when simulating conversations, I would forget that I needed to soften my language until the words were already out of my mouth. It took major conditioning for me to finally put the words to practice, but by the end of the semester, I managed it. As a joke though, my character in our final video has trouble with polite language.