Sasshi (察し): sensing. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten defines it as perceiving, being considerate, inferring. Ichi o kiite jū o shiru (一を聞いて十を知る): hear one, know ten. To grasp the whole of a matter after hearing or trying only a little of it.
Maiko Stages
A young woman who wants to become a maiko in Kyoto first spends about a year as a shikomi, living in and training. Then comes minarai, learning by watching. At a designated teahouse, she is allowed to see what happens at the banquets. The day she becomes a maiko is called misedashi.
Around the fourth or fifth year as a maiko, after the age of twenty, she becomes a geiko. This step is called erikae, the changing of the collar.
No Spinach Here
Yamada Akio, founder of the company Mirai Kōgyō, said: Uchi ni wa hōrensō wa nai. We have no hōrensō. He did not mean the vegetable, he added, but the abbreviation for reporting, informing and consulting with a boss.
At his company, he said, even in product development the person in charge decides alone and finishes the product alone. He criticized today’s control-minded management, in which bosses do not trust employees, meddle in every detail and treat them like children.
The Report That Did Not Arrive
The Diet’s commission on the Fukushima accident found that Tokyo Electric Power had told the nuclear regulator, its usual point of contact, that venting work was under way. It found no evidence that this had reached the top of the trade ministry or the prime minister’s office.
The commission concluded that the regulator’s failure to function and the lack of information at TEPCO headquarters built distrust between the prime minister’s office and TEPCO. It led the prime minister to go to the plant himself and give instructions there.
Early on March 15, 2011, Prime Minister Kan Naoto went to TEPCO headquarters, where a joint response headquarters of the government and TEPCO was set up.
Warming the Sandals
One winter day, according to a famous story, the warlord Oda Nobunaga went outside and found that his sandals were missing. He asked Saru, Monkey, as he called his young servant, where they were. The servant took them out of his robe and said that he had warmed them. The servant later became Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of Japan.
The story first appears in Ehon Taikōki, a popular illustrated biography. The magazine Waraku notes that no other source has it, so it cannot be called true.
Waigaya
Honda describes waigaya as a culture of its own. People discuss dreams or what their work should be, nenrei ya shokui ni torawarezu, without regard to age or position. The name imitates the sound of a noisy discussion.
Honda adds that waigaya is not a place for compromise and adjustment in order to reach agreement. It is a place to clash opinions in earnest, honki de honne de, and create new value.
Apology and Measures
On January 23, 2026, Prudential Life Insurance held an apology press conference after more than 100 current and former employees had improperly received money. Its management apologized and explained the company’s saihatsu bōshi-saku, measures to prevent recurrence.
A public relations column in the business report of a Japanese regional bank gives the order for a written press release on such trouble. It opens with an apology, then sets out the course of events, the facts, the response to customers and the measures to come. For press conferences, the column warns against wording that sounds like an excuse.
The Vocabulary of Excuses
Iiwake (言い訳): an excuse. Explaining after a failure that there was no other choice, in order to justify oneself. Iiwake suru na: no excuses. A common rebuke to someone who has failed.
Kuchigotae (口答え): talking back. Answering a parent, teacher or boss argumentatively. Herikutsu (屁理屈): fart logic. Forced reasoning made to fit.
Chikara busoku (力不足): lack of ability. Used of oneself in apologies, as in watakushi no chikara busoku de, through my lack of ability.
He Does Not Say It
In 2012, the catcher Tanishige Motonobu of the Chunichi Dragons told the sports journalist Ninomiya Seijun what he had learned from his former manager, Ochiai Hiromitsu. “There is something about him that makes us think on purpose. He does not say it aloud.”
Two Hundred Omelets
At Sukiyabashi Jirō, the Tokyo sushi restaurant of Ono Jirō, an apprentice trains for about ten years before being allowed to make the tamagoyaki, the sweet rolled omelet.
The apprentice Nakazawa Daisuke, who appears in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, has said in interviews that he made it about 200 times before Jirō accepted one. In the film, he says he cried when Jirō finally said it was good.