The Secret to 'Getting Work Done' at a Japanese Company

After 20 years in a Japanese company, I realized the most capable person in the office wasn't the expert, but the one asking "dumb" questions.

The Definition of 'Getting Stuff Done'

I’ve been with the same, very traditional Japanese company for over two decades. I’m a working mom of three, just trying to survive the daily grind. For 20 years, I was a tech specialist. My idea of a "capable person" was set in stone: someone who could do complex analysis, invent new tech for patents, or spot anomalies in data just by looking at it.

Then, this April, I was transferred to the international business division. The whole landscape changed.

I started noticing this one guy. He didn't seem to have deep specialist knowledge, so why was everyone constantly going to him for advice? He wasn't even that high up. But people flocked to him.

It took me a while, but I figured it out. He just… talks to people. "Can I just confirm something?" "What was the deal with this again?" "Just wanted to ask to be sure, but..." He was constantly asking things I thought were too basic to bother someone with. I see now he wasn't just 'asking' — he was pushing the work forward.

The Open-and-Close Chat Window Championship

When I first moved departments, I was terrible at asking for help. I’d open the internal chat. "Sorry to bother you, Tanaka-san..." I’d type. And delete. Type again. And delete.

"Maybe now's not a good time." Close window. Five minutes later, open it again. I swear, I was the company champion in opening and closing chat windows. I'd waste an hour agonizing over something, finally ask, and get a reply like, "Oh, just look at this file." Problem solved in 30 seconds. Where did my hour go? 😩

I think I believed that "to ask a question is to admit defeat." As a veteran employee transferred to a new team, I was embarrassed to look like I didn't know anything. But the truly capable people were different. They knew that *not* asking is the real defeat.

The 'Kuse ga Tsuyoi' Incident

One day, my boss messaged me. "I don't have much time, can you handle this ASAP?" Of course. I was new and eager to be useful. The funny part? He was on a business trip on the other side of the planet. The modern world is wild.

The task was to translate a document sent from an overseas branch. I opened the file, ready to go. And froze. What… was this English? It was, as the kids say here, *kuse ga tsuyoi*—the "quirk" was off the charts strong.

My first thought was, of course, to throw it into the company's AI translator. Banzai, modern technology. The Japanese came out. But the Japanese *also* made no sense. The quirkiness had survived translation.

I stared at the screen, thinking "You're asking me?". I tried to figure it out on my own, but eventually, I had to raise the white flag. "Boss, I have no idea what this says." I was so embarrassed. A 20-year veteran admitting she can't handle some English, even with AI.

But what happened next was the best part. Another manager stepped in to help, and then others chimed in. "Oh, *his* English." "Yeah, he's famous for being impossible to understand." "Even the AI can't translate it, huh." Gee, thanks for the heads-up, guys. Could've used that info earlier.

The job ended up going to a specialist translator, and even for them, it was a five-hour task. It was work I could have spent days on and never finished. By admitting "I don't know," I was able to get back to my own tasks, and the whole company saved time. It wasn’t giving up. It was protecting everyone's time.