Ready to join this online meeting? Not without N1!

I’m lucky to have thus far been able to continue working during the coronavirus pandemic, and even luckier to have been able to do so from home for the vast majority of that time. 

I have no idea how long this can continue. As much as my position is made precarious by a lack of deals being done though, the thin ice on which I tread is also feeling the strain of my, quite frankly, awful language performances during online meetings. 

There’s rarely an online face-to-face that goes by which, after my having hung up, doesn’t leave me wanting to crawl under the bed covers and cower from my own embarrassment.  

“Did I really say that?” “Did anyone understand what I meant by this?”

I can only hope that amid the awful mundanity, and decisions not being made, that characterize many a meeting I’ve had in Japan, people have long since tuned out by the time I take the stage.  

Ready to join this online meeting? Not without N1!

I’ve always struggled with business meetings in Japan, especially those involving clients. (In-house stuff isn’t so bad.) I’m a testament to “having JLPT N2 doesn’t mean much when deals need to get done … or dithered over.” And I’m not even trying to use polite Japanese.

Doing it online, talking to a bunch of bobbing heads or even worse, a set of initials on a blank background, for whatever reason exacerbates the language challenge for me.  

Achievement of smoothish Japanese language performance during meetings on my part requires optimum conditions. Any number of online factors throws me right off -- frozen screens, audio delays, the builders next door, who’s that walking past in the background?, someone needs to turn their mic off when they’re not talking, someone needs to turn their mic on when they’re talking. The challenges are varied. 

Just the other day I was called into an impromptu online meeting during which my ability to contribute in Japanese, well, in any language really, was severely compromised when I realized halfway through that my counterparts were potentially getting an eyeful of my laundry (delicates and all) hanging out on the balcony to dry.  

Forget about, “how do I say …. in Japanese?” I could think of little else other than that bloody laundry and trying to keep cool as I gradually shifted the angle of my laptop. (Luckily it was an in-house meeting. They’d have told me though, right?!)

The point is, as much as I’m protected by doing things online, sitting there in my comfy pyjama bottoms with a nice cup of tea just off screen, the distance really exposes my communication-in-Japanese flaws. And maybe the English ones, too.

And I really do want to be able to communicate. It’s so frustrating only being able to say what I can, rather than what I actually want to say, or what needs to be said. I need good communication to prove my worth, to stand up to that pain-in-the-rear colleague, to get things done.   

Any tips?