First public CSM in Tokyo

Last week I was in Tokyo, there to give the first public CSM course in Japan. It was a wonderful experience, I'm quite happy about it.

I arrived very late due to plane delay and we started early the next day. My slides are all translated in Japanese and so I cannot read them, which was quite interesting. About 3 minutes in the course, I figured out some people didn't speak much English. Luckily we (me and my local contact who helped me out a LOT!) expected that a little and my local contact was going to do real-time interpretation. He did an amazing job! It was quite interesting though to have everything I say being translated immediately (as a side-conversation). The most interesting parts were then the role-play was half-English and half-Japanese. I had lots of fun, but couldn't have done it without my local contacts help and all the translations and preparations.

The atmosphere in the class was very good. Lots of questions and also some really really good ones which were very difficult to answer (but are often the most important questions!).

I'm leaving to Japan again in a week, but then I'll be visiting the Toyota factory in Toyota City.

You can read a summary in Japanese at