In any culture, wearing the appropriate clothes is a strong sign of showing up as a professional. It signals that you understand your role, your competence and what is expected about you. But nowhere is it as true as in Japan.
A journey through Japan that begins with an unexpected encounter and ends somewhere I never expected: a different way of understanding leadership, people and myself. Because sometimes the longest journeys are the ones that quietly change how we see the world.
One year after a relocation, most people ask a simple question: “Is this working?”
It sounds reasonable. But it’s the wrong question.
The one-year mark does not call for a neat conclusion, but for a more honest form of reflection—one that resists the temptation to tidy up the experience into something coherent, and instead lingers on what has actually unfolded: what worked, what did not, what has shifted quietly
It invites a different kind of question, one that is less concerned with whether expectations and goals have been met, and more attentive to what this experience is now asking in return.
