Tetsu’s Road to Multilingualism (Part VI: 29-present)

Why Japan?

Two reasons. First, being half Taiwanese and half Japanese, I wanted to revisit my roots. But really, that’s not half as important as the second reason. I’ve always felt a disconnect between what I learned at university, i.e., biology, and my strongest assets, i.e., languages. The language of science is English and it was not about to change anytime soon. So I figured I could probably find some clues as to how to use my languages, well, at least Japanese, if I came to Japan, the scientific hub of Asia, and started my career here. The plan was to do a post-doc for about 2-3 years in Japan, and then do another one for 2-3 years in California, where a lot of biotechs are found, before going back to Canada to open my own lab. As usual, things don’t go quite as planned.



I’ve been in Japan for almost 7 years now.

Working in Japan was a linguistic challenge, even for someone like me. In a working environment, I had to deal with aspects of Japanese that I never before had to deal with just talking to people on a casual level. Now I needed to use it on a professional level, i.e., I had to get familiar with various levels of formality in the spoken language, I had to write it (I mean type it), and I had to quickly improve my scientific vocabulary in Japanese, with all the fancy abbreviations that the Japanese are so fond of. And have you ever heard people giving scientific talks in Japanese?! That’s right, it sounded like gibberish. Again.

And putting things down in writing was an obstacle that you just have to experience. I came to Japan on a scholarship from the Japanese government, so I had to write all sorts of reports in Japanese all the time. This was a major pain in the $&%”! Things that took three minutes to write for my colleagues took me an hour. But I learned so much. Learning all the intricacies of the language not only allowed me to write better, but it allowed me to speak and read better, too! It is thanks to the efforts in those days that today I am 100% functional in Japanese at the professional level.

I lucked out on another linguistic dimension in Japan. At our laboratory, there were two Chinese students with whom I spoke Mandarin everyday. Having left Taiwan more than 16 years earlier, I was very happy to have the opportunity to my polish my Mandarin.

Outside the lab, I also signed up to a few of the Meetup groups in Tokyo (which I will discuss in future posts), especially the Spanish Meetup (organized by Yuko-san, who of course speaks Spanish perfectly). My first one though was the French Meetup organized by Kazu-san, who is also a phenomenal linguist. He’s actually the organizer for the French, Italian, Portuguese, German, ESL, and I don’t know which other Meetup! I salute you Kazu-san and Yuko-san! Please keep it up!

So I used Japanese, Mandarin, and English at the lab, and kept up with my other languages outside the lab, but I still felt I wasn’t really making the perfect link between my work and languages. I knew that if I wanted to continue with bench science, then English will pretty much be the only language that I'll really need to use. That’s when I thought I should go into business. But to go to “the other side”, I believed that I needed some business know-how.

How about an MBA?

Oh great, another brilliant idea to turn me into a poor student again. At age 32. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea... Moreover, many people that I talked to and all the websites about MBA programs strongly suggested that one should first have business exposure before doing an MBA. Logical and convincing.

But my mind was already set. I thanked the world for wonderful advice, but carried right on ahead with complete disregard and started to shop around for MBA programs. Fortunately my parents and my post-doc supervisor were supportive.

At first, I was expecting to have to pursue an online MBA program, because I didn’t want to quit my post-doc for a full-time weekday program, and, being in Japan, I thought I had a much better chance of finding a reputable English program online. But the trade-off is that I would have to give up the real human interactions that come with classroom learning, which forms a huge part of the value of the MBA experience.

But combine will with good luck, and you have my life story. Persistent Googling landed me on a McGill University website. Sounds familiar? Yes, that’s where I did my Biology undergrad in Montreal. But this time, it was the website of McGill MBA Japan program! In total, I found two fully English MBA programs in Japan: McGill and Temple University. Temple is American, and, of the close to 100 universities in Canada, McGill had the other MBA program in Japan. What are the odds!? Now if only it could be an evening program, then I could completely satisfy the stringent criteria I set forth, i.e., a highly reputable full-time English program that I could pursue in a real classroom setting, with real classmates, without quitting my post-doc. It was a weekend program. Even better. Hey, I don’t write the scripts…

So I applied and got accepted, and the rest is history. (…er actually, maybe I shouldn’t say it as if it were a breeze, ‘cuz for the next two years, I would go through pure hell doing a post-doc and an MBA at the same time. Oh, and did I mention the $50,000 tuition? La cerise sur le Sundae…)

From bench science to global pharmaceutical R&D management

During my second year of MBA, I began thinking about leaving the lab and started looking for a job in the “real” world. Four industries interested me. 1) Investment banking, 2) Consulting, 3) Venture capital, and 4) Pharma. IB would make good use of my MBA (finance concentration) but my Bio PhD would go to waste. Given that this was late 2007, at the height of the bubble, I’m really glad I resisted the temptation to go into IB. Consulting on the other hand may use a little bit more of my scientific mind, but again my MBA would probably come in more handy. Either way, both IB and consulting would likely have meant huge pay in return for no life. VC was an attractive option, because I could make good use of both my PhD and MBA in the valuation of start-up biotech firms and in persuading investors to fork over millions of dollars for me to invest in these companies. But the VC industry was and still is very weak in Japan. So the only logical remaining choice was pharma, which obviously requires a scientific mind for research and development and business know-how for many other functions, such as licensing/partnering/mergers, etc. It was indeed the best choice that promised to let me use my assets in a balanced way.

Now, do I join a foreign company or a Japanese company? Any Japanese person who speaks good English will say go to a foreign company. But my rationale says that I should go to a Japanese company, because I figured the need for global minded people was higher in Japanese companies, most of which are actively expanding into foreign markets. And since few Japanese are fluent in English, my competition was likely to be low. And this is without even considering how my Mandarin could contribute to expansion into the colossal market right next door called China. On the other hand, in a Japanese branch of a foreign company, I would probably be competing with native Japanese speakers in dealing with the Japanese market. So again, why would I wanna to do that?

So I narrowed down the choices to one single Japanese pharmaceutical company, and knocked, I mean, pounded, on its door until they finally gave me an interview. Well, 3 interviews really, including scientific presentations and extensive Q&A's. And I made it a point to do all my interviews in Japanese, despite offers to carry out various parts in English. I wanted to show them that my Japanese, which they knew from the beginning was my third language, is fully functional under all circumstances. And I got the gig.

Pretty much overnight, I switched from doing frontline bench science in an academic lab to working in R&D management for the entire global R&D department of a big pharma company. Of course, the transition was anything but smooth, but again, I was blessed by great people, from admirable superiors to wonderful peers to help with my integration.

By the way, do you wanna hear another creepy story? The first day I walked into the office, a foreigner sitting at the desk in front of mine greeted me enthusiastically. But instead of saying “hi”, he said “bonjour” with the thickest Quebecer accent. Isn't it a big coincidence to meet a Quebecer in a Japanese pharmaceutical company of all things on the first day of work? But wait, there's more! Meet Frank, who’s also from Quebec City and did a PhD at Laval University, and who, about 4 years before me, was working in the same laboratory as me!! We know all the same people, and his great friend Jean-Yves was a reviewer for my thesis! I’m telling ya, I don’t write the scripts!

Here I am today, still in Japan, working in a great job that allows me to simultaneously use both my PhD (as I take care of pharmaceutical research and development) and my MBA (as I think strategically about our pipeline and do valuations of licensing/partnering/acquisition deals). Our company is a global company and is already well established in the US and EU, and is increasing our foothold in various other countries, including China (in fact I just came back from a business trip from Beijing last week). So on the language front, I would talk to my Japanese colleagues in Japanese, my American and UK colleagues in English, my Chinese colleagues in Mandarin, and Frank in French. I look forward to using my Spanish and possibly Portuguese in South America.

So there you go, you are up to date on my background. Now are we ready to talk about some of my thoughts and theories on language acquisition!! …eh Matt, ready for CLAP?