A banker who cares

Going to the bank can be tedious anywhere. But when you are in a foreign country with limited language skills, it can be very challenging indeed. Despite having lived here for years, I am ashamed to say that my Japanese feebly stumbles along. I can shop and get about, talk to doctors and converse on the phone if the vocabulary is simple and the pronunciation clear. I can even manage interviews for odemagazine.com. My grammar is atrocious, but I can get my ideas across. Mostly. When it comes to precision and technical terms, I am in deep water, barely able to stay afloat. Such is a constant challenge, but a great chance to stretch beyond my current limits.

Periodically I send money overseas. When I travel, I make friends. And I often end up helping send kids to school, assisting with medical expenses, or even sponsoring small business ventures. I am delighted to do this within my humble means. But the process of getting funds from here to there can be a true test of patience. There are millions of forms, of course, with specific ways to be completed. Inevitably I make mistakes, so often have to redo everything from the beginning. Several times. The poor man helping me is a saint, explaining and re-explaining, pointing and re-pointing how I must give information. But my brain does not fit into precise little boxes. So, the entire process can take hours.

After all these years I have gotten a rather friendly, but always polite, relationship with the men who help me. The most recent gentleman, Izumi Yamamoto, is young and says he is “at the bottom of the pile”. But he is one of my favorites. He is exceptionally eager to please. The poor fellow knows little English, but must deal with foreigners who speak minimal or no Japanese. They struggle to communicate, especially when the clients come from such places as India, Iran, Brazil, Italy, Ghana, England, and the USA. They all speak in English, but with very different accents, different speeds, different manners, and different expectations.

What I love the most about Yamamoto is his constant effort to get it right. Since I speak enough Japanese to get my ideas across, he uses me as a source to better his English. In fact, each time I am there, we have a mini-English lesson.

The first time we wrestled with high numbers: very important for a banker. In Japan the numbers up to 9,999 are grouped the same way as in America. But after that, they diverge. Where we have 10,000, the Japanese have an entirely new unit called “man”. So, what is 10,000 in English is “one man” in Japanese. 100,000 in English is “ten man” in Japanese. Later they jump to another unit called “oku” and then on to others.

To add to the confusion, the placement of commas can differ, too. So, dealing with high numbers is indeed nerve wracking at best, and always a test of mental and emotional dexterity. So, having a banker’s first mini-lesson be about high numbers is a matter of great importance.

The last time I went in, Yamamoto proudly brought out his dictionary and showed me the paper I had written previously with numbers and an explanation of how they operate in English. He had been practicing, and was very pleased with himself.

That day the lesson went on to other things:

“Please fill in this paper.” “Please wait a minute while I process this.” “Our international transfer documents are deleted after six months.”

I feed in the vocabulary and expressions we need, and he immediately puts them to use. He stumbles, of course, but picks himself up and carries on. As I watch him, I can sense his truly lovely heart. And that is why I decided to write an essay about him. That seems doubly appropriate since he uses odemagazine.com as a way to improve his English. He will print out an essay, get out his dictionary, and work until he gets the meaning. Sometimes it takes weeks, but he does not stop until he has finished the entire essay. He says mine are the hardest because my sentences are long and “like poetry”. But he persists. I find that a very impressive way to learn a language. I wish my university students were as serious and hard working as he.

Yamamoto is 31 and started working at the bank after he graduated from university. Japanese institutions are triangularly hierarchal and he is one of the majority at the base. The formalities in places like a bank are very set and detailed. So, working there is like being in a straight jacket. But Yamamoto says it is good discipline for him. It forces him to direct his energy towards the working of the whole system, to constantly consider others, and to strive for the harmonious functioning of the group. All good traditional Japanese values.

When I asked Yamamoto what got him into banking, he told me an interesting story. When he was in high school, he rode the train and every day for one full year he watched a pretty girl on the same train. He fell in love with her, even though he had never spoken to her. Then one day he mustered enough courage to approach to her. What he said was, “I love you. What is your name?”

They started going out and when he went to university in another city, they kept in touch, always with the idea of marriage. Yamamoto played in university. He said he did not study at all. But somehow he got through. Then he came back to his hometown to marry his sweetheart, but had no job. He quickly realized he would have to figure something out. He hated paper tests and a certain bank in town had none as part of its application process. It used only interviews. So, that is why he chose to work where he now does. He had to go through six interviews before he was hired. But he is great at face-to-face encounters, so sailed through with flying colors.

In fact, Yamamoto says that connecting to people is the most important thing in his life. He loves that aspect of his job and wants to do more of it with both Japanese and foreign clients, if he can. Even though he helps foreigners like me to send money elsewhere, his main job is in the loan department. The economic situation in Japan is not so great at the moment, but even so, the bank lends money to people wanting to start a new business. Yamamoto is the one who gives them their first interview. He says that even though the world economic crisis is very disturbing, he thinks his work is a step towards hope. If new companies start up, then life keeps moving forward. “We’re having a huge crisis now, especially in construction related areas, but we have to keep looking forward to what we can become.”

And for him the future is also very personal. He now has a young son and another child on the way. He wants to spend as much time with them as he can. Yamamoto goes to work when his son is still sleeping, and comes home after he has gone to bed. One weekend his two-year old son saw him at home and said, “Who are you?”

Of course, Yamamoto was shocked, but that was a good wake up call for him. He realized the importance of spending quality time with his young son. So every weekend he and his son do things together. When I asked Yamamoto if he had any hobbies, the answer was, “Yes. Watching my son grow. Being with him. Doing things with him.”

“I want to teach my kids how important it is to think of other people, how to work hard to please them, to value harmony in relationships. I want them to know traditional Japanese values. That is, relating to people from the heart, not just the mind. After all, the heart is where we relate to people in the deepest and most important ways, even when we do business.”

And that is exactly what I love so much about dealing with Yamamoto. He is fully there with me as we struggle along filling out forms and working on English. And the process is always definitely and beautifully from the heart.