A Lecture about Research Experience in Japan

Today was the first day of a 3 day long orientation session for the new JSPS postdoctoral fellows (like me). The session featured talks such as;"Introduction of JSPS",  "Japanese Research System and JSPS's Activities",  an enthusiastic lecture on "The Japanese Language and its Cultural Context", "Introduction of JSPS Science Dialogue", a lecture by JSPS second year fellow "About Research Experience in Japan", and "Introduction of JSPS Alumni Associations".

The last talk was reduced from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. This was due to the previous talk lasting 45 minutes instead of 20! It was a fantastic display of self promotion without any boundaries, done in a very entertaining way. It was an incredible talk, and I want to name the person who gave the speech as I believe his CV may have something to teach us people pursuing a career in academics.

The aforementioned speaker is Dr. Sulayman K. Sowe:  http://www.merit.unu.edu/about/profile.php?id=1110&stage=2. A remarkable showman, and a determined academic on his way to becoming a professor sooner than most of us.

His speech was supposed to be about his research experience in Japan, but this person has been in Japan only 1.5 months longer than us, the people he was lecturing! So, what did he have to teach us that he might have learnt by living here for 45 days longer? Was his experience enough to talk to us about it for 20 minutes? The answer is no. The first thing he did was to admit this and simply to jump to an introduction of himself. An introduction that highlighted his achievements, and professional experience and lasted for half an hour! The whole time he was very amusing, and he told us what a great guy he is in a very humorous way. A lot of us laughed, some for different reasons, and some of us frowned at the obvious shameless self promotion this guy was doing. After 25 minutes into his talk, one of the Japanese hosts gave him a note in a very discreet and polite way. He took the note and read it out loud: "Please try to wrap up your talk in 1.. minutes", well he actually read 100 minutes just to be humorous (?). He continued his lecture about how awesome he was, and towards the end he told us about the experience he had in Japan , which had nothing new to anybody who has been in Japan for more than 7 days.

One interesting advice he gave us was this; "Don't be a nuisance". He told us to know our limits, and not to expect any negative feedback from the Japanese people as they are too polite to do so. He said; "They will always say, Yes, and will not stop you if you are annoying them." I guess these words reflect the truth, but why should we not bother the Japanese if there is a personal gain?