Hello from the Sushi restaurant — How about working at a company where English is the official language?

A month ago, I was sitting at a counter at a cozy sushi-go-round restaurant.

As I was starting to eat my sushi, a woman next to me asked me. “Do you speak English?” I answered, “Yes,” and then she started to explain that she couldn’t understand which Kanji and Hiragana characters corresponded to the sushi that she wanted to order. I asked what she wanted to order and then helped her write it down on the order sheet. (This order sheet was totally written in Japanese.)

After finishing writing it down, we had some conversations. She was a cabin attendant at a European airline. She came to Japan as a crew.

I think not speaking the native language is not an easy thing for many people. Because, as far as you are in Japan, you rarely have to speak English or other foreign languages.

But HENNGE, our company, is different. The primary language used by our company is English. Because in our company, many people come from outside of Japan. These days, many companies started to adopt English as a primary language in the company. HENNGE adopted English as a primary language in 2016. This was an advanced initiative.

This is almost certainly true, but resistance to multiple languages, including English, depends on the environment. If you don’t have an English-speaking environment nearby, your resistance to English will increase. Compared to when I was in another IT company that rarely spoke English, I think my shyness and anxiety about speaking English have decreased.

When I write things like this, some readers might think that it’s completely difficult to work in HENNGE with no English skills. But it’s not true. Of course, motivation to improve your English skills is important and necessary, but it does not mean you should have to be a perfect English speaker when you enter our company. (Of course, becoming a perfect language speaker is impossible because even native Japanese speakers don’t speak correct Japanese with no miss. It can be understood when you catch up with the theories like Ferdinand de Saussure.)

We’re in the same world, but to tell the truth, a lot of things are divided by language. For example, WWW(World Wide Web) can literally be used worldwide, but many services and communities are divided by language. Therefore, becoming a speaker who can speak English or other languages finally expands your cognition and interpretation.

Our company is conscious of the difference. It does not mean we try to eliminate differences. What we try to do is take differences for granted. We believe that being different is great because recognizing differences is essential to noticing things that have been overlooked and taken for granted. We believe that products become even better when we get diverse perspectives.

If you share these values, why don’t you contact our recruiting team? You may find the job you want. I hope this article will be your first step towards HENNGE.

If you are interested in using English at work and pursuing a career at HENNGE, check out our recruiting website for available positions.