How a pig, Doraemon, and a Japanese proverb can transform your workplace communication
If you’ve ever worked hard to communicate clearly—in English or Japanese—and still walked away from a meeting unsure whether you were truly understood, you’re not alone.
Many of my clients assume the problem is their English. But in 35 years of working with business professionals in Japan, I’ve found that the real issue is almost never vocabulary or grammar.
It’s listening.
And before you think “I already know how to listen”—stick with me. Because real listening is rarer than you’d think.
Hearing is not the same as listening
There’s a distinction that sounds simple but is actually quite profound.
Hearing is passive, automatic, and physical. As long as your ears are working, sound enters and you hear.
Listening is different. It’s active, intentional, and it requires curiosity. You listen not just with your ears, but with your mind—and in many ways, your heart.
Isn’t it interesting that the Japanese kanji for “listen”—聴く (kiku)—contains the character for heart, 心 (kokoro)?
So let me ask you: at work, are you hearing your colleagues? Or are you truly listening?
Why even smart, experienced people miscommunicate
A senior American colleague once came to me, clearly frustrated with his Japanese team. He said, “Helen, I don’t understand it. I tell them what to do, and they come back a week later with something completely different.”
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar—or perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end, doing your best work only to find it wasn’t what your manager had in mind at all.
This happens when there’s a gap between what was said and what was understood.
There’s a quote often attributed to George Bernard Shaw:
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
You think your colleagues understood. They think they understood. Nobody did.
This happens especially when you’re working with people from different nationalities, genders, or age groups. Diversity is wonderful for creativity and innovation—but without careful communication, it easily leads to misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and unnecessary stress.
A pig, Doraemon, and the cost of assumption
In a communication training I once facilitated, I asked participants to sit back-to-back in pairs. One person drew a simple picture and described it to their partner, who had to draw the same thing based only on what they heard—no clarifying questions allowed.
One participant from Thailand began: “It’s a pig.” He described the round face, the round eyes, in careful detail.
His Japanese partner showed us his drawing at the end.
It was Doraemon.
Somehow, he’d missed the word “pig.” When he heard “round face, round eyes,” his brain immediately filled in the rest with the most familiar image it had. This kind of assumption-driven miscommunication happens in workplaces every day—except it’s rarely so funny.
Two very different listening traps
Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, observed:
“Most people don’t listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”
In Western business culture, this shows up as people already formulating their response before you’ve finished speaking. Half-listening. Waiting for their turn.
But in the Japanese business context, I’d offer a different version: many professionals don’t listen with the intent to understand—they listen with the intent to maintain harmony. Not wanting to seem rude. Not wanting to bother anyone with a question. Nodding along without truly understanding.
I know this trap personally. I talked about it in my TEDx Talk in 2016. A colleague once told me: “Helen, I sometimes feel like you’re not interested in a word I say. You never ask me any questions.”
I was genuinely shocked. I’d always considered myself a good listener—patient, quiet, attentive. But I realized in that moment the importance of asking questions—not just to make sure you’ve understood, but to show the other person that you’re listening and you care.
The courage to ask
There’s an old saying:
“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
And in Japanese: 聞くは一時の恥、聞かぬは一生の恥 (Kiku wa ichiji no haji, kikanu wa issho no haji).
Many Japanese professionals hold back from asking questions for two reasons.
First, they’re simply not used to it—in the traditional Japanese educational environment, students listen to the teacher and don’t ask questions.
Second, they’re not confident their English is good enough to express the question clearly.
These are real concerns. But here’s what I know after decades of coaching: the discomfort of asking is almost always smaller than the cost of not asking. A moment of uncertainty versus a week working on the wrong thing. A small risk versus a missed opportunity—or worse, damaged trust.
Open and closed questions: knowing which to use and when
So how does this work in practice? Using open and closed questions appropriately makes a huge difference.
A closed question can be answered with a simple yes or no. It’s useful for confirming facts or closing a decision.
An open question invites the other person to think and respond more fully. It’s essential for checking understanding, exploring ideas, or uncovering concerns.
Here’s an example. You’ve just briefed a team member on a new project.
You could ask: “Do you understand?”—closed. Almost everyone says yes, even when they don’t. Nobody wants to look like they weren’t paying attention.
Or you could ask: “What’s your first step going to be?”—open. Now you can actually hear whether they’ve understood.
A few open questions worth keeping in your toolkit:
- “How are you planning to approach this?”
- “What might make this challenging?”
- “What would be helpful to know at this stage?”
And when you want to confirm and close:
- “So we’re agreed on the deadline—is that right?”
- “Is there anything that might stop you getting started?”
Simple shifts. But they move you from the illusion of communication to the real thing.
The heart of the matter
Remember that kanji—聴く (kiku). Listening with the heart. With curiosity. With the genuine intention to understand, not just to reply, and not just to keep the peace.
That’s the kind of listening that prevents the Doraemon moments. That closes the gap between what was said and what was understood. And in a global workplace, that kind of understanding builds the trust that makes everything else easier.
The next time you’re in a conversation at work—whether you’re giving instructions, receiving a brief, or sitting in a meeting—notice which mode you’re in. Hearing, or listening? Waiting to reply, maintaining harmony, or truly wanting to understand?
One small shift in awareness can change everything.
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A free resource to help you ask meaningful questions
One of the most effective ways to improve both your listening and your meeting outcomes is to ask more questions—strategic questions. If, like many people, you find that difficult, I’ve created a free resource to help.
It’s called 25 Questions for More Productive Meetings—25 practical questions in English and Japanese to help you lead or participate in meetings more effectively, plus five easy steps to get started, even if asking questions doesn’t feel natural yet.
Ready to go deeper?
If this resonated and you’d like to explore how communication coaching or training could support you or your team, I’d love to hear from you.
Don’t miss the next post
This is the first in a five-part series celebrating the 10th anniversary of my book 英語の仕事術 (Eigo no Shigoto-jutsu), published with Shogakukan. Over the coming weeks, we’ll cover presentation skills, online calls, meeting facilitation, and dealing with workplace conflict.
To make sure you don’t miss a post, sign up for Sasuga! Tips For You—my free newsletter with practical techniques and inspiration in English and Japanese.
You’ll also find this content as a podcast episode on the Sasuga! Podcast and as a video on YouTube. And if you like to compare languages as part of your study, the Japanese version of this post is available here.