It's been a record hot August with most days over 33 degrees and many over 35/36. Even after 20 years here I am not used to the humidity that accompanies the heat. Luckily my lifestyle and workstyle allows me to manage my calendar to be able to stay indoors during 11am to 4pm and escape the heat. The podcast recording schedule was on low power mode for August and although no podcasts were released I did hop on the mike to record a couple of episodes which will be out soon. It was also a good chance to stay under the air con to get on with a whole lot of backed up admin, and tidy up my office, as well as have some really good social catch ups.

In other news these are some wrap-up highlights from my month of August 2023! 

• Induction to Global Women - My membership of Global Women was confirmed this month. I am excited to join this amazing organisation of women from Aotearoa New Zealand who are catalysing Aotearoa New Zealand’s social and economic success across the globe. Global Women is a group of leaders with a personal mission to accelerate change. I’m proud to be one of the members who are a collective of ambassadors for Global Women with the goal of driving diversity in leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond.
  
  My goals are to champion diversity and inclusion by mentoring women, regularly speaking at events and in the media, making substantial change within the organisations I work with and where I serve on their boards, and beyond this to support and promote women in Japan. I will continue my work towards developing specific initiatives to increase diversity in leadership for Japanese women through the role modelling of New Zealand women leaders.
  
  I’m also super proud that Toyota (where I serve as an outside board member) is Global Women’s Principal Partner along with PWC. My thanks to Mel Hewittson for being my sponsor for membership. Check me out amongst the new members list here and see what three aspirations I have for Global Women!
  

• Global Chamber keynote on Japan updates
  It’s always a real pleasure to provide an update on Japan from the ground, to the Global Chamber membership. In lieu of the podcast updates for this month, here’s a bonus expanded summary of the points I mentioned as keynote speaker for the Japan update from a business, social and governance perspective:  

  • There's such a pent-up demand for people to come to Japan. Streets are bustling, hotels are full, restaurants are bulging, The yen is weak and so it’s very approachable and you visitors come here for cheap compared to us going to your countries. 

  • If you are planning to come to Japan – remember exchanging business cards is still a thing – a big ingrained cultural thing. You may find some people scan QR codes but you’d better not assume and not come without physical cards. Or at least scan one of your cards and be able to share it via email or text message quickly on the spot.

  • The "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" movie phenomenon is spurring intense backlash in Japan. Go ahead and talk about Barbie, and you can talk about Oppenheimer too but don’t mix them together. It will be a lead balloon effect for any conversation here.

  • As to what’s hot right now we are seeing Rapid digital deployment across all industries which would have taken many more years pre-pandemic, especially B to C businesses, such as Japan’s grocery industry which is struggling with growth due to demographic changes. 

  • We are seeing opportunities in digital adoption for operational efficiencies,
    e-commerce, introducing or enhancement of mobile applications, and delivery services. 

  • The ageing Japanese society is bringing about a spike in healthy food offerings and age-tech items are also popular.

  • The “average”  Japanese are getting into solo camping & glamping adventure tourism snorkelling in Okinawa – yes they are getting outdoors so business ideas to help enhance these experiences – clothing gadgets are popular but not new products to make people have to buy, buy, buy. Doing an “add on” to an existing product consumers already have, adding a new feature or way of using an item they already like using seems to be key – so not selling a new thing but a new way to do/use an existing thing.

  • Chat GPT – companies are embracing it and allowing it to be used for certain work processes.

  • 4 day working week trials are underway in certain large J companies and as a result the number of sick days has reduced. 

  • Also very hot is Japan’s conversations about gender equality. Japan dropped to 125 on the World Economic Forum (WEF) Gender Gap index ranking from 116, the worst in the G7 nations. Japan is not sitting on its hands. It is trying. Let’s cut some slack. It needs some more systems in place to help support the road to equality and if you look at all the points in the WEF report Japan is tops for women in education and a couple of other sections. It’s low though in politics and in managerial positions. PM Kishida has pledged to promote the economic independence of women as a core pillar of his "new form of capitalism" policy by stepping up efforts to advance gender equality. 

  • Brighter news: 1) The number of working women in Japan hit a record 30.4 million in 2022; 2) this is an increase of 1.22 million from five years earlier;  In July the a government council approved a women's empowerment policy that included a goal of raising the ratio of female board members to more than 30% by 2030 at firms listed on the top-tier Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. 

  • The employment rate among women hit a record high of 53.2%, partly attributed to government efforts to help mothers work while raising children. This is one of the systems I mentioned before that Japan needs to improve to move the needle on the WEF Gender Gap Index. Other systems – such as supportive measures, like parental leave and reduced working hours, have helped workers balance work and child-rearing.

• Privacy Round Table - which I mentioned in my July blog, was an absolute success. We had a fantastic group of in-house lawyers come together to discuss the latest in privacy laws and practical issues around data. They said that they had missed the opportunity over the covid crisis to come together to hear from other lawyers tackling the same issues and get some better practices and tips for their own companies. They also said they missed the social networking aspect so we delivered on that, providing some drinks and food after the event at a nearby watering hole. A photo of the group at the offices of IBM features in this blog but none from the afterparty (what goes on tour…)

• FIFA Women's Football World Cup kicked off and now it has finished with a surprise win by Spain. Japan won against spain in the earlier games so they got a moral victory knowing they did beat the ultimate winners. We (New Zealand) lost early on, but it was great to see the increase in viewership of women’s sport and what a terrific ANZAC collaboration between New Zealand and Australia to run these matches so well. We probably won’t see that comradery on the field in the Rugby World Cup starting next month and the AB’s are off to a rough start with the worst-ever loss to South Africa in a pre-game recently. Only I know that it's a big loss that makes you pull up your socks, and go harder. As they say the only way is up, after hitting the bottom. So all the best to the teams and especially NZ and Japan!

• Catch ups

• My friend KG had a baby and I went to see her. I made her cry so need to touch up on my baby holding techniques! 

• My buddy Kirsten and I caught up at Two Rooms imbibing on bubbles and watching planes flying over and reflections in the infinity pool. The relatively risk-adverse staff were worried for us with the supposedly impending typhoon but we negotiated our way out to the deck… and no typhoon happened. Sometimes you just got to push a bit in Japan. 

• Champagne and friends is a perfect combination for me. It’s always a super special thing when you get invited into someone’s home and when a group of happy women come together you have a lot of conversation and plenty of stress relief. Thanks to NS for hosting. 

• Community events coming up

  Keep your calendars open on the evening of October 4th for Women in Law Japan’s next event which is all about Legal Operations. More information to come soon. If you are interested in keeping up with WILJ then you can join as a member right here. It only takes 2 minutes and you are in. 

  
  

• Mentoring to get you a Board seat and Women Lawyers Retreat
  I continued to receive inquiries in the last month about my coaching/mentoring offering for female lawyers who are aiming for getting on Boards. I also received inquiries about the Women Lawyers Retreat. One space became available for the Autumn retreat in October so if you are interested in joining this or in the mentoring please get in touch with me at admin@catherineoconnelllaw.com. 

And finally… 

In 1985-86 I studied Japanese full-time in Christchurch and my classmate Colin (Corin-chan as we called him) came to Tokyo in July. We caught up at Tokyo American Club. Why? Because shhhhh but they have THE best carrot cake in town. You can see that cake in one photo and you can also see an embarrassingly OLD photo of me with my then-statement 80’s blue eyeshadow, pastel pink lippy, and fashionable permed hair of the day. Our Japanese class got to visit Nagano Prefecture in Japan as part of our studies, to take part in a “New Zealand Fair.” Though my style has majorly changed, the fun and camaraderie between us hasn’t. Colin keeps his eyes open for photos these days 😂While scoffing carrot cake and a latte, Bufferin-chan (my nickname) and Corin-chan had a great session of fondly thinking back to those good old days in class. That Japanese language course and the time we had in Japan, was a period in my history that changed the course of my life forever, literally. There is no way I’d be writing this blog to you today without having done that amazing Japanese course. I’ll share more details in my memoir one day! 

That’s all from me for this month. See you in September.

Catherine