ビジネス日本語講座

Why do online communities built around self-help, side hustles, AI, and “making money online” rarely criticize the people selling these ideas? In this episode, I explore a possible reason: many followers hope to become sellers themselves someday. Criticizing the guru can feel like criticizing their own future. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where people teach others how to earn, then those...

Leaving a company is easy. Leaving the company inside your head can take years. In this episode, I explore what I call “Salaryman Aftereffects”: the habits, fears, and ways of thinking that remain after someone quits corporate life. Employees receive more than a paycheck—they receive approval, structure, roles, and a sense of being needed. After independence, those rewards disappear. Suddenly, no...

What happens when AI reduces white-collar jobs while making it easier than ever to produce professional-sounding ideas? In this episode, I explore what I call the “Empty Theory Bubble”: a world where fewer people do the actual work, while more people talk about how work should be done. AI can generate articles, courses, newsletters, and expert-sounding advice almost instantly, dramatically lowerin...

Why does self-help sell so well? Perhaps because people feel they are already living in hell. Inspired by Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s famous story The Spider’s Thread , this episode compares self-help, side-hustle courses, AI entrepreneurship, and online business opportunities to threads hanging above people desperate to escape their current lives. When work, money, loneliness, or uncertainty becomes un...

Why can people with seemingly little substance still become highly popular and successful? In this episode, I explore how appearance, charm, likability, and personality influence the way we judge others—often more than we realize. Drawing on the psychological “halo effect,” social media culture, and a personal experience from my time working in Vietnam, I examine how first impressions can shape op...

Why have cold showers become so popular in modern self-improvement culture? In this episode, I describe them as a form of “light asceticism.” Traditional religious asceticism can involve distancing oneself from worldly desires and ambitions. Cold showers, however, offer just enough discomfort to create a sense of discipline without disrupting everyday life. You can suffer briefly, feel that you ha...

Why do people today seem to want “companions” or “teammates” rather than traditional friends? In this episode, I explore the growing popularity of the Japanese word nakama in self-help communities, startups, and online groups. Friendship can involve deep, open-ended emotional responsibility, while nakama relationships are often connected to a specific goal, project, or community. This makes them f...

Can we accept a life in which we never become “someone”? In this episode, I begin with Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and explore the modern pressure to succeed, build expertise, gain followers, and prove our value to society. Social media has made comparison easier than ever, turning even ordinary life, loneliness, and failure into marketable content. But could AI eventually offer another po...

Why do we crave “hokkori”—that warm, cozy feeling—so much today? In this episode, I explore how the Japanese word “hokkori” reflects something deeper about modern life. From relaxing Vlogs and coffee breaks to quiet walks and small everyday pleasures, contemporary culture often transforms strong desires, ambition, anger, and competition into safer, gentler emotions. Drawing on Nietzsche’s idea of...

What does ikki-tsūkan (一気通貫) mean in Japanese business? Originally a mahjong term, it has become a common expression in Japanese companies, describing a process handled continuously from beginning to end. You might hear phrases such as “supporting clients from planning to operations” or “managing everything from recruitment to employee retention.” In this episode, I explain the meaning and ori...

Why does simply feeling good no longer seem enough? In Japan, sauna culture often uses the word totonou , meaning to feel physically and mentally “reset” or balanced. But I sometimes feel uncomfortable with this idea. Modern life encourages us to give everything a purpose: reading becomes self-improvement, exercise becomes health management, meditation becomes productivity, and even relaxation mus...

Modern life demands that we behave rationally, efficiently, and responsibly. But perhaps human beings also need places where they can temporarily “go crazy.” After trying a karaoke app and watching strangers sing together online, I began thinking about digital communities, identity, loneliness, and freedom. What initially looked strange started to resemble something much older: a festival. In the...

Is giving money to a person begging on the street the same as sending money to someone sharing their struggles on YouTube? In this episode, I explore a crucial difference. Traditional charity ideally aims to reduce suffering until assistance is no longer necessary. On social media, however, suffering can become content that generates views, donations, advertising revenue, and attention. This creat...

What happens when people stop selling only their labor and begin selling their entire lives? In this episode, I use Marx’s ideas about labor and alienation as a starting point to examine YouTube and social media. Today, poverty, loneliness, unemployment, failure, daily routines, and even private emotions can become content. Some creators sell vulnerability, while others sell expertise, status, and...

What if employee suffering were treated as a hidden business cost? In this episode, I explore how companies carefully track materials, logistics, labor, inventory, and productivity while largely ignoring the emotional and psychological costs of unnecessary meetings, internal politics, excessive approvals, difficult managers, and endless coordination. Employee suffering consumes time, energy, and c...

Why does self-help culture turn social problems into personal problems? In this episode, I examine how low wages, inequality, insecure employment, and difficult working conditions are often reframed as individual challenges requiring better skills, habits, productivity, or entrepreneurship. Instead of changing society, the solution becomes escaping from its problems. Even more paradoxically, those...

Why does self-help culture love habits so much? In this episode, I examine how ordinary behaviors such as waking up early, reading, exercising, and arriving ten minutes early are transformed into supposed formulas for success. Successful people may have good habits, but that does not prove those habits caused their success. Education, networks, resources, timing, luck, and control over one’s time...

In this episode, I examine the suffering of corporate employees through the language of accounting. Companies constantly try to reduce material, logistics, and production costs, yet the emotional cost imposed on employees is rarely treated the same way. I call this “the cost of suffering”: unnecessary meetings, internal coordination, difficult bosses, excessive reporting, and workplace politics th...

In this episode, I explore a peculiar aspect of Japanese corporate culture: the belief that work should involve visible suffering. Producing results efficiently is not always enough. Employees may also be expected to look busy, tired, stressed, and deeply involved in workplace relationships. Suffering can become a kind of unofficial currency that proves someone is working hard. This mindset also c...

In this episode, I explore why people become psychologically conflicted when they hide their desires behind morality. Wanting money, recognition, success, or status is not necessarily wrong. Problems arise when we fail to obtain what we want and then convince ourselves that those things never mattered. This can turn disappointment into resentment, jealousy, and moral superiority. Drawing on Nietzs...

What happens when people leave a company but remain employees in their minds? In this episode, I introduce the idea of the “employee in the brain” and “psychological lifetime employment.” After years inside organizations, people may struggle to see their accumulated knowledge, skills, and experience as their own assets. They can work confidently under a company name yet hesitate to speak, create,...

If you have a truly profitable business method, why sell the method instead of using it yourself? In this episode, I examine the strange economics of the online “make money” industry. Traditional companies protect valuable know-how and use it to create better products, reduce costs, and build competitive advantages. Online, however, successful practitioners often become teachers selling their meth...

What happens when “small happiness” becomes a product? In this episode, I explore the rise of minimalist, low-income lifestyle vlogs that transform modest daily routines into carefully crafted aesthetics. Simple meals, old apartments, quiet walks, and ordinary evenings become symbols of a supposedly richer inner life. Drawing on Nietzsche’s concept of the “Last Man,” I examine a curious paradox: p...

Has being harmless become a modern virtue? In this episode, I explore why calm, agreeable, non-confrontational personalities are increasingly rewarded on social media and YouTube. There is nothing wrong with kindness or peaceful living, but being harmless is not necessarily the same as being good. Real conviction can create conflict, ambition can look uncomfortable, and meaningful action often inv...

When you become independent, working harder is not always the right answer. In this episode, I explore why freelancers and small business owners eventually need the ability to stop creating unnecessary work. Early on, taking massive action helps build experience and judgment. But after enough learning, the real skill becomes knowing when to act, when to wait, and what not to do. Being busy is not...