A young American businesswoman discovers life inside a Japanese corporation. Armed with a new degree in Japanese studies, plenty of youthful idealism, and a can-do attitude, a young woman accepts a job as the first American trainee at Honda's headquarters in Tokyo. Her image of Japanese corporate life is dramatically challenged on her first day at work when she is issued a blue polyester uniform--a uniform worn only by women! With good humor and accessible prose, Laura Kriska relates her journey through the company, from serving tea to executives and cleaning the boss's desk to a stint in public relations and developing training classes for Japanese associates going to America. The reader is rooting for Kriska as she recounts her struggle to adapt to--and ultimately thrive in--the culture of a traditional Japanese company. Shortly before her departure, she comes full circle by introducing a successful campaign to make women's uniforms optional. Now with a new foreword by the author, The Accidental Office Lady is a vivid and valuable firsthand account not only of corporate Japan and the gender inequality that persists within it, but of an outsider's successful attempt to work within cultural boundaries to affect organizational change.

Discover how this leader-focused approach to understanding, managing, and maximizing organizational diversity and inclusion can increase employee retention and productivity. Workplace misunderstandings lead to lost revenue, lost time, and increased legal risk, thus your success in the marketplace will depend on our ability to collaborate across difference. Yet, inevitably, Us versus Them gaps disrupt workplace efficiency. In The Business of WE, cross-cultural consultant and diversity expert Laura Kriska will: Provide a practical roadmap for creating trust with others who are culturally different from yourself Help you create a WE mindset throughout your organization, bringing teams together into cohesive units. Walk you through the steps in fostering a workplace that is inclusive and respectful of all employees—one of the most critical, yet most widely mismanaged keys to success. Stakeholders are demanding real change, and nothing less than comprehensive solutions that lead to meaningful and lasting solutions will suffice. The Business of WE arrives just in time to help you stop Us versus Them gaps before they start and foster authentic connections across race, ethnicity, religion, age, and any other factor of identity to exponentially strengthen your entire organization.

One Sunday evening, a friend asked if he could stop by. Over a bottle of wine - I don't remember if it was red or white - he suggested that my husband, Rick Kriseman, should run for the St. Petersburg City Council. That conversation changed the course of our lives. Six years on the City Council led to six years in the state House of Representatives and then two four-year terms as mayor of Florida's fifth largest city. That conversation let to eight elections and 22 years in public life for Rick - and for me, the accidental first lady of St. Petersburg, a life on the front lines and behind the scenes of local politics.

This book reviews employment and leisure trends in Japan from the post-war era to the present. In addition, it also examines how these trends will affect tourism destinations and businesses that rely heavily on Japanese overseas tourism. Topics that are of particular interest to readers include the most current Japanese employment and leisure data and how the data compares with the earlier, postwar era that made up the boom-years of Japanese overseas travel. The latest data provides insight into how today’s working and living conditions in Japan impact overseas travel expenditures today. Readers, ranging from academics to business practitioners, will benefit from the book that provides the latest information that can be used in a practical manner to assist tourism-related businesses and organizations meet the current and future needs of the Japan overseas travel market.

'Snapping and Wrapping' represents an original study in Japanese visual culture, pictorial communication, and photographic studies. Vernacular visual culture is highlighted, stressing ordinary people and everyday life to explore photographic expressions of Japanese family life. The theme of “how people looked” is described from two closely related perspectives: how people appeared in their own photographs, and how people looked at specific features of their own lives with analog camera technology. The book includes unexamined material based on a qualitative study involving personal fieldwork undertaken between 1993 and 2009. The metaphor of “wrapping culture” (Hendry) is suggested for ways of interpreting relationships of personal family photographs in conjunction with acknowledged cultural influences and values of Japanese culture. Across an introduction and six chapters, the book covers a series of research topics evoked by efforts to recover, repair, and return millions of photographs to survivors following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Memory, privacy and kinds of information control are reviewed as parts of strategies of sharing pictures, “presence” and the use of photographs for interpersonal interaction and communication. Throughout the monograph, emphasis is placed on understanding details of analog personal photography for potential comparisons to the intensely popular digitalization of photographic recordings and, in turn, facilitate making informed speculations for future photographic practice. This book will be of interest to upper-level students, graduate students and scholars in the fields of media and culture, Asian Studies (especially Japanese visual culture), as well as those working on sensitive relationships of family, memory and representation.

Our lives are a fraught with accidents. The Dictionary defines an accident as a noun; "an accident is undesirable or an unfortunate happening. An unintentional happening that most commonly results in harm, casualty or loss. Accidental is an adjective described as; happening by chance, or accident, or an event not planned." Every day we experience an accident, with luck the event is minor. David Black found himself the object of a number of accidental happenings, some of his own making. What he needed was an actual event of his own making to appear as an accident, little did he know what the outcome would be? Detective Inspector Les Steele is involved in three incidents involving two accidental deaths and two suicides. Are they accidents? Only his perseverance and intelligence will provide the answer. He is sidetracked when a murder takes place that is neither an accident nor accidental. The Detective Inspector is given the task of solving all four cases. Will the Assassin escape the long arm of the law?