Mr Bitar joined me in my department at Mitsubishi.He was very friendly person. Before he joined he got Japanese language training in the USA. He had dripped out of PhD program at Princeton and name to Mitsubishi after that. The got a few hours of training in spoken Japanese in America become coming to Japan.
From the very first day he started saying ‘Hai. Wakalimashita. and vigorously needed his head. That impressed me a lot. By the third year be remained the same.
Japanese staff and my Bucho, Kacho were pleased too. One day my Kacho sounded that it was obvious that I had no ability in language learning, and the company decided me to transfer me to America. I took Japanese Proficiency Level 1 test that year and passed. A rare achievement. Virtually impossible for Caucasians.
Remarks on my lack of Japanese language continued. In the staff me vocal were Susuzi san and Tanatani san. Those days a research was going on a monkey at Nagoya University for one language skills and he was much better than Suzuki, Takatani, Sawai and others.
Sugoi ne was commonly uttered this days.
A Caucasian guy once told me Japan was strange. On appearance Japanese rated him perfect 10, but he thought he was 2 or 3. I guess this strange behavior is still going on.