Yesterday I was a panellist in a round table discussion about the challenges of cross cultural career development chaired by Tomoyuki Sakurai. Sakurai-san previously ran the cross cultural engineering party which I was unfortunately unable to attend. About 100 predominantly Japanese people attended, and a large number said they were considering working for a foreign companies or 外資系. This is the first time I have been in a panel, or presented in any capacity, in-front of a large group and I was pretty nervous. The other panellist included Jim Grisanzio, Toshiharu Harada, Gosuke Miyashita, Iwasa Takuma and Hiroumi Mitani who did live translation from English to Japanese. The main message I wanted to get across was that it is possible for most Japanese to work in foreign companies.