Encounter with EMI

After the Project Rosetta, there was an assignment to work as a backfill of the Japanese business analyst in EMI Music in Japan. It was said to be a three-month assignment until EMI find the permanent staff to fill the role. As the role required fluent Japanese, I was ask to prove that my Japanese is good.

Well, how can you prove your native language skill?

The easiest way was to speak to the current Japanese BA in Japanese, and that is how the telephone interview was done. Now my long business trip was confirmed.

The company was very understanding and allowed to bring my daughter along to Tokyo. Leaving my husband behind in KL, I left for Tokyo in March 2006. Sakura was beautiful then.

The SAP project there was 6 months before the go-live, but the most of the development was ready and testing and data migration were taking place.

I even helped EMI to look for candidates for the permanent staff, but they could not find the qualified one.

So the assignment was extended another three months. Then coincidentally my husband was asked to come back to Japan though not in Tokyo but Osaka. Knowing my family was coming back to Japan by chance, I was offered to take that position permanently. The previous employer Diagonal did not have a Japan office so that I could not continue working for them. So Diagonal and EMI agreed to transfer me from one and the other. Now I worked for EMI Music HQ in London and stationed in Tokyo.

Since I loved music passionately, working for a music company was such a fortunate opportunity. Doing SAP for EMI seemed to me a perfect solution. However, this started my weekly trip between Tokyo and Kobe where my family settled for husband's new appointment. EMI allowed me to work from home twice a week and take a bullet train every week, so that I became a premium customer of Japan Railway ever since.

The project went live successfully in Sep 2006 and I took over the support and maintenance work. At the same time, I started to study BATIC (Bookkeeping and Accounting Test for International Communication) taking an opportunity working in Japan. I strongly felt that I needed to study accounting properly to excel in FI/CO. That was the beginning of a long journey.