私の周りのMany seniors were worried about me and gave me a lot of advice, for example.
“You may not be able to return to being an engineer anymore, so decline.”
“I wouldn’t go to Poland”
From their point of view, it seemed that my boss ordered me to be a victim.
However, as time went by, I moved to the Export Department three years after joining the company.
Until it was time to go to Poland, I was in charge of exporting to South Africa. However, few orders come from South Africa. It was a boring time that was completely different from when I was an engineer.
Occasionally, when an order came in, it was only a parts order for tens of thousands of yen. I had a lot of free time, and I used to read books about exports that I bought myself.
Seniors sometimes took me to freight forwarders and went to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry to apply for export approval. Whenever we went out, we almost always stopped at a coffee shop.
At that time, I was wondering if this was an export job.
When I was working as an engineer in a factory, I was constantly thinking about design with a lot of electronic circuit drawings in my head. However, after moving to the export department, when an order was placed, I only had to write a single ordering instruction by hand in order to arrange it at the factory.
It’s boring.
However, once or twice a month, the general manager of the medical device division sometimes came to the export division.
At that time, he always talked to me.
“Sato, make some tea”
He asked, drinking the tea I made,
“What are you doing now?”
He might have been a little worried because he was the one who moved me from the engineering department to the export department at the headquarters to send me to Poland.
However, one day, the business manager called me by phone. The export department I belonged to was on the 7th floor of the head office, and the general manager was on the 9th floor.
This business manager was a little petite, but he was a terrible person who yelled loudly at the manager and the section chief.
When I was called and went to the 9th floor, I saw the general manager yelling at the manager. By the way, the general manager was a person who will become a director next time, and was like the president of the medical device business.
After getting angry with the manager, the general manager told me to go for a coffee.
On the first basement floor, there was a small coffee shop where ordinary office workers go for a break. At that point, the general manager and I went in and sat down at a small table.
So he said to me:
“Mr. Sato, why do you think Toshiba hired you? Well, there are about 600 people joining the company at the same time.
Toshiba’s top people are hoping for some people who can do tens of billions of dollars in business.
Think of anything as if you were the president. ”
With these words, I decided the direction of my life.
Although I broke up from the engineer, I was wondering how to live when I put myself in the place of the export department where I can do overseas business.
I didn’t really understand why this general manager took me to a coffee shop and said this.
The managers and section chiefs around me seemed to be wondering why the general manager was talking to me intimately.
Since then, I’ve been jokingly asked:
“Do you know any of Toshiba’s top people?”
“Are you a relative of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato or something?”

At that time, on purpose
“I’m not going to talk about that. I’m sorry.” I said.