Account of Residence in Czech Republic

Essay
Account of Residence in Czech Republic
NOMURA Norifumi

1. Introduction
I was assigned to work for KYB Manufacturing Czech
s.r.o (hereinafter "KMCZ") as an expatriate for five years
between April 2016 and April 2021. Before the assignment, I had been involved in the shock absorber (SA)-related quality support operation in Japan for overseas sites
and in charge of ASEAN projects even while I had been
preparing for the assignment. Actually, I had never been
to KMCZ before. Although I had to begin my work forKMCZ rather suddenly with no specific information
available, home is where you make it. I eventually developed personally thanks to a variety of experiences overthose five years.
Looking back, I will outline my life there. You know
many predecessors who had been sent to the Czech Republic have already talked about tourist attractions andlocal cuisine, but there are still many other interesting
places and stories. I hope you enjoy reading my essay.

2. Information about Czech Republic
Before 1993, the Czech Republic used to be part ofCzechoslovakia along with its current neighbor Slovakia.
I remember in my childhood the Czech ambassador stepping onto the Sumo wrestling ring on the last day of eachtournament (Senshuraku) and read out loud "hyo-sho-jo,
anta-wa-erai !" in Japanese (meaning "congratulations,
you are the winner") while handing a huge Bohemianglass cup to the champion. Bohemian glass is still one of
the famous specialty products of the Czech Republic.
Featuring high transparency and hardness, Bohemianglass used to be used for the stained glass in churches andis popularly used in a wide range of applications including flower vases and drinking glasses.
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country borderedby Germany to the west, Poland to the north, Austria tothe south, and Slovakia to the southeast. Located in thecenter of Europe, the country is at a latitude roughly
equivalent to Hokkaido. It is very cold in winter. In middle February, the temperature is below -10°C for several
consecutive days. When I was in the Czech Republic, I
always stayed indoors on weekends during the winterseason, except going out for shopping, to spend comfortable hours in warm rooms where the temperature wascontrolled by a central heating system. On the contrary,
the summer is comfortable with low humidity. You canspend the season without using air conditioners just by
keeping the windows open.
The summer in the Czech Republic is the best season todrink beer. In front of restaurants on the street you cansee tables, chairs and parasols where people can enjoy
talking with their family and friends with a glass of beerin one hand. Speaking of beer, the Czech Republic isnumber one in the world in per capita beer consumption.
Of course, the small country cannot be top in total beer
consumption, but scores far ahead of others in per capita
consumption. When I walked by a restaurant or bar in theearly morning, I sometimes happened to see a beer tanktruck parked alongside the building supplying more andmore beer to the restaurant or bar. That made me understand how much beer customers drank in the restaurant
last night. I recognized anew that Czechs really loved
beer every time I saw such a scene.
The word Czech may also remind you of some famoustraditional towns including several World Heritage sites.
Not only in Prague, but also near Pardubice where I lived,
there are many famous tourist sites such as Kutna Hora.
The town used to prosper with silver mines and is still
dotted with gorgeous traditional buildings.
Among them, the Church of St. Barbara and the Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec are particularly well-known.
The Church of St. Barbara has Gothic architecture fromthe 13th to 15th centuries with various statues and paintings decorated inside the church. The historical building
has three roofs at the center, around which there are several pointed columns.
The Cathedral of Our Lady at Sedlec is internally decorated using the bones of about 10,000 people. When you
step into the cathedral, it is cool even during summer andmay feel a little dusty. On the front of the gate there is anemblem. Inside the cathedral you can see a chandelier
and several decorations on the wall. All of them are madeof bones! You may be astonished by this way of using
human bones, something that never happens in Japan.
Pardubice, where the KMCZ plant is located, is in East
Bohemia and 100 km east of Prague. A famous event inthis city is Velká pardubická, which is a cross-country― 48 ―KAYABA TECHNICAL REVIEW No. 64 APR. 2022

horserace or steeplechase held in October every year.
Many tourists from everywhere in Europe visit the city toenjoy the race with a glass of wine in hand.
During my expat assignment in the Czech Republic, I
lived in the center of Pardubice. I often ate at the plaza
where the city hall was located or visited old castles nearby. The city hall was in a traditional building that hadbeen renovated. The building exterior was decorated andlit up at night during seasonal events, which is popularamong the citizens.
In addition, the Czech Republic has many other various
tourist spots. Most Japanese tourists typically enter theCzech Republic from Prague and then travel to Austria
via Český Krumlov.

Photo 1

Currently, on the west side of the KMCZ plant is aloading dock to receive and ship finished products including tubes. Nearby is a storage space for finished products.
To the southwest are tube/rod machining lines and partwarehouses. The expanded area was mainly used as a finished product yard and a preliminary machining space.
To the east of the plant are an internal valve assemblyline, a standard SA assembly line, and a strut SA assembly line. The production system is designed to transfer
finished products to the finished product yard to the west.
KMCZ has about 700 employees. They work in three
shifts for assembly lines and in four shifts for preliminary machining lines. We set up the Open House in summer and held a Christmas party in winter to allow employees to enjoy themselves with smiling faces, whilethey worked with their serious faces in daily production.

Photo 2

Pardubice City Hall

KMCZ Open House

4. Entertainment
3. KMCZKMCZ in 2016 finished with a plant expansion to thewest (more than doubling from 15 thousand m 2 to 35
thousand m 2) since 2015 and introduced additional assembly lines. The plant had started to increase production since FY2015. With an economic boom in the Czech
Republic from around that time, the country enjoyed anincrease in capital investment and private consumption
year by year. As the jobless rate decreased and wages increased every year, some of the employees retired from
KMCZ and tried to work at another workplace on slightly
more favorable terms. One of my missions during the assignment was to find substitutes for those who retired.
KMCZ introduced another manual production line forassembling single-cylinder gas SAs and standard SAs in
August 2016. As the third line, an ST welding and assembly line was introduced to steadily improve the production plan in December 2017. The plant shipped 3.70 million pcs/year in 2014 before the plant expansion increased
the level to 5.70 million pcs/year in 2018. Thereafter, production has increased year by year, although shipments
dropped in 2019 and 2020 partly because of the effect of
the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Czech people really like to do outdoor activities. Onweekends they often go hiking in the mountains, cycling,or inline skating with their family. When I was there, wealso played golf on weekends. On golf courses, we often
found that the husband of a typical Czech family wasplaying golf and his wife and children were walking theirdogs following the husband. I was moved by the fact thatCzechs really loved to be in nature with their family.
Sport is also a Czech favorite. The popularity of tennis
may be well known to Japanese. In particular, in women's
tennis, several Czech players are ranked high in theworld. Many readers may have heard the names Barbora
Krejcikova and Karolina Pliskova. News of their performance was reported by Czech television almost everyday. It reminds me that a Czech woman won the gold
medal in both skiing and snowboarding in the winterOlympics, which was quite before though. The prominence of Czech women in the world of sport is remarkable.

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Account of Residence in Czech Republic

Photo 3Kunětická golf course

Photo 4 A game of ice hockey

5. Ice Hockey

6. Czech FoodIce hockey is very popular among Czechs with multiple
active professional leagues. In Pardubice, where there is a
professional hockey team, the arena is packed for every
game with fans in the team's uniform and they roar on theteam regardless of whether it is winning or losing. It waseasy to figure out when a hockey game was held just by
hearing the chanting on the street. I went to the arena towatch hockey games several times. In these games I saw
players battling with each other for the puck or charging
into each other. They had a fight once in a while. Unfortunately, I could never clearly see the scoring moment
when I was watching a hockey game. Instead, I enjoyed
the scoring scene by noting it with the scoring lamp andbeep sound as an instant fan.
Hockey is a national sport for Czechs. They play hockey on a skate rink from childhood. Even during summer,
they enjoy playing ground hockey using a stick similar tothat used for ice hockey. In the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, the semifinal game was the Czech Republicagainst Russia. Although the Czech Republic finally lost,Czech staff members in KMCZ were always checking
what was going on in the game via the Internet or the liketo share information with each other, putting work to oneside.
If you tell a Czech person that you are from Japan, you
may be asked "Which part of Japan?". Since the Czech
national hockey team won the gold medal in the Nagano
1998 Winter Olympics, the word ‘Japan’ reminds them ofNagano. In spite of being a hockey superpower, the Czech
team had only ever won the silver medal, and it had been
beaten by Russia many times. In Nagano in 1998, theCzechs were especially happy when the national teamwon the gold medal by beating Russia in the final. Thisbig event for Czechs did happen at Nagano in Japan. If
you talk about the Nagano Olympics, you can get friendly
with Czechs very quickly.

I am often asked "What is typical Czech food?" One ofthe popular lunchtime dishes in KMCZ was Schnitzel,
thin slices of chicken or pork that are fried. It tastes similar to cutlets in Japan. Japanese expatriates often asked
the kitchen to dress Schnitzel with pork cutlet sauce andenjoyed eating it with rice. Neighboring countries including Austria and Germany also have the same dish. Schnitzel is typically served along with potato in these countries.
A kind of beef stew originating in Hungary called Goulash is another typical lunch dish. When you are in a restaurant anywhere in the Czech Republic, you can always
find Goulash on the menu. This national food is a little bitsalty compared to beef stew in Japan and is often servedwith steamed bread. I privately recommend Goulashsoup in a bowl made of bread.
The next cuisine I want to introduce is Beef Steak Tartare; I do not know if you like it though. Japanese, including me, tend to have difficulty ordering this food at a restaurant because they cannot pronounce it correctly. SteakTartare is like beef yukhoe seasoned with spices and garlic. You can put grated garlic on a piece of well-baked
bread and then add an appropriate portion of Tartare on
the bread before eating. Czechs, whether they are men orwomen, cram it into their mouths without caring about
the smell of garlic. I do not know how your stomach will
be next day if you eat Tartare too much.
Typical drinks in the Czech Republic include Kofola, akind of carbonated drink. As the name implies, this is aCzech version of cola. It is said that Kofola originatedduring the time of Czechoslovakia when people mimicked cola. This slightly carbonated drink smells a little
bit like lemon. I thought at first that it was just cola withlemon that had gone flat, but I gradually became used tothe taste. It is definitely a national drink along with beer.

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8. COVID-19 Pandemic in Europe

Photo 5 Steak Tartare

7. Czech Names
I had an opportunity to learn the typical surnames ofCzechs. I want to introduce some of them as their surnames and Japanese counterparts have several things incommon. Some Czech surnames are named after the natural world, such as Kopecky meaning "hill" or "mountain" and Novotony meaning "new". I thought these might
be similar to the popular Japanese surnames Yamamoto(literally meaning "foot of the mountain") and Arai (literally meaning "new well"), respectively. The order ofnames is also common between Czechs and Japanese: thesurname comes first and is followed by the "first name".
This was a story I felt connected me with Czechs.
I almost forgot to say, but Czech surnames for men end
a little bit differently from those for women. Most surnames for men end with "ky" or "y" while those for women end with "a". Kopecky, as mentioned above, will be
Kopecka for women, and Novotony will be Novotona forwomen. Many surnames for women add "ova" to the surnames for men.
I found in KMCZ that a popular name for men was Jan.
In Czech, "ja" is pronounced "ya". Many famous heroes
are called Jan, and this should be popular among today's
people too. However, its nickname is a little bit strange.
Jan is nicknamed Honza, which is quite different fromthe original name. I did not get it at all in the early days of
my stay in the Czech Republic. I remember I sometimes
looked around me trying to find what people were called
as I did not understand what the nickname meant. In addition, Anna, Anicka, Eva, and Evicka were also typicalnicknames. I wondered why they were called by a nickname that was longer than the original name.
Another interesting story about names is that peoplecelebrate their name day on the date corresponding totheir own given name on the calendar. So, Czechs have
two birthdays in one year. At first, I did not understand
why they would celebrate their birthday again as they hadcelebrated it the previous month.

COVID-19 first spread as an epidemic in Italy andSpain a couple of months before the news of Japan's first
infection cases on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship
were reported. Czechs seemed to look upon it as "That's
not my business" in the beginning. However, as Czechs
who had come home back from the designated countries
were infected with the disease, the Czech Republic started to close its borders with neighboring countries and tosuspend air services in March 2020. Various COVID-19control measures including an entry ban for foreigners
were taken to combat the virus in European countries.
KMCZ also took COVID-19 control measures for its
employees. For example, those who had traveled to Italy
or Croatia during their children's school winter holidays
were recommended to voluntarily isolate. In order tocope with the problem of shortages of masks and disinfectants, the company placed orders for these goods early.
It also changed the scheduled period of business trips of
employees and meant those who had been sent to a foreign country had to come home before the suspension ofinternational air services.
The situation rapidly deteriorated thereafter and wasfollowed by a lockdown. Some customers planned plant
shutdowns, and KMNA suspended production in April
2020. During the lockdown, all shops except food markets, gas stations and drug stores were closed. With norestaurants open, I had difficulty in getting food as I livedalone. Other control measures included a night curfew
from 9 o'clock at night to 6 o'clock the next morning. The
lighting in shops on the streets was turned off and nobody was walking on the street. Even the downtown area
was quiet.
After that, the restrictions were relaxed in phases as thenumber of newly infected patients had changed. A cycleof lifting the ban and the spread of infection was repeatedover and over again. During this period, the entry of foreigner tourists was prohibited, greatly impacting thetourism and food service industries.
I had the opportunity to visit Prague on business during the period of relaxed restrictions. The city, which had
usually been crowded with tourists, was quiet and nobody was on the famous Charles Bridge (Karluv most) oron the road on the other side of the river. It felt strange theway the city was different from usual, but the scenery
was still beautiful.
KMCZ also had a difficult time and struggled to secure
the personnel necessary for production during the pandemic because of the increased number of newly infectedpatients. Some employees were infected and some others
were identified as persons who had close contact with patients and were asked not to report to work. COVID-19
may still be advancing or retreating. I hope the pandemic
will be over soon.

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Account of Residence in Czech Republic

Photo 6Prague, photographed from Letná Parks

9. In Closing
I returned to Japan after finishing with my five-year
term of residence in the Czech Republic. Now I can see
what difficulties my colleagues may have had during
their expat assignments in foreign countries.

During my assignment in the Czech Republic, I learned
a lot about corporate management as I served as site manager and was involved in management that I had neverexperienced in Japan. The experience of living in anotherculture also gave me a good opportunity to change myway of looking at things that I had never previously
doubted. Particularly as I experienced living in two countries (before living in the Czech Republic, as I had been
assigned to the U.S.A.), I can now compare the people,
culture and economy of those countries with those of Japan, which helps me think I am a better person. I reallyappreciate being given such opportunities.
I would like my colleagues, if they have an opportunity
to work overseas, to absorb another culture while they
live in the country in addition to their daily work in Japan.
Finally, I would like to thank all those who supported
me when I lived overseas. I am committed to continuously doing my best for the development of KMCZ.

Author 
NOMURA Norifumi
Joined the company in 1992.
General Manager of Quality
Management Dept., Quality Div.
Took present post after working in
SA Quality Assurance Dept.,
expatriate in the U.S., ProductPlanning Dept., and expatriate in theCzech Republic.

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