Aaron is Asia Regional Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble.
Japanese language education
Secondary:
Studied Japanese for five years at Lynfield College, Auckland in the mid-1990s, receiving a scholarship to study Japanese at the Tokyo Dome Foreign Language Institute. At the end this trip Aaron sat and passed Level 3 of the Japanese Language Proficiency test.
Tertiary:
Completed conjoint Bachelor of Arts and Commerce degree at the University of Auckland.
Motivation to begin Japanese
Aaron’s curiosity to try something different led him to study Japanese in his first year at high school and then joined a sister city exchange to Fukuoka in 1995. He was then hooked on the country and culture having made some lifelong friendships in Japan.
Skills gained and current employment
Through his university studies, Aaron has gained skills in speaking and writing Japanese alongside an in-depth knowledge of Japanese culture and society. Aaron has used his Japanese regularly in his job as an Asia Regional Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble. This role has involved him overseeing brand marketing strategies together with the on-the-ground team in Tokyo and Kobe. Aaron has also worked with Japanese companies who are expanding into other parts of Asia.
Aaron believes that his Japanese language knowledge gave him the strong grounding in characters/kanji that enabled him to gain both spoken and written proficiency in Mandarin during a 6yr stint in China.
In the future, he plans to continue to leverage his Japanese skills to grow businesses and brands throughout Asia. Aaron could also see himself exploring his own business in the tourism industry where his grounding in Japanese studies and language would be a key success driver.
Trips to Japan
As well as having lived in Tokyo for one year while at the Tokyo Dome Foreign Language Institute, in the past ten years Aaron has travelled back and forth to Japan extensively for business.
He is also an international rugby referee who in the last two years has refereed four of Japan’s Rugby World Cup 2015 qualification matches, where his language skills were put to good use on the field!