In Japan–Vietnam collaboration, the one thing that reliably breaks the schedule every year is the New Year holiday. Both countries take their longest break of the year around then — but the structure of the break differs, and that rarely gets said out loud.
The dates are fixed differently
Japan's year-end break runs on the solar calendar and is effectively fixed. Government offices close from 29 December to 3 January. Companies shift it slightly, but it lands at nearly the same time, for nearly the same length, every year. Nobody checks the dates when planning next year, because there is nothing to check.
Vietnamese Tet follows the lunisolar calendar, so it moves. Some years it falls in late January, others in mid-February. The classic accident is the Japanese side setting a deadline without having looked up that year's Tet.
Official holiday and actual absence are two different things
There is a second difference that doesn't show up in the numbers.
Japan's year-end break restarts quickly. People come in on 4 or 5 January and are back to roughly normal output that same day.
Tet does not work that way. The official holiday is around five days, but many people travel to their home provinces, and a one-way trip taking a full day is unremarkable. The days before are spent preparing to travel; the days after are spent on new-year visits. Output returns gradually. The length of the holiday on the calendar does not match the length of the period when work actually stops.
This is not slackness. It follows from a social structure in which many people see their family exactly once a year.
What to do about it
Three things we actually do:
- Share the Tet dates early. Not in January — in the autumn of the previous year, timed to when the Japanese side builds its fiscal-year plan.
- Put no deadlines near Tet. Shade two weeks before and two weeks after as a no-milestone zone on the plan from the start. Leaving the space is far cheaper than renegotiating later.
- Ban releases immediately before Tet. If something breaks, there is a good chance nobody is around to handle it. Push releases to the second week after the break.
Remember the other side's holiday
One last thing, outside the mechanics.
Fewer Japanese managers than you'd expect manage to say "have a good Tet" to their Vietnamese colleagues. And there is no Japanese person who isn't pleased to be wished 良いお年を by a Vietnamese colleague.
Knowing when the other person's year ends is, by itself, message enough.