Transcription gets even messier when more than two languages are involved. Russian uses the Polianov system as a "cyrillization" method. It's neither Hepburn nor Kunrei-shiki, which can be confusing if you are a Russian Language learner and know Japanese or English.
Some Japanese words entered Russian not directly, but through English. In these cases, the word is first romanized using Hepburn, and then adapted to Russian using English-to-Russian rules. A classic example is 寿司, which Polianov would render as суси (susi), but Russians mostly know as суши (sushi). Then there are words which actually do faithfully follow Polianov, as in 新宿, which is written as Синдзуку (Sindzuku) instead of Шинджуку (Shinjuku).
Another example of JP→EN→RU is Nintendo's character Yoshi:
By Polivanov, it should have become "Ёси" but since it came to RU via EN, it is written as "Йоши".
しんじゅく (Cиндзюку, Sindzyuku) is an interesting case, as it has both し and じゅ in it. This is where Polivanov is similar to Kunrei. OTOH, Fukushima is cyrillized as Фукусима (Fukusima), where the ふ is a fu in Hepburn, hu in Kunrei and fu in Polivanov but し is not shi as in Hepburn, but si as in Kunrei.
Unfortunately, this is not just a problem limited to Berlin :-( [1][2]
It's been an absolute mess trying to secure my wife's settlement permit ("Niederlassungserlaubnis"). She has a german Master's degree, works in a government-funded research facility, and has been in the system since December 2022. We've now been ghosted for 14 months, only to be told to make an appointment to provide additional documents (which were not on the 'required documents' list they initially handed to us). After checking the appointment booking website to no avail, I came up with a python script that sends a notification to our phones when a new appointment pops up. It took 40 days of scraping until a new free appointment was available, only to be allowed to provide paper documents in person.
Adding to that, every six months, her employer threatens to fire her if she can't prove her legal status in Germany. So she's constantly jumping through hoops to get this temporary paper permit called "Fiktionsbescheinigung" just to keep her job. It's a hassle, costs €13 each time, and involves cycling through multiple unhelpful bureaucrats at the Ausländerbehörde's hotline (they do not answer emails) until finding one that very reluctantly produces this document.
Poor UX for medical systems is something that has always baffled me. I used to work for one of the major CT system manufacturers (although on the firmware end of things). I never understood why a hospital would willingly pay a seven figures price tag for a medical imaging system that comes with an early 90s GUI.
Ultimately, it is not the radiologists or technologists who make this decision. From a purely technical point of view, modern systems hardly differ from each other, at least as far as diagnosis is concerned. The fact that a better UX means new users need less training and the time between scan and diagnosis is reduced are hardly taken into account when making a purchase decision.
Many German companies (BMW, Siemens, Bosch, BASF, ...) historically cooperate with unions like "IG Metall". Unions win benefits for their members, but companies usually pass these benefits on to all employees. These benefits typically include: 35-hour work week, regular and performance-independent salary increases for all employees, at least 6 weeks of vacation per year, parental leave beyond the legal minimum, training and job placement if your current job is eliminated, etc. If you are a developer working for one of these companies, the union contracts will always affect you, even if you are not a union member.
It is hard to tell if you are in a better or worse situation as a developer when you work in such a company. Many employees in such companies would like to have a 40-hour week, because that would result in higher pay. Unions, however, push to allow 40-hour weeks only to a small percentage of the workforce on the grounds that if the workload is higher, it should be compensated by new hires instead of overtime for existing employees, since more employees also means more union members and thus more power for unions.
Some Japanese words entered Russian not directly, but through English. In these cases, the word is first romanized using Hepburn, and then adapted to Russian using English-to-Russian rules. A classic example is 寿司, which Polianov would render as суси (susi), but Russians mostly know as суши (sushi). Then there are words which actually do faithfully follow Polianov, as in 新宿, which is written as Синдзуку (Sindzuku) instead of Шинджуку (Shinjuku).