Hotel Asia Center of Japan Minato

We are finally here in japan. After leaving at 4 in the morning to get to the airport it was a long day with us not reaching our accommodation til about 10'oclock here (which for you people in melbourne is 12o'clock) The plane trip was long Anthony slept for a little bit, i think i had 30 min. Lee found a friend on our first flight a little girl named Jessica who decided it would be a fnatastic idea to write her name and draw a spider on his hand. Anthony finally got what he wanted at the gol...

Hello Japan! We made it! Our bus driver greeted us once we made it through customs.. the sign read "Bentley Collrge".. so cute. It was a 1.5 hour drive from the airport as we hit some traffic getting into Tokyo. We passed Tokyo Disney on the way (they have a Magic Kingdom castle there too, and this amazingly huge resort hotel right next to it.. it's massive). Tokyo looked very much like any city as we approached it, but as we got onto the streets, they reminded me of a mix between NYC, San Fr...

So I am writing this under the influence of a few sips of sake so there's no telling what may come of it. Most of my photos didn't get uploaded.. not sure if it is a connection problem, but I promise I'll get them all up on Facebook eventually so you won't miss anything good. Today I woke up at 5:30am.. gotta love the jetlag! I couldn't fall back asleep so I got on the computer for a little while, then read, then showered and headed down to breakfast. It was a buffet at the hotel and I had ha...

What a day! Started out with our first class session meeting w/Nobi, the President of Japan Laser. He was so nice and kind to give us his time to talk w/us. We had free time for lunch and I finally got my ramen noodles. I didn't slurp them, but they sure were tasty. I walked around a bit and killed some time on the computer before our next meeting. Off to the subway we go for our meeting at Sumitomo - one of the largest corporations in Japan. The subway was a fun experience. Lots of great sig...

So the morning started out by getting up at 4am so we could go to the famous Fish Market. As it turns out, it's closed on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, which today happened to be.. go figure! We had already called 3 cabs by the time we figured this out and then had to pay them 400 Yen each (about $4) for the cancellation fee. Not that big of a deal. At least we didn't get all the way down there. So we went back up to our rooms to catch some more sleep. Of course at this point I'm wide awake...

So our day started a bit early this morning as we needed to travel farther outside of Tokyo to visit the Oppama Plant of Nissan (yes, that's Oppama, not Obama). This required riding the subway in the heat of rush hour traffic... oh my. I can only equate it to getting on the green line after a Sox game (minus the drunk college kids). These people pack into the trains so tightly, but they are so calm and gentle about it. And just when you think there's no way anyone else would try to get on the...

What a LONG day. It started at 4:15am as we headed over to the fish market. We were advised to stay single file or nor more than two across as we walked because they don't care that you are there and will run you over... that was the best advise we got because it was so true. They were driving around in these little carts and we were basically invisible. Got to see some really interesting fish (some still alive). And then the auction for the salmon. These fish were HUGE. The guy doing the auc...

Today was probably the most shopping I have ever done in one day. We were advised to start at Omote-sando, just a few stops away from our hotel. We started early (so early in fact that we had to wait until 11 for the shops to open). I went with 2 of my classmates and we were on the hunt for jewelry, bags, and shoes. I wasn't interested in clothes.. not that I didn't love some of the stuff they had there, they just didn't have anything in my size. The stores were interesting.. they only had 1-...

We started our day by joining the ranks of the rush hour traffic on the subway on our way to Pfizer. It was a beautiful day... the weather was just perfect with low humidity and bright sunshine. We enjoyed lunch and then went to Price Waterhouse Coopers. Most of the class struggled to stay awake despite the entertaining Texan who was presenting to us. That was the hard part of the day... the rest was a blast. We went over to the Kabuki Theater in Tokyo. Kabuki is similar to Shakespeare... the...

So today was our last schoolwork day. We met with two different people in the morning at the hotel. First, we had two men from the US Chamber of Commerce and then a Japanese woman who started her own HR company, first in the US and now runs it in Japan as well. She was very inspiring and I enjoyed her presentation a lot. We grabbed a quick bite for lunch and then we were off to our last presentation - The Gartner Group. This one was painful to get through because the room was close to 80 degr...