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Today is Japan Wal-Mart day but first we had to get there. Apparently we left right at the rush hour because we saw Tokyo’s infamous train station crowds. Our experience included the white-gloved train attendants who were prepared to shove the crowds into the trains so the doors can close. We arrived a little early so it seemed like we were in a little danger until our train showed up. When a train arrived, it was just like getting caught in a flood people who were clogging the escalators up to the exits. Our group had to hide behind a concrete pillar so we wouldn’t get washed away by crowds from arriving trains. Fortunately, the train we boarded wasn’t as crowded as some of the others that we saw and we were able to ride comfortably which is fine by me.

Our contact today was Mike Bratcher one of Wal-Mart’s high level executives in Japan. In December 2002, Wal-Mart bought a 37.7% share of Seiyu, Japan’s struggling number five retailer and is in the process of getting their operations up to Wal-Mart standards. The company will still be called Seiyu for the time being and Wal-Mart won’t extend their brand unless they can function with the Wal-Mart quality and price. Seiyu can’t simply lower prices in the same manner Wal-Mart currently does since it does not have a cost structure to support it. Seiyu still has a brand equity of trust as well and Wal-Mart believes that it can leverage that brand name until it can make the name change to Wal-Mart. Seiyu’s market problems in combination with Seiyu’s president realizing a need to change the direction of his company greatly aided Wal-Mart’s efforts in Japan.

Mike talked a lot about differences in culture that makes doing business difficult. To emphasize the point, he asked what he had done in our meeting that would be considered mistakes in a meeting with Japanese people. Some of the examples he cited were, no detailed meeting agenda, no biographies of the people at the meeting, and a seating arrangement that does not put the people who are in charge in their proper places.

Japanese businesspeople hate to be surprised in a meeting and want to understand what is going on beforehand. Giving them time to read all the relevant information before meeting produces wonders in results. No new information should be brought to a meeting. There is a term called nemowashi that requires everyone to be in agreement on what to be done before the meeting is even held.

Meetings must also always start and end on time and everybody should be given the opportunity to talk. Finally, it must be determined who is the owner of a particular task and when will the task will be done.

This attention to detail is also seen in planning. Not only is planning is a high priority to the Japanese business system but process planning is huge. Unlike in American where we can abstract certain parts of a plan out since we know conditions will change, the Japanese have to understand the whole plan and all the details before they can commit to it. This takes more time but the Japanese more patient, longer term view of business.

The amount of indirect communication used by Japanese businesspeople is very high especially since hard to explicitly say ‘no’. If an American encounters a problem in a meeting, he will come out and express it verbally. However in Japan, one might use a sigh or where they are looking even though they are agreeing with a course of action verbally.

The Japanese are very risk adverse since public failure and the attendant humiliation and loss of face is very bad. Start up experience is not liked here since failure in those businesses is common. No adrenaline junkies need apply. This attitude makes it difficult for American retailers since not everything promoted works. Instead, risk shouldering is a more common tactic used. The risk of failure is shared among many people which is a more acceptable outcome to a new business venture.

Hierarchy is very important. The official lead may not have real decision making power. It is hard to give a differing opinion especially to a superior. You are also not allowed to bypass your superior. Mike recounted a time where they asked one Japanese manager to talk to another manager to get a particular task done. Since the second manager was not in the first managers chain of command, he could not simply have a conversation and complete the task. Rather, he had to spend considerable time working his way around with his chain of command where he could get his message to the appropriate person.

Finally, Mike emphasized the importance of translators. He gave us a though experiment to show the importance of translators. Try to translate the ideas given by one person in the room, restate what they say, to someone else in your own language. If your translators is translating 80% of that ideas, that is good, but a 30% translation rate is bad. To avoid these kinds of problems, give your translators the notes to the meeting just like they were another business attendee. This lets the translator know what they’re talking about when they are translating.

The evening activity is a visit to the famed Kodo drum troupe. We arrived a few hours early to the concert hall since Dr. Stapp had arranged for us to see Kodo warm up and practice some before the evenings concert. Jun Akemoto, manager of North America tours, was our guide at the practice very impressive and very loud.

After the practice we talked with one of the members of the troupe who grew up in Missouri just like Kelli did. He talked about how he joined Kodo. He was trained as a jazz musician but went to the tryouts on the small island off the western coast of Japan where Kodo is based. At the tryouts, they look for general aptitude and spirit. Once you are accepted, you stay on the island for a two year apprenticeship. During that time you run several miles a day, plant rice and do other farm work and also practice music. In addition to drums, you also learn how to play the flute and to sing. After you complete the apprenticeship, there is a one year probationary period where you go on the road and play with the group. If you pass this step, then you are in the group for as long as you want.

The Kodo members are in excellent shape (as many of the ladies in our group noticed) and look like male models. During several of the drum sessions the drummers are wearing nothing but a loincloth. This prompted me to suggest that they drop the drumming and make a Kodo home workout video. I’m sure they could clean up.

Tomorrow, free time in Tokyo!

Today is another busy day for us. Our first stop is the US embassy to discuss trade and other commercial issues with the diplomats here. We will be leaving a little early to have breakfast with Dr. Stapp’s friend.

There were a quite a few police along the streets leading up to the embassy. Dr. Stapp was even stopped by a Japanese police officer as we walked up the main gate of the embassy. Fortunately, Skip was able to get the guards attention and get us through.

Then we began our security check as we entered the main embassy building. We had to walk through a metal detector and our cameras, cell phones or Palm Pilots had to be checked in to avoid bomb threats. Japan’s elections won’t be held for some time so I didn’t worry too much about terrorist threats at this time.

Breakfast was a pleasant surprise. It was mostly your standard American fare, bacon, eggs, hash browns, toast, etc. and we could get our eggs well done. It was, however, staffed by some of the surliest polite people in Japan. “You want bacon with that? Sure, I’ll get your bacon, sir.”

The first meeting of the morning was with Joel Fishel. He gave us a little information on his background and his current position. His undergraduate degree was political science but he also has an MBA. Before his posting to Japan, he spent three years in Beijing and four in Hong Kong. The last two years have been in Japan. Although, he is paid a lower salary than some of his contemporaries back in the US he has some pretty good perks that make up for it. He is required to take a 6 week long vacation in the US so he doesn’t go native. Most of his local expenses are taken care of and he gets COLA for the host country which in the case of Japan is quite large.

Mr. Fishel is a member of the Foreign Commercial Service which is a part of the Department of Commerce and not the Department of State like regular diplomats are. He is responsible for helping American companies operate smoothly in Japan. He is not a trade representative who are sometimes considered the bad guys since he does not have to fight local battles against Japanese government and business interests.

He next gave us a breakdown of who works at the embassy. 35-40% of that embassy staff are diplomats while the rest are becoming increasing more law enforcement oriented. Common concerns are drugs, smuggling, terrorism, and counterfeiting. Of the approximately 600 people who work for the US government in only 60 perform commercial work.

Then he began to talk about why Japan is still a very important player in the world economy in spite of the growth of China. There is still lot of wealth in this country and will be for a long time. Currently, Japan is 2nd globally in terms of total wealth. The second reason is that it is much easier to do business in Japan now than 20 years ago. Most tariffs and have gone down but there are still non-tariff barriers such as the various kierestsu and cultural characteristics such as xenophobia and a highly perfectionist attitude that keep foreign competition out.

Revolution/evolution going on in the retail sector was the final thing that Mr. Fishel mentioned. In Japan everybody takes a piece of the profits at every level of the supply chain passing a higher cost to the consumer. The relationships between the members at step of the chain are more important than ultimate price. However, Fishel believes that Japan will look more and more like the West as price becomes more important not only in Japan but globally.

We left Joel to head to the agriculture briefing. We met Clay Hamilton who explained the job of the Agricultural Department in Japan. They are primarily involved in export to Japan issues but they also collect data on trade policy and sanitary issues such as pesticides, BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease), etc.

He had a Power Point presentation ready for us that outlined what the Agricultural Department did and some information about food and Japan. Some of the interesting bullet points about Japan are:
Japan has had some bad food safety scandals which make consumers very concerned about where their food comes from. People like to see their food being made in restaurants and will pay 20-30% if safety can be guaranteed. Store generics are used not as a lower price alternative as they are in the US but as a safer alternative than branded products. The generics have picture and background of the farmers who produced the product to reinforce this image.
Bar scanning of beef in stores and you can find out where it came from and who the parents are. Theoretically one can trace beef back many generations
However, this system only traces the safest beef. These kiosks are in many grocery stores but hardly anybody uses the system
Japan imports 60% of its calories.
Farmers in Japan are aging, less than 2% are under the age of 30.
Japan has half the people but spends almost as much as the US does on food.
Changing demographics are starting to catch up with Japan. They have had to close schools because there are no children to fill them. This is hard to believe from my travels in Japan. I see tons of school groups and lots of pregnant women on the train.
Trying to reduce rice production.
Japanese consumers are very convenience oriented with several chains set up to cater to this. There is a Family Mart, Lawsons, am pm, etc. on every corner, sometimes literally. On one block I saw an am pm convenience store on three of the corners.
Convenience stores are becoming more flexible as well. 7-11, for example, has a truck that comes by to change out its freezer cabinets from breakfast to lunch to dinner foods everyday.
Japan doesn’t allow GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Japanese consumers don’t like GMOs and the laws allows no more that 5% of a food to be genetically modified. This is unlikely to change since retailer’s profit margins are small and can’t risk any losses by introducing new biotech foods.
Chicken is hard to compete against other Asian countries
More health , conscious, more vegetables, yogurt, addition benefits added, etc.
Japanese consumers are demanding more more style in their food. Water bars serving dozens of different brands of water are popping up and groceries are concentrating on making things look better.
Demand for ethnic food is growing, particularly in Asian cuisine and fusion foods where a Japanese twist is added to ethnic foods. An amusing example of this is how Starbucks is replacing many of its coffee based items with green tea. For example, you can get green tea cappucino at Starbucks. Bagels are also another up and coming food.
More value and more choices are appearing. High end/low end stores are appearing within the same company.
Gender roles are changing, more men are cooking.

One of the big topics facing the Agricultural Department is the importation of American beef by Japan since the discovery of BSE. Since that time, Japan has imported its beef from Australia and New Zealand. However, there are working groups between the US and Japan should allow the importation of American beef again by late summer.

Next we had an economics briefing by John Wecker, First Secretary of the Economics Section and Daniel Chen, an intern on his first day. Wecker’s belief is that the Japanese economy picking up after 12 or so years of downswing but he’s not sure if its permanent. As an officer of the US government he wants to encourage Japanese economic growth because Japan is an economic driver for Asia and the world and the US and Japan have shared values such as democracy, Iraqi reconstruction, and regional stability.

Mr. Wecker named three groups that provide suggestions for the various players in the commerce between the US and Japan. They consist of the Economic Partnership for Growth, where sub-cabinet members of both governments discuss common issues, Private Sector Government Committee-non-governmental, creates issues for the Economic Partnership for Growth to discuss and the Regional Reform and Competition Equipment group.

After Mr. Wecker’s overview he answered some questions. Here are a few of the things he discussed:

Telecommunications
NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) the national phone company is still 40% owned by government, which discourages private growth. Since NTT has been deregulated, broadband rate cheapest and fastest in the world. $40/month for 40 Mbps. Yes, 40 Mbps is the number he gave. Wireless expected to grow just as broadband has in the past year or so.

Free Trade
The US wants Japan to get involved with Doha development accord in WTO. They are also working on free trade treaties with Singapore and Mexico, however, they do exclude products they don’t want in their country.

Japan and China and US
US deficit is greater with China now, not with Japan. The pressure has now been turned away from Japan and put on China

Outsourcing
IT outsourcing hasn’t occurred yet in Japan because there isn’t a large pool of Japanese speakers overseas.

Japanese Banking System
Japanese banks have been having problems with bad loans. US thinks Japan should restructure the banking system to discourage bad loans. The Oversights Financial Services Agency (FSA) is the regulatory agency that oversees the banks. It has been pressuring banks to stop giving new loans. However, there has been private/public inbreeding of positions of power. It is common for someone working on the FSA to retire and go to work for a private corporation.
Japan also has unusual reporting rules for its financial statements. No one can understand how footnotes in reports work and this hinders foreign investment.

At lunch, Skip gave us a military briefing. Japan buys a lot of top military hardware from US. It has some of the most advanced aircraft hardware outside of the US. Japan is unusual in that the carrier Kitty Hawk has its base here. The Kitty Hawk is an older carrier with a conventional power plant but the US Navy wants to replace it with a nuclear carrier. Japan is resisting this since it is leery of nuclear power.

Skip finally warned us about the Roppangi are where we’ve been staying. Several bar clients have been slipped mickeys and have been robbed. You have been warned.

After the embassy, we had the rest of the day free so we returned to the hotel to change. After changing we headed out to the next stop of the Akihabara. In one of the subway interchanges, I see a guy in blue came out of the corner of my eye and put his hand on Nhan’s shoulder. It was one of a pair of police officers who had stopped Nhan and had began to ask him questions. All of us almost at once wailed “Alisa!” who had gotten a little ahead of us. She came back and talked with the police to find out what was going on. There was no specific charge, I guess Nhan just looked like a criminal. After showing the police our train passes they let us go. I think the fact that Alisa can speak fluent Japanese really helped us out.

Now for the main event of the day, maybe even the trip, Akihabara. Probably the best way I can describe it is nothing but one long street of BestBuys, CompUSAs, and Circuit Citys interspersed with comic book and fightin’ robot toy stores with the occasional video game arcade thrown in. It was a real gadget geek’s dream.

There, you could find almost any tech you want, cameras, phones, MP3 players, computer components everything. I think we saw some of the smallest computers I have ever seen. I wish I could have picked one of them up since it would have made my travel burden lighter. Everything we saw was slightly ahead of the US but costs 30-40% more than in the States. Since I don’t have a job yet I figured I could wait for a while before I bought something cool.

The first stop we made was at a store called Gamers. It is one of a chain of stores with lots and lots of manga and anime. There were 6 levels of stuff. It started off with a couple of levels of comic books, then a couple of levels of DVDs and video games, and then a couple of levels of toys and card games. None of it made much sense to me since I don’t follow manga but I wished I knew how to read Japanese so I could make sense of it.

The final stop we made was at a local arcade. I guess I’m too used to playing PC games. I just can’t play something that doesn’t have a mouse and a keyboard. I got killed at all the games we played. I wound up playing a few of the older games but at a ¥100 a pop where I didn’t get killed in the first five seconds.

That being said there were some cool games being played there. There was a giant fighting robot game where you sit in the cockpit of one of these machines and fight it out. Several large screens let everybody watch to see what you were doing. I thought about playing this game but I didn’t bring enough money to climb the learning curve and to endure the embarrassment of getting killed repeatedly in front of everyone in the arcade.

After spending a few hours we went to Shibuya (which I pronounced Shi-BOO-YAA! Which made it sound more fun.) I think all of Tokyo was there since it was amazingly crowded. I still don’t understand how I wasn’t knocked down by someone. Shibuya reminded me of Piccadilly Circus with the large TV screens mounted on the sides of buildings. There was even a huge advertisement for the upcoming Harry Potter movie, all in Japanese of course.

We were supposed to meet another group who had mentioned they had gone to see the Japanese Chippendales (a group that will remain nameless for a price) at a well known landmark but the other group couldn’t find it (or couldn’t they?). So we wandered up and down the streets of Shibuya.

Shibuya seemed to be a prime shopping and entertainment district with tons of shops and a few movie theaters. They also had some restaurants and including a doner kebab (Turkish gyros) stand. Since I hadn’t had one of these since Vienna I jumped at the chance to order one. Tim also joined me for one as well. Usually, doner kebabs come with a yogurt based sauce that I don’t usually like. This stand offered a couple of other sauces that I had not seen before such as a hot and chili sauce. I had a ketchup based sauce on my doner kebab and thought it was fabulous.

Since I had gotten so little sleep in the past couple of nights I returned home around 8 PM to catch up on my journal and to try to get to bed early. I also wanted to find the wireless hot spot that my classmates said they could get in their rooms. After about an 45 minutes walking around the hotel with NetStumbler I noticed that there was a hot spot apparently coming from outside of my window. The signal was such that I had to put it on top of my TV and stand up to actually get a usable signal. It was a 802.11b connection but it was free so I uploaded a ton of pictures to my site and made a few posts on my blog. I also got to IM Kathleen which was a pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow, Wal-Mart/Seiyu and the Kodo drum company.

Today was the first of the three very long Tokyo days we have. It didn’t start out too well for me, we stayed up late (but not too late) just hanging out. Then I woke up at 4:30 AM instead of 7:30 AM which I set my alarm clock to and couldn’t go back to sleep. Oh well. Our ride out to Diawa Steel was in a double decker bullet train and it was about an hour so I made the sleep up as best as I could.

At the train station we were met by Eric and Sam (their American names) who were managers and researchers at Daiwa Steel and our hosts for the majority of the day. They had arrived with the company bus that took us to the Daiwa manufacturing plant.

On arrival, we were ushered to a meeting room where we waited for everyone to assemble including Thomas, one of the chief engineers at Daiwa and a very gracious host. On one the wall of the meeting room was a letter to Daiwa from then Governor Clinton from 1987 thanking Daiwa for starting up a plant in Pine Bluff, a nice reminder of home.

Eric began a presentation about the plants that we would be visiting today. The whole complex we were at covers 13 acres with five of those acres taken up by the buildings alone. There are two main buildings each holding a production line, the first was built in 1987 and the second in 1992. The two production lines build tubing to different specs and production limits. The first can product 5000 tons of pipe a month and the second 6000 tons of pipe a month.

Daiwa produces several types of galvanized steel tubing which due to the zinc content is resistant to corrosion. The process begins with 20 ton rolls of steel that comes in from Nippon Steel shipped from Kyushu. The steel is then cut from these rolls into the widths they will be used in the pipe size.

Somewhere along the production line, they use a hot dipping process to galvanize the steel. This dipping process is called the Daiwa Z process which can apply up to 20 micro meters of zinc to the steel pipe. This precision control is important because it regulates the amount zinc used to make tubing. Since zinc is expensive, if zinc requirement can be cut, then there is a competitive advantage to be gained against competitors. Daiwa’s process also has fewer steps than competitors which reduces the price as well.

The lines function in a similar manner except for the galvanization process. The galvanization occurs at different places on each line, either before, during or after the steel has been rolled depending on the final application of the steel tubing. On the first line, the steel is treated before the rolling while in the second it is treated after the rolling is done. The latter requires a pipe drying machine to make sure that the interior of the pipe is dry before sending the pipe to the next step. The drying process puts an unpleasant smell in the area. To counteract this, Thomas suggested that they put vanilla in the machine to make the steel smell good for the customer, and for the workers and visitors as well.

The steel is rolled into a tube by using a series of ever smaller rollers. The rolls are then welded together by that application of a high voltage electric current which binds the two ends of the steel and melts off the excess metal. This excess metal looked like a strip of red hot, smoking metal and when we viewed we stayed far back. We got to hold a few of the rolls of welded steel and welding process is very effective since you can only barely feel the joint in the pipe.

The welded pipes are then cut to an appropriate length and stacked in hexagons of 100. This makes it easy to count and customer like the symmetry.

After our tour we boarded the Daiwa bus for lunch. It was served at a very swanky country club with a huge golf course set on a hill that overlooked a wide valley below. There were many unusual things to try including shark fin which Dr. Stapp had. I settled on a sampler plate of sashimi but it turned out it was just too much for my stomach.

After lunch we headed out to see some of the scenery in the area with Sam and Eric. Thomas had to return to work, so we gave him the Banzai treatment, three times in the air and a yell of “Banzai!”

After boarding the bus, we found out that our it was not just Daiwa’s bus but Daiwa’s karaoke bus. Just about everybody got their chance in the spotlight to sing something. The English list was very limited but we still had a lot of fun crooning them out. The tunes I can remember were:
Hey, Jude
Love Me Tender
I Can’t Help Falling in Love with you
Bridge Over Troubled Waters
I Left My Heart In San Francisco
Imagine

I got to sing Love Me Tender. That’s right, thank you, thank you very much, uh huh huh! There is video, stay tuned.

We stopped at Nikko Toshogu, the ornate gravesite of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the shogun who unified Japan. Toshogu was a very impressive looking place. Since Tokugawa was a dragon in the Chinese Zodiac there were many dragons incorporated into the building designs. In one building there is an unusual room called the Dragon’s Mouth. On the ceiling wa painted a large dragon. When you stood under the dragon’s mouth and clap a pair of wooden sticks together, an eerie ringing noise was produced.

Another interesting feature of the gravesite is the “Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil” monkeys. Can you tell who is who from the pictures?

Our final stop was the Kegon Waterfall located in the Nikko National Forest. The entrance to the falls was at the end of It is the tallest waterfall in Japan and a very beautiful place. The falls were kicking up quite a bit of spray making the air very cold, about 54 degrees F. We stayed for some time snapping pictures of people and the waterfall and just generally enjoying the scenery.

We drove back down the mountain and returned to the train station to say goodbye. So we took this opportunity to Banzai both Eric and Sam as a final thank you for all their help.

The train got us back pretty late around 8:30 PM. We were all tired and hungry and after changing clothes, we had to find dinner. Tran had found a Vietnamese restaurant that sounded good. They were on the expensive side but the food looked good and we decided to stay. However, but they took so long with our orders that we finally ate at around 10 PM. I had Pho Ga, a spicy chicken noodle soup with an incredible dipping sauce.

We returned to our beds around midnight. Uh oh, there’s an early morning breakfast at the US embassy the next day.

Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding’s facility was a truly impressive place. One of the things that distinguished this factory from some of the others we’ve seen is scale. The main production building is a huge, 80 year old facility. All of the tools and workspaces are is much bigger than those we’ve seen to build cell phones.

The shipyard we toured uses 5000 tons of raw steel a month. The typical ship uses 5000 tons of steel to construct. It takes six months from steel cutting to delivery of the ship

To cut the steel, they used powerful cutting equipment plasma torches and lasers. Plasma torches can be used to cut through more steel and aluminum but laser cutters offer better precision. After the steel is cut it is bent into the proper shape using a combination of heat and water. This process requires great amount of skill. Of the 1000 workers at this factory, only 7 are qualified to perform this step. What is finally produced are a series of modules. These modules are sent to the drydock where they are put in place with a series of huge cranes then welded together and finally painted.

MES had two ships in the drydock we visited, a bulk carrier and the biggest aluminum ship in world. They were designing the latter as a catamaran which uses a special alloy to keep the weight down.

In dock they also had a Japanese Navy supply ship. We were asked not to snap any pictures of the ship but I did get a shot of the rising sun flag on its stern. For the Japanese Navy, MES works only on the superstructure, the US provides the weapon and sensor systems.

Our next stop was one of a pair of almost completed ships, a medium sized bulk carrier named Clementine. We got to walk across the deck and up the main superstructure to the bridge. They had quite a few sophisticated instruments including the helm. I got a few shots of the hold but I don’t think they gave the full idea of how big a space these ships hold.

After lunch we visited our friend from last night, Soba-san. He is in charge of manufacturing parts for the big diesel engines that the ships use for propulsion. The engines are so powerful that they are often used by MES’s clients for power production.

We saw among the part we saw in production were such items as the valves, fuel injectors, fuel pumps, special device that improves oil consumption, a precision driller that uses electric voltage to drill holes. All these parts are very expensive. Soba-san gave us some of their defective parts. We were told that the part Dr. Stapp received was worth $500, a very expensive paper weight. The machines in this part of the factor were highly automated requiring only 5 workers to maintain.

Much like Toyota, almost all workers in the plant were male, we saw only one lady working in the plant during our entire tour. In spite of that, Rebecca really wanted to work here. I told her that she needs to know how to swear, drink, and whistle and since we’re in Japan, she needs to know how to do kendo.

The final leg of our tour was their engine testing area. They were huge, immensely loud, and pumped out a lot of heat. I asked Kajihara-san what the differences were between car engines and the engines built at MES. He said that the scaling factor is basically the same as car engine except the cam is 98 cm wide.

After MES, Kajihara-san and our group headed to the ocean for the next activity of the day, a boat ride in the Seto Inland Sea. The Seto Inland Sea is a very shallow area of ocean between two of Japan’s main islands. The area is dotted with thousands of little islands and a ton of shipping goes through it. There is a series of huge bridges that connect two of the main islands, one of which we were told by Kajihara-san, was built by MES.

We first stopped at a small museum overlooking the sea to watch a short film about the area. After posing for several pictures in front of the sea and the bridge, we headed down to the boat. It was an older boat but it moved fast across the waves. Everybody was snapping pictures like crazy at all the beautiful scenery, the islands, the fish, the boats, and the bridges. The had been very warm and uncomfortable but once we got moving on the boat, we cooled down very quickly. The boat ride was about an hour long and over way to quickly.

We returned to the hotel to clean up and get dressed up for dinner with Kajihara-san and his wife Miki-san. Our meal was teppanyaki style with a wonderfully smooth salmon sashimi. It was delicious, of course, but a bit more undercooked than I’m used to.

After dinner we gave Kajihara-san the banzai treatment, throwing him in the air three times. Since this is the fifth or sixth year JSAP has visited, he was prepared. One of our group members saw him removing the items from his pocket before he came outside.

Since it was our final night by the ocean, some of us walked down the beach to a set of observation decks overlooking the sea. We had a great nighttime view of ships passing, the moon, some of the first stars I’ve seen in this country, and people shooting off fireworks from the beach below. We did get a little lost on and unmarked trail since we only had one small flashlight among us but it was a very nice night.

Tomorrow, “home” to Kameoka and maybe a bit of soccer.

Our group has been very lucky in set of experiences we will have in Japan. We have had two very unique ones recently. Last night at 11:45 PM, there was an earthquake centered on Kameoka. It ranked a 2 out of 7 on the Japanese earthquake scale. A couple of the members in the group said they heard a loud noise and the building swayed a bit. I slept right though it. Then we found out that there is a typhoon heading this way and will hit tonight sometime.

So in the face of the typhoon, we headed off to Shoyeido an incense manufacturer who has been in business for over 300 years. Shoyeido has a big factory in Kyoto where they make most of their incense by machine but we saw the handmade incense at their headquarters. We were told that there has been no loss of quality in the factory process, in fact, the people who originally made the incense by hand currently do the hand inspection of the machine made incense and say the quality is quite good.

The production of incense starts with wood such as sandalwood from India or agarwood. The wood is hand chipped from the logs before it is ground up so only the best is added in. Other spices, such as cloves, frakensense, sea shells, and other items used in Chinese medicine, are powdered and added in as well. Shoyeido imports almost all of its incense components since they can only make a tiny amount of ingredients here in Japan.

Various liquids are added to make a type of dough. The air is crushed out of dough and the dough is push through spaghetti making machine and placed on wooden boards. Craftsmen cut the incense to one size, make sure it is straight, a very important step, then dry it in a special climate control room. After drying, the incense has a final hand inspection and is then wrapped for shipping.

Our lunch meeting was with Masataka Hata the CEO of Shoyeido. He is the 12th generation of his family to hold this position. He gave us a short presentation about the history of incense in Japan. It described how Buddhist brought incense to Japan in the 6th century and over the years, the Japanese slowly altered the ingredients and manufacture of it so that it became their own. It has played a big part in Japanese life for centuries for things like perfuming of hair and in games where you have to correctly identify the type of incense by smell.

Mr. Hata was very philosophical about incense making considering it from many different perspectives. He sees burning incense as a universal process, citing its use in both Buddhism and Catholicism, and working on all five senses. The fragrance calls attention to it through its smell that makes you want to look at it and, as he put it, you can “listen to incense”

He also pointed out through his presentation that with the sense of sight, is easy to handle what direction you want to focus a smell on. However, a smell is hard to focus on one place but eventually the sense of smell eventually adapts to an ambient smell.

Mr. Hata also noted that as technology has progessed in the 20th and 21st centuries, our sensory experience has been dominated by digital audio and visual stimuli. The sense of smell has fallen behind and that there is still market opportunity to feed that sense.

Shoyeido has a plant in Colorado and Mr. Hata discussed a little about trying to market in America. Incense has long been associated with Buddhism or hippies (his word, I swear), but he wanted to expand the experience of incense to a bigger market. He believes that Japanese fragrances are very compatible with US market. So, in a smart marketing move, he uses the Japanese word for incense, koh, when discussing his product. This removes the perceived negative connotation in the US. In Japan, he uses the English word for incense to market it better.

As the typhoon was beginning to roll in, we visited Nijo Castle. It was built at the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate as a symbol of its power. The castle was deliberately built to be less than defensible. This was to show that the shogun was so powerful he could afford to show some “weakness” because he was completely unafraid of any challengers.

The castle was built with the famed nightingale floors to protect against ninja attack. There are special pins under the floor so that when you walk on it, the floor makes a chirp. When our group walked on the floor it really did sound like a small flock of birds was in the hall with us. Even though the floor was built 400 years ago, it still works just as well today. There were also various beautiful gardens around Nijo but it was a dreary day and we were drenched by the time we made it to the sword shop.

At the sword shop, Nhan bought a daisho, a beautiful set of swords with a black lacquer scabbard, blue hilt wrappings and sageo, and a black same. The photos do not do them justice. He spent $900 on both of them and another $80 for shipping. The most brave thing he did though was buy it with his girlfriend in the same room. Nhan, I salute you!

We returned to Kameoka early to get some Internet time. By the time we were finished, a lot of the places were closed including Dr. Stapp’s favorite yakimeshi (fried rice) restaurant so we went to Seiyu for dinner. Rebecca is a vegetarian so we asked for an order of yakimeshi with no meat, or at least we thought we did. Apparently, shrimp is not in meat Japan so Tim and I got a few extra shrimp.

Since we were at the Japanese Wal-Mart, we all stocked up on supplies and food for the up coming weekend. I was looking to replace a strap on a piece of carry on luggage so I split off from the group to look for one. With horribly bad Japanese I asked the saleslady if they had one. After a tortured discussion I got across what I was looking for and she got across that they didn’t have one for sale. She did remember that they had extra replacement straps behind the counter so, she gave me one. Seiyu, I thank you!

After shopping, most of us came back to play Texas hold ‘em. It was a pretty fun game but no one was really able to dominate the game. The winners of big pots kept moving around the circle but Tim, a finance major, usually had the the biggest pile.

Most of the people on this trip are still undergraduates so I was Teased terribly about being “old” especially because I wore a fanny pack. Hey! My fanny pack is incredibly useful and I can pack a lot of stuff in it…OK, I feel the same way about fanny packs, but I forgot to pack a smaller day exploration pack. The pack still works quite well for day trips and it holds a surprisingly large number of items leaving my hands free. I don’t care what it looks like I’m taking it with me.

Finally, very late, we planned what we’re going to do tomorrow with our semi-free day. We decided to go to Osaka and hopefully catch a matinee of a Bunraku, or Japanese puppet shows, try to see a sports game (soccer or baseball), go see the gadgets at Den Den Town, and see what else we can see there as well.

Tomorrow, Todiji Flea Market and Japanese puppet shows.

Today we said goodbye to our homestay families. Mine sent me off with a breakfast of curry and nan bread, a surprise for me but very tasty. Sumiko took me to the train station to meet the rest of the group. Ioku was there as well to send us off. Dr. Stapp conspired with us to give her the Banzai treatment. We surrounded her, lifted her off the ground, and threw her in the air three times and yelled “Banzai!” It was a hoot!

Then, we returned to Nagoya where we visited Kirin Beer. The Kirin Beer tour was a lot of fun. We had a great tour guide, namely Dr. Stapp, who was very, very, very enthusiastic about Kirin beer. Kirin had a nice exhibition hall where they showed how the beer was made. One section had the actual components used to make beer, the barley, hops, etc., that you could touch.

The hall overlooked the actual beer process. It was very much like the opening scene in Laverne and Shirley where all the beer comes down in rows on a conveyor belt. Kirin uses the andon system the same as Toyota and while we were there they had stopped production to fix a problem.

At the end of the tour, they had free samples of Kirin products. I had one of Kirin’s orange juice drink and a fruit drink called Amipurusu (I think that’s what it was called) which were both quite delicious. They were served with a little package of Kirin’s snack food which included a wasabe corn ball and small, dried fish with the eyes still in it which tasted, well, like fish. Now after this trip, I hope they don’t revoke my Baptist card.

On the way back from Nagoya to Kyoto I did some wartraining. I detected 6 hotspots, 4 unsecured and 2 secured, evenly divided between b and g protocols. There might have been more but the bullet train goes so fast weaker networks might not have been detected.

I also have to say again how stunning beautiful Japan is. If I didn’t know any better I’d say the almost the entire country was meticulously manicured. We passed through some low hills back to Kyoto and the fog was slowly rising off of them in the background.

Afterward dropping off our gear, a few of us went shopping at a department store near the Kyoto station. We had been in there earlier in the trip but we had arrived there just as they had closed so we didn’t see very much of it. When we returned tonight, we found that it is a much bigger place than we originally thought. They have everything there from clothes to a bookstore to an electronics store in it.

The bookstore was a little depressing. I love bookstores and I love being able to sit in them and read. To be in the presence of so many books with their form and smell and know that you can’t read any of it was frustrating. However, after wondering around I found a wall full of English books and magazines. They even had my favorite magazine, the Economist, and I finally got to catch up with what’s going on in the world.

The electronics store was a little different from American retail outlets. They had computers, software, and other gadgets just like a BestBuy. But you could also buy motherboards and cases there as well.

We returned to our hotel to work a bit and catch up before the grind starts up again tomorrow. But a maybe, we’ll play a little poker first.

Tomorrow, Shoyeido Incense, Todiji castle and its sword smith shop, and a Typhoon!

The morning started today with a huge breakfast served by the lady of the house, Sumiko. She lavished me with a huge western style breakfast. I, of course, ate way too much. I told her that she has added a pound to me. The thing that put me over the edge weight wise was the melon bread.

Over breakfast, Shinichi and I compared our experiences abroad. He said that he enjoyed working with Americans over Europeans. He found that Europeans tend to be too conservative and had trouble adapting to changing conditions.

Soon it was time to make our way to Toyota, and Shinichi, naturally, gave me a lift. During our drive we discussed his excellent English skills, and he explained that Toyota encouraged him to improve his conversation skills by paying half of the ¥600,000 tuition for a 10 week Berlitz courses. He also has to score a 720, a very high score, to pass.

Our trip also let me admire the built-in GPS system of his car. This thing is really neat. You can not only track where you’re at with a built-in map, but also use it to play the radio or a CD, check the Internet, and play movies. I would like one in my car, but I think I would be a little afraid that someone would rip it off. They’ll have to do some more camouflage work before I’ll get one.

Shinichi pointed out that our route brought us by the Toyota Technical Center, where their research is carried out. It is the home of 12,000 Toyota employees who do nothing but train and plan for the future.

Our first big event of the day was Toyota’s Motomachi plant. This plant has a dynamic production line and produces the Crown, Progres, Brevit, and Blit models of cars. The facility is huge, the size of 35 baseball fields. It employs 700 workers who, according to the current production score board above the line, were trying to make 333 cars today. When we went through they were supposed to have been up to 95 but had currently only produced 92. Each car requires 30,000 parts and 20 hours to build.

The plant had a lot of things you expect to see in an automobile manufacturing plant, parts come in, workers assemble them, and cars go out, but there are components of the plant that are not so obvious that are important.

The first, and probably most widely heard of, is the the JIT/Kanban system first developed here at Toyota. Briefly, it uses a set of card and associated boxes to make sure that only the minimum number of parts are on hand so storage area can be conserved. This system works even better because of the 200 suppliers Toyota uses; 80% are within two hours of the plant reducing response time to changing demand. Similarly, a large number of Toyota’s plants are in this area, 10 plants in this prefecture alone.

One of the things I was impressed with was the way people were valued by Toyota. They want smart and flexible workers, and they also want all workers to be inspectors to ensure quality. The manufacturing line had many robots performing various tasks. Usually, they were used for dangerous tasks or tasks that required the exact same action every time. They realize that their line workers, the people, are a source of great value. This is embodied by the slogan “harmonious interrelation of workers and facilities” which are printed and displayed on large flags within the plant.

Toyota incorporates a system of employee suggestions to improve the line. The employee tells his supervisor what changes should be made and changes are incorporated into the line. This process is called jidoka or intelligent production process. It also improves communication between workers and bosses. One of the examples we saw that was implemented was a parts storage cart mounted on a track parallel to the production line. This saves the employee from having to walk back and forth between the current car and the parts.

The other innovation is andon. It shows where problems are on the line and a color coded system of what the current status of the problem is. Green, white, or no light shows everything is OK, yellow indicates a need for parts, and red means out of parts. There is also a line stop system and call switch. Whenever there is a big problem, a worker or manager can stop the line. A tone sounds to identify the problem and where it was for the manager, so he can come and get the problem resolved.

There were quite a few musical tones coming from the floor. One of the robotic stations that added a part to the car was actually playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” The song was played to warn workers away from all the potentially dangerous action that was going on in the area.

Each car has a large card attached under the hood with instructions on what to do on the mixed production line. The code is a sequence of numbers and letters which tells what goes where and in which order. A car’s location on the line is tracked through a box on top of the cars, which beams the current position of the car to the robots that are assembling it. It was all very impressive.

Toyota has a tour set up in their home office to showcase their latest technologies. Some of the more visually dynamic displays were the ones involving holograms. The holographic car body would disappear to display the various actions of the engines and other systems of the automobiles. They also had several of their latest models on display so we could get in, feel the seats, flip the switches, play with the multimedia GPS systems, and turn all the dials. I’m not a big SUV or hybrid engine fan, but they had a smaller one there that I really liked. Maybe someday I’ll have to get one.

After the showroom, we had lunch with a few Toyota executives for a question and answer session. It was a very interesting time. Some of the questions and other topics that came up were:

What is the current state of hybrid engine technology?
It is still in its infancy. It will not completely replace gasoline-only engines but will be a complement to them.

What do you do about outsourcing issues in the US?
Toyota’s JIT system works best when cars are built where they’re sold. Toyota will still build plants in the US because Americans buy them. For example, a new truck plant was recently built in Texas, a large market for trucks.

What are your current market goals? Does Toyota plan to move up from its 3rd place standing?
Toyota is looking for a 15% global market share, up from 10%, to put it into second place. Automobile technology is not Toyota’s core competency; the production system is what’s important.

Why spend resources on Formula 1 race cars?
This shows that Toyota is an exciting company willing to work on high visibility, high performance cars. This also lets them see how engines perform at high levels so they can learn something new about engine performance.

A few other tidbits that we learned were about the hybrid cars. They are much more intelligent now that they have several years worth of actual on road experience to draw on. One of the executives said that he didn’t like the earlier models, but the new models were redesigned with a smarter power source switching mechanism. There is a completely different hybrid engine in the Prius now.

When Japanese companies hire, they don’t look to see what you’ve done like they do with American Companies. They look for people who work in teams and have challenging spirit.

One of the concepts Toyota has is genchi gemba, or each place has its own tools. There is no common tool box.

One of the executives whom I found most interesting was Ron Haigh, a Canadian expat. He moved here 14 years ago with a degree in English literature. He came to Japan on a lark because at the time, the Canadian economy was in bad shape. He began working as a translator and English instructor for Toyota. Eventually, he worked his way into public relations where he’s been ever since. He joined us for the Denso tour and was just as enthusiastic as we were about finding out what was going on.

We left Toyota with a ton of literature and little presents from Toyota: key chains, pens, notepads, etc. Unlike many of the businesses we’ve toured, we didn’t get any free Toyota car samples.

Then it was off to Denso. Denso is a parts manufacturer for various auto manufacturers not only in Japan but for other countries. They primarily make dashboard parts (called clusters), fuel gauges, speedometers, GPS system, etc. Bar code readers and robots are some of the other products they make. The plant in Takatana employs 2,700 workers.

Like Toyota, this plant tour started off with a display showing everything Denso makes. One of the things that we saw was a precision robotic arm. They had mounted four mechanical pencils with their tips pointing up. The robot arm gripped a pencil lead and quickly put the lead into the tip, removed the lead, moved to the side and quickly moved the lead back into the tip. None of us who viewed it could believe the precision.

The Denso line had many of the similarities of the Toyota line. There was the current board, a problem station board, andon, etc. There were many more robots working here though, 50 in total. The first thing that people were the most intimately involved in was inspection. All parts are inspected by hand and are tested for 8 to 30 minutes to find defects. People also do a lot of the work on combination clusters.

Denso uses the CKD packing process, or complete lock down process, used to package the parts made in this plant destined for other countries. This allows their customers in Asia, who might not be as skilled as the Japanese, to quickly get Denso parts into production in their overseas factories.

The lines eliminate the need for part molds by using lasers to cut the various parts. This gives the line the ability to produce many different things made in one line without changing the mold, a costly process.

A training center is also built into the factory. There are five different classes given: environmental, safety, operations, defect detection, and quality. One of the rooms was a QC room, or quality circle. Our explanation of what they did in there was much like the description of a Saturday Wal-Mart meeting. This and all the other processes are elements of the concept of kaizen, or efficient factory.

Our question and answer session did not go as well here probably because we had a translator between us and the executives. I think that the question that I asked got mangled because the answer I got back didn’t make any sense. I did collect a few interesting facts. Denso tries not to play favorites by not having a keiretsu, a Japanese term for business arrangements similar to a monopoly. They have a reputation for being a fair player to everyone.

In foreign expansion, Denso likes to own 100% of new investments, but they will joint venture with foreign firms if their quality is good.

Dinner was of yaki miku, it kind of reminded me of a cross between a fondue party and indoor grilling. After dinner I mostly talked with the parents of the house. We talked about many things including business, places in America, and gadgets. I also showed them our Halloween party pictures. They also lavished me with presents before leaving. Shinichi, Sumiko, you are always welcome at my house!

Tomorrow, Kirin Beer.