Tokyo

Tokyo was a blast. Alas all good things must come to an end. Even though this grand adventure is coming to an end I think all of us on the trip are ready for a break. We got to our hotel in Tokyo just before midnight on Tuesday. It was a really long day. What should have been a two hour flight was a whole day of traveling; I guess all good things just come with a sacrifice.

Wednesday was the longest day that we had on the whole trip. I got up at 4:45 am to get ready. We were supposed to meet at 5:30 am to catch a 6:00 am train. So Jon and I decided to be smart and get breakfast at McDonalds. Well it turned out there wasn’t a train when we thought. So they gave us time to get breakfast… too bad I got up early to take care of that! From there we took a two and a half hour train ride to Nagoya. On the train ride we went right by Mount Fuji. That was really cool. Once in Nagoya we got on a bus and went to the Toyota factory. The visit was a great experience. One thing that made it nice was that we had already been to GM and their production facility in China. Toyota is a special company. They are world renowned for their efficiency. After visiting their plant I can see why. They blew GM out of the water. The Plant that we visited is in Toyota City. It was only one of a dozen or so other plants that they have their. They have a very centralized model where all their plants and their suppliers’ plants are located within a close range of their plant. They only keep between two to four hours of inventory in their plants so they are constantly receiving new shipments of parts from hundreds of suppliers. Their plant was a beautiful orchestration of man and machine. In GM’s assembly plant there were only two robots. In Toyota’s there were dozens. In GM they just used a lot of labor. Toyota went to great efforts to make sure that the workers were happy and content with their job. They didn’t cause their jobs to be more strenuous than needed. Toyota used an army of robots to automatically deliver the proper part at the right workstation just at the right time. It is amazing to see these robots move parts around to the exact place they are needed right when they are needed. With this model they can build multiple models on the same line in any order that they want.

After Toyota we got back on a bus and then took another train to Kyoto, the old Capital of Japan. Kyoto was cool. There are a lot of cultural and historical sites. It was fun however, we got there late in the afternoon and all the cultural sights we went to were closed so we could only see them from the outside. We went to the old imperial palace and to a pagoda. Had a nice Japanese meal then a three hour train ride home.

Thursday was our last day of having to wear suits in Asia!!!!! w00t!!! We started off by going to another DHL. This was our third DHL visit. Each visit has been to a different side of DHL. We visited their logistics facility where they do in sourcing for Cisco. It was a really interesting to hear one of these companies talk about taking over certain parts of the supply chain for larger companies. For Cisco they are responsible for the shipping and return of units and a little bit of reverse logistics. We then went to our last business visit of the trip at Seiyu. Seiyu is Wal-Mart in Japan. This was the second time we had visited Wal-Mart. We visited them in China. It is interesting to see the different challenges that they are facing in the different cultures. At this visited we focused on marketing. This was our only true marketing visit. They talked about how hard it has been for them to get the ’Everyday Low Price’ concept to work in Japan. The Japanese people expect the highest quality; they like brand names and are willing to pay for most. They didn’t understand the concept the non high-low market scheme. It was fun to hear how some of the marketing techniques used in the United States weren’t as widely accepted there. Such as price comparison and price matching. Wal-mart used both there for the first time and at first the ads and had a bit of shock value. They went out on a limb with significant risk and it is starting to pay off. They are the seventh largest retailer in Japan and only have 1% market share. However, they are growing. There is definitely a hint of arrogance in their minds of how they are the largest elsewhere and use that leverage to help them in Japan. One of the people in our meeting was new to Japan and was formerly then VP over electronic purchasing. I asked her about electronics in Japan and she made a comment about how with Wal-mart and Sam’s Club combined they are the largest electronic retailer in America? Is it true I don’t know? It is possible. After Seiyu we got to go to the temple! That was exciting. About half the group decided to go. We did a session and I got to do it in Tagalog! That was exciting. It is good to know that I still have it. I have got to keep up on it. There were a few words that took me a while to remember.

Friday was our last real day in Asia so we decided to live it up. We had class at 7:30 and then were off for the day. It ended up being Derek, Emma, Heidi, Jon, and me. We had a blast. This may have been the most fun day I had on the whole trip. After class we went off to the Diet building (the government buildings). They wouldn’t let us in because we are America but we took some pictures then went to a nice garden across the street. We then did something that everyone should experience in their lives. We went to a sumo wrestling match. It was so much fun. I don’t know how those Japanese people get to be so huge. The rest of the population is quite small in comparison. We went to the most popular Buddhist temple in Japan. After then we went off to the Tokyo Tower which is basically a red version of the Eiffel tower in Japan. Well we kind of got lost in transit and ended up in a Panasonic showroom where they had four floors of different displays. The top floor we found massage chairs, really nice ones. So we got impromptu massages : ) They also had this weird machine that would analyze your posture. So who is surprised that I have bad posture? Not me! After our short detour we took a twenty minute walk over to the Tokyo tower. On our way over we happened to stop and play in the park. The tower was really cool. It was just a red Eifel Tower in Tokyo. We went up to the 250 meter observatory and got a really good view of the Tokyo. I can see how 27 so odd million people live there. It is huge! The city just goes on and on. For the Tokyo tower we went to the Imperial Palace. It was closed so we just took pictures from outside. We then went back to the Ginza District and went to the Sony showcase store. That was cool. I love electronics. To complete our night we had to have dinner at a Japanese place. It was so good. I just wish I spoke Japanese. At night we did probably the coolest thing ever. We went to a Japanese karaoke parlor. It was so fun. I didn’t think we would have as much fun as we did. We ended up singing for an hour and half.

Alas all good things must come to an end. Saturday we went home. Long flights. I think in a lot of ways most of us were ready to go home and have a break. I know I was ready for a rest. I wouldn’t of traded the trip for anything it was so worth it.