While I have tried to stay away from the subject of business in this Blog, I thought it would be safe to just share with you some comments and pictures from my first business meeting in Japan. It was December of 1994, and I had only been with the company 4 months when my manager told me I needed to go to Japan for some customer meetings. Your first trip to any foreign country is always the most memorable, and I was completely full of enthusiasm as I boarded my Singapore Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo (What I find ironic is that 17 years and 33 trips to Japan later, I have not used Singapore Airlines since!! What a pity!!!!).
Anyway, I stayed at the Century Hyatt hotel in Shinjuku upon arrival. We took the Tohoku Shinkansen up to Sendai, and had the meeting with our customer in our Tagajo factory. I found the meeting procedure to be quite formal. Everyone was extremely nice to me, and we had a good meeting. Here is a shot I took during the meeting (everyone probably wondered why is this guy taking a picture during a meeting???).
You can see we had a working lunch as during the middle of the meeting each participant was given a bento box meal (which was incredibly good). At the end of the meeting we took a group photo before heading off to dinner. Some of you may know a few of the people in this photograph.
What a fantastic experience that first trip to Japan was for me. My eyes were opened to an absolutely wonderful place, with beautiful people. For those of you who helped me on this particular trip (and you know who you are), thank you so much for getting me started on this wonderful journey.
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