The following are some excerpts from the emails Kjell wrote me while traveling through Asia. These compose of a very small part of his trip...for a much more comprehensive overview visit this blog.
May 26, 2009
I'm sitting in the Tokyo airport waiting to board our flight to Seoul. Today we visited Deusche Bank headquarters in Tokyo. We listened to some interesting presentations by the a few executives, including the COO who is a member of the church. He was impressive and he reminded me a lot of the successful yet spiritually grounded people in the New Canaan Ward. We then toured their trading floor (which was a little inactive because Memorial Day); you could see the carnage from the current market conditions (the staff that traded structured credit products had been cut drastically). Still, I was impressed.
After that we went back to the hotel and I, with a small group, went to an upper-floor observatory to view the city. Then we found a really good sushi place for lunch. It was well-priced, too. I got nailed with an expensive dinner last night and was a little annoyed, so it was a good change. Then a few of us went to a shopping district to look around, after which I went to check out a garden/park, only to find that it didn't open until 30 minutes before we had to leave. So I walked around and then challenged myself to figure out the subways un-aided (it wasn't perfect, but I made it back on time).
Overall, Japan was really neat. The cultural aspects were the most interesting. They are very service-oriented and place more value on pleasing customers than even the US. It also has an extremely low crime rate, due to its cultural influences. It was fun.
I'm sitting in the Tokyo airport waiting to board our flight to Seoul. Today we visited Deusche Bank headquarters in Tokyo. We listened to some interesting presentations by the a few executives, including the COO who is a member of the church. He was impressive and he reminded me a lot of the successful yet spiritually grounded people in the New Canaan Ward. We then toured their trading floor (which was a little inactive because Memorial Day); you could see the carnage from the current market conditions (the staff that traded structured credit products had been cut drastically). Still, I was impressed.
After that we went back to the hotel and I, with a small group, went to an upper-floor observatory to view the city. Then we found a really good sushi place for lunch. It was well-priced, too. I got nailed with an expensive dinner last night and was a little annoyed, so it was a good change. Then a few of us went to a shopping district to look around, after which I went to check out a garden/park, only to find that it didn't open until 30 minutes before we had to leave. So I walked around and then challenged myself to figure out the subways un-aided (it wasn't perfect, but I made it back on time).
Overall, Japan was really neat. The cultural aspects were the most interesting. They are very service-oriented and place more value on pleasing customers than even the US. It also has an extremely low crime rate, due to its cultural influences. It was fun.
May 27, 2009
Yesterday we were on the road a lot. The first stop was the DMZ (De-militarized Zone) on the 38th parallel (border of North and South Korea). We went into some tunnels that the South Koreans caught the North Koreans making in the 1970s that went under the DMZ with the intention of invading South Korea. The cover stories were kind of funny (they first blamed the South Koreans, then they rubbed black dirt on the walls claiming they were coal-mining tunnels). We then went to several other checkpoints and viewpoints around the DMZ and got to look over into North Korea. The North Koreans built several propaganda villages (no people, just shell buildings) right on the border to give the impression of prosperity. What’s interesting is that even though the South Koreans are frustrated by the antics of their northern neighbor, they still really love them. They realize that it’s just the dictators and not the people that are the whack-jobs.
Our business tour was Samsung. I surprised at how big they were and they put together a well-prepared presentation for us. They are definitely in it to win, but they weren’t as unassuming as Toyota and I found that to be a little tacky.
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