Related blogs: Taipei Shanghai | Anshan Beijing

14 October 2009

Slogging Through Asia: Kobe, Japan

Beyoncé and I alighted United 885 in Osaka in the early afternoon after a placid flight over the Pacific from SFO. She didn’t recognize me, as we descended side-by-side down the escalator (maybe if she had an opportunity to fly in Economy Plus--with 7” of extra legroom!--instead of the other cabin, we would have connected somehow). Unfortunately, we had to split up at immigration (not everyone gets to be welcomed through VIP channels in Japan, after all) and I didn’t see her again.

But from what I heard the next day from Emi (pro. “Amy”), one of our hosts in Japan, she played a great show in Kobe, even if the show was delayed for a while (maybe her bags didn’t make it to Osaka). Not really a connoisseur of pop music, but I can tell you that US culture and influence and music is everywhere and even Halloween is celebrated around here. Most societies have a way of honoring one’s ancestors, but the eve before All Saint’s Day in the US has evolved to be a profoundly secular goofy holiday. 

In many Asia cultures, however, “Tomb-Sweeping Day” or “Qing Ming Jie” (Clear Brightness) is a national holiday and includes a trip to the cemetery to repair the ancestral resting places and welcome the spring. An extreme demonstration of familial devotion takes place in rural Vietnam, where the decedent is exhumed and the bones washed and re-buried. Our guide to Tam Coc last month witnessed the ceremony honoring his grandfather in this way. “We had a specialist do the ceremony. We just watched and prayed.” Makes one embrace the present for its possibilities and reflect on the actions of those who came before us.

But it’s fun just to hang spiders, too. EEK!

US Export

But we’re here to take a look around and expand our interaction with the great country of Japan. And, because our first friends in Japan are in Kobe, we start here.

Kobe is part of a ring of metropoli that hug the water on the greater Island of Honshu, Japan. As is true in much of Japan, the mountains, which are not so very high in this part of the country, come right down to the water. One of the notable Japanese cities that shares the access to the sea is Kyoto (an ancient capital city of Japan and site of the protocols-setting that has seasoned much climate-change debate). Kawasaki is here. Maersk ships containers in and out of the port and, at least superficially, all is calm and pleasant, (at least compared to frenetic Ho Chi Minh City). “The streets are like a nice Scandanavian city.” Nob, our host, says. And it appears true.

Symbol of Kobe City (not Kobe Bryant)

Kobe, aside from its famous beef (hand-massaged, sake-soaked cattle) is an important and historical port on the southeastern part of Japan. It was one of the first cities open to international trade after the “Long Seclusion.” Japan, for several hundred years, was a closed society and was managed by a line of Shogunates under the Tokugawa line. Contact with foreigners, or gaizin, was restricted and trade and interaction with the West was carefully balanced and strictly controlled, until Commodore Perry sailed into Tokyo bay in 1868 and started the long--and sometimes brutal--opening of Japan to foreign trade. “Perry brought in the ‘new system’”, my companion Mr. Hiro commented to me, ill-disguised wryness in his voice. Kobe used to be the site of a prison for offending gaizin. We didn’t visit there.

It certainly didn’t look like this when the Portuguese rolled in here. What a difference four hundred years makes.

Kobe at Night

James Bradley’s Flyboys, which details some of the “exploits” of various characters in the Pacific in World War II during that the awesome struggle, has a succinct and interesting take on the spasms caused by the opening of Japan, offering a non-schoolbook perspective on her own colonial past (in some respects, a process that not too-unfaithfully mimicked the expansion of the US from East to West and across the sea, not to mention the means and effects of colonialism around the world from all the major European countries). Although the SFO to Pacific flight is long, settling into Flyboys, was a serendipitous book pick at the airport (not to mention a way to distract me from brooding about Beyoncé’s apparent ambivalence during our hours in the air together).
 
Anyway, the backdrop of history makes on feel fortunate to be able to come and go as we please. And so we visited our Friend Nob Nakanishi with DSP Research at his new laboratory in Kobe.

Nob is an inveterate entrepreneur and engineer, maybe not in that order. His facility in Kobe, and his critical ties to the industry and regulatory segments are an important bridge between the US and Japan. Nob has been an advocate of trade and mutual understanding for many years and a discussion with him leads one to a greater appreciation of the both the similarity, and wide dispersions, between our method of doing business and the Japanese methods. For the past ten years he has been a strong support of the APEC meetings, bringing the Japan-World perspective to these gatherings. And he is a good friend. Bonus.

Nob Nakanishi and Desmond Fraser

Our Conformity Assessment System--measuring and monitoring the compliance of products for safety and compliance--is a fairly transparent process (we think) with loads of input and consensus decisions. We, being the benefactors of an English-based system of business, have a difficult time with other methods because we have to expend a lot of energy to get understanding. The Japanese, on the other hand, have had to adjust to our system and have mastered the processes. On the flip side, they have developed a system based on their needs, which is understandable. The question is: who should adapt to whom? We often assume that we can project our practices into a system and expect results similar results that we get from our other activities. We need to take a page from the Japanese methods and understand their system; this has been a bugaboo in our particular corner of the sandbox for quite a while and as a result, I think, progress has been glacial.
 
Nob’s business, DSP Research, conducts measurements and performs R&D on some of the state-of-the-art technology now being implemented in wireless communications. Unbeknownst to many consumers, the wireless gadgetry and gimmickry go through an amazing amount of scrutiny and testing before they see the light of day. Consider that your newest iPHONE has three or four radios inside, each a sophisticated silicon slab unto themselves, not to mention the effects and complications and interactions of these devices. Nob’s work is to stay on the front of the wave of these technologies. Plus, his new building is powered by solar-cells and windmills.

Konan University; Hirao School of Management

We stopped by the brand-new Hirao school of management. Nob’s friend Professor Sato founded this facility, and its mission in only April of this year. The inaugural years’ freshmen class is half-way through their first-year studies. The seven story building (the “Cube”) is a testament to flow, feng shui, fine learning spaces and creativity. The facilities boast fine design and functionality with lecture halls, computing space, study and project rooms and an international faculty with ties to the University of Buffalo.

Here, Desmond gives his first mini-lecture on “International Business” to a group of students and Alumni Emi.

Professor Fraser and rapt audience

Mr. Sato, Professor of Economics, Fulbright Scholar at MIT in the 1990s and guest academic at Cologne University in Germany (Desmond’s alma mater), is a dynamic and persistent advocate of learning and international engagement. Many of his students are heading abroad for their second year, but only the best make the cut.

Sato-san is working to expand cooperation with other universities to give his students the most opportunities possible. The “Cube” is his vision and reflects a profound dedication to the education of the next generation; without a doubt, graduates of the Hirao School will be leaders of international business. One reflects as the mid-century rises, that the best work ahead is to foster learning in the following generation. One of the themes is the importance of English, as I mentioned before, as witnessed by this “English-Only” section of the school. I don’t know how long I’d get along if I was only allowed to speak Japanese...

Finishing Off Kobe

Thirty-six hours in any place is just enough to whet one’s appetite and to fully sate it requires a trip to a Shabu-shabu restaurant. Shabu-shabu is Japanese Hot Pot, where cabbage, mushrooms, squash, tofu and thinly-sliced pieces of beef are cooked in a boiling pot of water in the middle of the table. It is a superb-conversation and interactive style of dinner. Ms. Saori, raised for a few years in Indiana in elementary school, gives us superb English-language instructions and keeps us from burning our hands on the boiling water.
 
First up, though, an arrangement of sashimi is presented. Presentation is everything.

What’s on there? some tuna, shrimp, squid, salmon and wasabi.

After soaking up some sake, Saori shows us the method for cooking the rest of the Shabu-shabu, add some chives and radish to soy sauce or tahini (your choice).

Stir the thin beef for just a few moments and enjoy!

That’s it for now. The sun is coming up and I have to say sayonara!
 
Mike Violette
AmericanTCB & Washington Labs
from Kobe, Japan

Related blogs: Taipei Shanghai | Anshan Beijing