pokejapan@kyoto

Giving a presentation at DBS Marketing Forum in English

I am giving a presentation at “DBS marketing Forum” on 22nd of February at Doshisha Business School. As this is the first time that this forum is having presentation in English, I am very happy to participate in this event. I will be the second speaker after Mr. Andrew Till, Co-founder and Vice President of Japan Market Intelligence K.K. I will talk about Internet Marketing the theme of which will be “Attractive website for the niche market using cutting edge technologies web2.0 “. This subject is almost same as the presentation that I did for the MBA of Xi’an JiaoTong University  in November last year. That was about 40 minutes long including Q&A, but this time will be much longer, 90 minutes to around 2 hours for only my presentation. When I hard about that, I was a little nervous because this is the first time for me to give such a long presentation in English. Since I want to enjoy it, I’m going to prepare from now. Mainly, I would like to talk about the case of the website of  “Kakushin Juku” and its analytics. As I have plenty of time to speak, I will talk about the website strategy of Global MBA as well, and also about my online shop at Rakuten shopping mall which is the largest online shopping mall in Japan. Our online shop called  “K-net” is celebrating its 11th year anniversary on this shopping mall since 1998. Though the total number of shops on Rakuten mall, called “Rakuten Ichiba” is more than 25,000 shops, only 39 shops including “K-net” are the oldest shops on Rakuten Ichiba now. Fortunately, the sales of our shop are gradually expanding, but the competition between online shops is becoming harder and harder. I don’t know if the audiences of the forum are interested in our online shop, but I want to talk about the current situation of Internet marketing looking at examples such as the website for craftsmen in Kyoto, those of the university and current online shopping. 

Video interview of two faculties from foreign Universities 4

We could have about 10 minutes of video interviews with Professor Simon F Deakin from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge and Associate Professor Andrew Staples from Kansai Gaidai University at the library on the 3rd floor of DBS. Professor Simon Deakin talked about Cooperate Governance for his next Global MBA class. He said he would mention some of the cases such as Enron from the US and Livedoor from Japan. Associate Professor Andrew Staples is going to teach a Global MBA class as well. Since he has been in Japan for about eight years, he knows about Japan and the Japanese well. Both videos should be very interesting for you even though they are short, and they are coming soon on the Global MBA website. 

Seminar for Students from Fudan University in 2009 Winter

Around 60 students from the well-known university, Fudan University, Shanghai in China visited at Doshisha Business School (DBS). This is the second time for studens to visit from Fudan University and we hope they had good time in our Business School to know about the education curriculum and the atmosphere of our university.

In the morning, the Dean, Prof. Harukiyo Hasegawa of DBS provided the welcome speech and the next speech, “Introduction to Kyoto, Doshisha University” was provided by Associate Prof. Ou Qian, Associate Dean for International Affairs, Doshisha University. After the introduction of Doshisha Business School (DBS), a trial MBA class, “Knowledge Leadership Seminar”, was provided by Prof. Philippe Byosiere from DBS. As a student voice, “What one international student thinks about DBS” was discussed by Mr. Sheng Wang from DBS. Finally, a “Lunch Party” was held for the visitors with students who have experience visiting and learning at Fudan University. 

Japanese winter

We had snow in mountains in Kyoto. From our office at University we can normally see mountains called Mt. Hiei (Hieizan) clearly. The sky is not clear today but we could see some snow on the mountains for the first time this year. In this year it is quite a warm winter and we had a longer autumn than usual, but these days it is cold in Japan, including the Kansai area where Kyoto prefecture is. In Kyoto city, we have several snowy days a year, but the amount of snow is much less than Hokkaido or the northern parts of Japan. In those areas, they have heavy snow on the roads every day during winter. When I was a student, I used to go skiing in those area, and would stay there for two to three months in winter at a skier's lodge to work and practice skiing almost every year. Today's snow in Kyoto reminds me of the old memory of my active period of life, which I can not do now. 

It was good fun to be away from home and to stay in a snowy area; to put myself into nature at a lodge surrounded by deep snow and mountains. I really felt that I was free and also had unique experience even though it was a hard time. I woke up at 5 am to prepare the breakfast for customers who were staying at that lodge. Then my duty as a staff member was cleaning rooms, making beds and removing snow on the roads in front of the lodge. After lunch, I could have free time to ski for three to four hours. For the first few weeks, I really enjoyed skiing to develop my skills of skiing, but I used to get tired of skiing because I used to the same slopes, saw the same scenery and had the same things to do: going up by lift to the top of the mountain and going down on skis twenty times a day almost everyday. I was, however, interested in meeting new people who stayed in the lodge and we could ski together. After skiing I worked for the lodge until night preparing the customers' dinner and there was a party sometimes.

There are many ski fields and resorts across Japan, mainly in Hokkaido and in the northern part of Japan. When the Japanese yen is weak against foreign currency, some resorts in Hokkaido have a lot of travellers from Australia who come to ski and some travellers from different Asian countries because Hokkaido has good snow called powder snow, nice Japanese food, seafood and vegetables, and hot springs called "Onsen". Now the Japanese yen is quite strong against the US dollar and other currencies but if you have a chance to come to Japan, I recommend a ski resort in Japan for you to relax and you can have a Japanese experience such a many Japanese are enjoying in their vacation.

Year end and New Year’s traditional customs in Japan

I have quite a lot of things to do at the end of the year and at the beginning of the new year here in　Japan. We cleaned our whole house especially we did the places which we normally don't care very much about such as cleaning the back side and rails of windows, for caps of the lights in the halls and other details in our home and garden. On the first day of the year, "Gantan", in　Japan, many people traditionally go to pray at a Shinto shrine or Buddhism temple with family members or friends, after eating "Osechi" which is traditional Japanese food for the new year. It consists on meat and vegetables which can be kept for several days at the beginning of the New Year. We also went to the nearest temple called "Nakayama　Temple" to pray to the god for good luck of our family members and myself.

On the second day of the New Year, I went to our relatives house with my wife and my son. This is my wife's original home and almost ten relatives met together. We played table tennis and table games with our children. We had a good fun for the family event once a year. Next day, 3rd of January, I went to eat crab at a nearby restaurant with my family members. It has been also our family event every year for four years. Depending on families, different events are available for the New Year in　Japan, but many people go to their home towns and spend several days for the New Year with their families. How were your year end and New Year events in your country?