Dear Friends:
The second stop on my big tour of Asia this week is one of my favorite cities in the whole world - Tokyo, Japan. I'm here on business. My very first stop was our local Tokyo office:
Nice reflection, dummy...
The local sales team asked me to meet with all of the largest PC manufacturers in Japan, to discuss the amazing software that uses our latest technology. I love giving these kinds of presentations and the meetings went really well. One meeting was held at Fujitsu. They reserved their largest board room for the presentation. Here's how big the table was in that room, before people showed up:
This is a classic 1980s and 1990s Japanese board room...with not a single electrical outlet in sight ; )
I made similar presentations to other companies like Toshiba. My favorite stop, however, was at Sony. I've been a big fan of Sony video equipment for years and years. Their latest hi-def TVs are no exception:
After a full day of meetings, the team took me out to dinner. This is about all I saw of the streets of Tokyo for the entire day ; ) All the main roads are lit up with neon signs. The restaurants and shops are stacked on top of each other for story after story:
The meal was fantastic. The food in Japan is one of the reasons I love this country so much. There's so much more than just sushi. Some of the dishes are unusual - but only by American standards ; ) Our appetizer was fried ray fins, with a flavored mayo to dip them in. Crunchy and sweet - this was the first time I tried this dish:
Another course was more of the traditional sushi/sashimi that you would expect. The photo isn't great, because it was dark in the restaurant and I had to use a flash. However, there was some gorgeous tuna, octopus and salmon in the mix here:
After several more courses, including the traditional cold noodles at the end of the meal, they still brought a dessert. This was really interesting. From the outside, it looked like a baked apple:
However, on the inside, they had filled the interior of the apple with ice cream and then froze the whole thing. They delivered it sliced into bit-size chunks. In addition, they had a tiny cup of honey to drizzle over the top. Super-duper delicious!
With no light, the camera had a hard time focusing for the picture...
Back out in the street, I caught this driving by...it seems like the radiation leakage from the Fukashima reactor may be mutating the crustaceans:
The next day was spent conducting a press conference. Another employee from Toronto was there to introduce a new graphics card product. The code name of the technology is "Hydra". It's a graphics card with two large chips on it - rather unusual, due to the size. The logo is perfect for this...and the Asian audience ate it up:
The Latin translates to "Two are better than one"
We showed this new technology - and the technical press really got excited. As usual, the Japanese reporters mobbed the display afterwards, to get pictures of every detail:
Here are snapshots from Japanese news sites that covered my press conference:
That evening, I went to visit my cousins who live in Tokyo. On the way, I stopped in a portion of the city called Akihabara. Literally, this is known as electric town. They sell all the latest electronics and games here. In addition, there is a healthy market for action figures and toys, which always interests me:
I only had 15 minutes to look around - not my usual length of stay in Akihabara. I don't have room in the suitcase, with this really long Asia tour, so I couldn't fit a bunch of new toys. Perhaps another day:
Disney is very popular here - that is a blinged-out Minnie and Mickey
Yes, that's Lebron James, 1930s gangster and Albert Einstein
The typical robot toys that most people associate with Japan...
Although I'm sad to only be here for a short time, I still consider myself lucky to even see these wondrous places around the globe. Tokyo has always been special to me...I can't wait to return.
The next blog entry will be about some of the cultural observations that I collected while in Japan. This includes the strange and cute ; )
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