Eels

So I tried a piece of eel last night at dinner. I didn't like it, and I think the feeling was mutual.

For future reference: No eel for Eric.

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Monday in Shanghai

So I have a little extra time on my hands today and thought I'd give everyone a fuller update about my adventures in China. I flew in yesterday afternoon on what was about a two hour flight. I slept for the first half of the flight, so it was just that much quicker for me. Then we made our way to the New Asia hotel near the Bund in Shanghai. As a matter of fact, you can see the beautiful skyline from my room.

The rooms here are slightly larger than the ones we had in Beijing, but about the same quality. We also no longer have an opera hall in the lobby downstairs. Too bad for me, no more Chinese opera.

We took some time our first evening in town to explore the area. A bunch of us walked to the Bund and were amazed with how the town looked. (For those of you who are wondering, the Bund is the riverwalk in Shanghai. There are food carts, street vendors, and vending machines. It's a lot like the waterfront in Portland only without the parks.) We decided that Friday afternoon, when we have more time, we're all going to take a river tour. There are several boats that take you up and down the river to see the different buildings and it should be an experience.

Today was a tour of the sourcing company for Target. I was pretty bored for a majority of the tour, but my boredom was my own fault. I let myself be at the back of the line for the office tour and didn't even realize we were on a tour with a tourguide until the very end. Most of us in the back didn't hear a word she said about the office. The presentations were also very supply-chain specific and, because I'm interested more in marketing, I didn't pay much attention. I did find it somehow ironic that so many people work for Target in China (they design and make the actual products) but are unable to buy anything from Target. There are no Target stores in China and apparently you can't purchase things from Target.com for shipping in China. How strange is that?

After the office was a tour of the Target warehouse and the port everything is shipped through. I've never seen so many shipping containers in my life! And yes, Ryan, the longest container ship is a quarter-mile long. I double checked with professionals today. So :-P.

Now it's time to find some dinner and relax before my 12-hour factory visit tomorrow. Have a great evening!

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Shanghai

I'm safely in Shanghai. More updates to follow (hopefully) later in the week.

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ispo China

Today I went to visit the ispo China trade show on the other side of town. It was phenomenal and I got a lot out of the trip. Click "Read More..." to hear about my experience.

We left at about 8:30 in the morning to get there by 9 when the trade show opened. There were six of us in our little expedition: Kusko, Stephanie, Will, Brady, Kathy, and myself. Here's a picture of everyone who went (I took the picture, so you can't see me):

The show ended up being free, rather than costing us 20RMB as we had expected. I got all the brochures and fliers and such and then we divided up to look at the individual booths. It was the winter trade show, so there were a lot of booths for skiing and snowboarding equipment. I'm actually inspired now, and I hope to learn to snowboard at some point in time when I get back to the US.

The trade show was apparently very popular. There were TONS of people there looking at the various displays. I was a little afraid that we wouldn't actually get to talk to anyone; the sheer volume of people in the exhibition hall was restrictive, and I don't speak a word of Chinese. My fears were put to rest quickly, though, when I realized that I felt very in-my-element at the trade show and started walking through the different booths.

There was a lot of creative energy in the room, but some of the displays were very lacking. There were quite a few low-budget box setups: White walls with hanging product and a table in the center with catalogues. At the same time, there were several other wildly creative booths. One had huge stone pillars made entirely out of styrofoam. Another had a mechanical yak (the company was Black Yak, so it couldn't just be a mechanical bull). Still another company had an actual runway and was doing a fashion show to display its products.

My favorite booth was in the climbing area. Right next to the Petzl display was a full-sized bouldering wall set up for the ISPO Bouldering Cup. I really wanted to get up on the wall, but the tournament was already set and I couldn't sign up for it. I thought it would be fun for the random American to come in and school everyone while wearing khakis and a button-down shirt.

There were a few booths that I was disappointed with, though, but not because of the content. You have to realize that this entire trip is in Asia and the trade show is in China. Naturally, everyone in the show spoke Chinese. I was hoping that because it was an international show that there would have been more English speakers. Nope. In a couple of the booths that I had been waiting to see I was avoided like a leper by the sales representatives. They spoke no English and were intimidated by me and what I seemed to already know about their products.

All in all, though, I had an incredibly positive experience. I wish I had more pictures to share with you, but my camera batteries died shortly after I got to the show. The people I was with will more than likely have their own photos that I will definitely add later for you. If anyone knows of a similar show in the Portland area, please be sure to let me know about it so I can go hang out there and meet more people in the field.

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Videos

I have been taking several videos of my trip to Asia. Here is the first of what will be many segments on the trip. This is just a quick walkthrough of our hotel room in Tokyo. It was the Takanawa Prince Hotel and was by far the nicest place I've ever stayed on a trip.

I probably won't get everything else up until I get home and get the chance to work with my desktop. I have taken 3 hours of film thus far and have two more tapes to work with. A friend is giving me the 7 hours she's taken as well and I will try to compile something interesting for everyone.

Enjoy the show!

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中国に行きました

I made it to China safely. Sorry that I haven't posted anything else sooner, but I just got Internet today. I'll try to give you all an update later. Until then, enjoy the wonderful Portland weather and be thankful for not having smog and having sit-down toilets ...

Oh, and Dad, I haven't seen Cherry Coke here yet, but the Coca-Cola does taste a lot different than at home. And it has pull-tab tops. And costs only 50 cents.

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中国

Today I fly to Beijing. It should be quite an experience and I will let you know how things go. I have to check out of my room by noon and catch the bus to the airport by 2:30. It's a 2-hour drive to the Tokyo/Narita airport and then we have about 2 hours budgetted for checking in for our flight. All said, we should take off around 6:20 and touch down a couple hours later in China. Wish me a safe flight!

じゃね!

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Baseball

I went and watched a couple of baseball games today. It's a free day for the trip schedule, so I took a trip out of Shinagawa to a big sports complex. I can't remember the name of the area, but it was next to the 1964 Olympic stadium. Yes, I have video of the stadium, too.

Originally, I had planned to meet some representatives at Waseda University. The downside of that is that we had to cancel the meeting. Waseda was involved in some very big front-page news this morning and is very busy trying to avoid the massively negative PR. Their representative still met us at the hotel as promised, but we could quickly tell he only came to save face for Waseda.

Greg quickly spun together an offer to cancel the meeting and the Waseda rep was incredibly thankful. I felt sorry for him and the situation he was in, but I was also impressed that he still made the original meeting. Ironically, the only reason we didn't cancel the meeting earlier was to save face on our part. After we got here, we realized Waseda didn't even use the equipment DeMarini makes and that all the equipment we had was for a different form of baseball altogether. We wanted to cancel the meeting on that part, but held it to maintain the relationship between Waseda and Portland State. Now I guess it's the best for both because there was no way we'd have gotten any information today. One of the coaches is in Okinawa and the others are all so busy trying to figure out what's going on that we could only have met with the student managers in the first place.

So instead we made our way to the fields and then ventured to the batting center (batting cages) nearby to interview some people. Luckily for us, there were some English-speakers there practicing rubberball. They're all in the rec league and set us up with some information about their team. They even tested our bat for us and were willing to go out and buy it because they liked the feel and performance so much. Score one for us! One of the guys does the voice of the announcer on Iron Chef, by the way. He was a very interesting character and tried to impress us by shouting catch lines from the show that, ironically, none of us have ever seen.

Right now I'm on my way back up to my room to start packing because we leave tomorrow and I want to be ready. I'm going to try to go out with some people later tonight and will try to keep you up to date on what happens there.

Keep in mind that I might not have frequent access to internet next week. Forgive me in advance for infrequent updates. すみません.

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Finally with time

It's about 10:45 PM and I finally have a few minutes to sit down and write a real post for everyone. Because I only have a few minutes, I'll just give you a quick summary of my week. Everything from plane sickness to washing my clothes in the sink.

The plane flight was fine. It was a little long, but all-in-all a great ride up until the last hour or so. We had so much turbulence that I got myself really sick. That, and I was hungry and tired from the 9 hour flight and had a headache from watching movies on the tiny little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. I managed to hold it together, though, and didn't throw up. You'd all be proud of me.

I decided not to stay up too late that night and just toured around the hotel for a bit before going to bed at 10 or so that night (to do a time conversion to PDX time, add 7 hours and drop a day. 10PM Monday night would be 5AM Monday morning in Portland).

Lectures were pretty good the following day. The first was conducted entirely through interpretors, but I thought it was the best we've had thus far. I ate lunch at McDonalds just for the experience (and Dad, the menu is pretty much the same, but they have a shrimp filet here). After the second lecture I got to explore the Tokyo commuter rail line and the subway to find my way over to Shinjuku for a meeting with the marketing manager of Wilson Team Sports. For those of you who want to look at a map, I'm staying at the Takanawa Prince Hotel in Shinagawa (which is in Tokyo).

We went out to a fancy restaurant after that and, like the rest of this week, I avoided pretty much all the fish and stuck with the rice and vegetables. I'm already losing weight because I don't eat pretty much anything that's served here in Japan. I think it will be the same way in China.

On Wednesday we had a presentation by a Nike representative. I was somewhat less than impressed, but won't go into why here. If you're really interested, find me later and ask.

Then I went to the area around the Tokyo dome to look at sporting goods shops for my exit project (For DeMarini, the Wilson subsidiary that makes the really high-quality bats). We looked at a couple of pro shops, then saw a neat looking roller coaster. It cost ￥１０００ to ride, but the 40-story drop was worth it.

Thursday took us to the Asahi brewery for a pre-packaged plant tour. It was OK and was followed by free samples for everyone. I wouldn't recommend their "super-dry" beer, but the stout was pretty good.

After that we took another trip through town for the exit project. This time was a trip to a batting cage only a few train stations away from the hotel. We hit a lot (the DeMarini bats are incredible, by the way) and got 3 good interviews in with Japanese hitters.

Today was a tour of the Nissan factory. Unfortunately, there were no free samples. The tour itself was nice. It was great to see a different factory than the one for Freightliner that we toured a while ago. Japanese manufacturing is very different than American manufacturing.

I went shopping in Harajuku after that, trying to look for small gifts for everyone at home. Sorry guys; I didn't find anything useful. Even the rip-off plastic jewelry was about $10 a piece.

I came back to the hotel and ate some more rice (look at me, I'm healthy!) before doing my laundry in the bathroom sink. I know that sounds kind of gross, but it costs $3 to wash 1 shirt at the hotel and there are no laundromats near here. I'd rather wash my socks in the sink than pay what my roommate did to do his laundry: 3 t-shirts, 3 pairs underwear, 4 pairs socks = $30. Still think I'm crazy?

Tomorrow I have a meeting at Waseda University. I get to talk to the baseball teams before they start their practice/games later that day. I hope to get a lot of information before heading to more pro shops and possible the sports museum afterwards. Then I need to pack and get ready to go.

We have an 8am meeting on Sunday with one of the adult rec baseball leagues before they start a tournament at 9. We plan to stay for the first hour to chat with players and coaches before taking the hour and a half train ride back here. Downside is, we have to check out of our room by noon and catch our bus to the airport at 2:30. It should be a very difficult but fun morning to plan through all the logistics. With me luck!

じゃね！

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日産

Today was our tour of the Nissan plant. It was great, but unlike the Asahi brewery there were no free samples waiting when we finished. Sad times for us.

My schedule's been pretty busy thus far in Tokyo, so I haven't had the time to give you a real update on the week. I've been getting up at around 7 every day and hitting bed at around 12. Tomorrow is a free day, so I will try to get in a nice long summary of my past week.

Thanks to all who are staying tuned to hear about my trip in Asia!

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Difficulties

Since I`m in Japane, Blogger is entirely in Japanese. I don`t read Kanji, so I accidentally deleted everyone`s comments rather than posting them. Can anyone who commented please do so again? I`ll try to figure out the language thing when I get a few free minutes...

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Nihon

I`m here! I made it!

... more to come later when I have a computer with an American and not a Japanese keyboard ...

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