Thailand

I went to Thiland with my friend for four days in September,2007.

When I got to the airport, it was not so exciting because the weather was not very good and it smelled pretty bad.

But... the more I stayed there the more I start liking Thailand.

I like their food, culture, night and weekend markets, and many other things.

Thai Curry

Tomyamkunn

Shopping in Thiland was fantastic. Everything was very cheap!!! I bought everything I want without hesitating which felt really really good because I have to think everytime when I buy something.

I was most impressed by the remain of Ayuttaya. It was amaizing how it is still remaining in pretty good shape, and the fact that people in old days could actually make them. Here is some pictures of the remains of Thiland.

Wat Mahhatat

It was made by the Kindome of Ayuttaya from 1351-1767. Not only the statue in the picture but also there were the remain of Tepmle which is in the picture on the right.

If there is anyone who had never been to Thailand, I strongly recomend them to go.

Of course, I am planning to go there again.

Minatoku Project: Interview with 3 foreigners

We had interview with 3 foreigners. It was our last shooting. The angle of the camera was ok and we were very satisfied with the content of the interview. But because we didn' have microphone, the sound quality was really bad. So we have to take care of that at the editing process.

Another thing about the interview was that we only had on person who lived here for two years and other two only have been here for three months. Sometimes, when people are here for the first time, they don't really have Japnese friends or they have no opportunity to meet Japanese. So I felt we should have had foreigners who have been here quite long to relate our interview questions to their experience.
That's pretty much all about the interview and here is the questions we asked them.

Questions we asked:

1. Name, country youare from, how long you have been in Japan

2. What was your first impression twards Japan?

3. Has your impression changed as you live here longer?

4. Is it easy or difficult to live in Japan and why?

5. What's the worst/best experience in Japan?

6. What's the advantage/disadvantage to be a foreigner in Japan?

7. Do you think Japanese peopole are welcoming foreigners and why would you think so?

日光（NIKKO）

Leaves are changing the color.

I took a trip to Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture for two days for the weekend. We went there by local train which took about two and half hours to get there. The leaves were very beautiful because its color were changing. The weather there was very nice but it was too cold.

Tosyogu(東照宮)

The entrance of the Tosyogu

We visited Tosyogu which is a very famouse shurine in Japan built in 1612. It is known to be a shrine which enshurine the Edo shogun(tycoon) Ieyasu Tokugawa.

Inside of Tosyogu

The simbole of Tosyogu: Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru

When you visit Tosyogu, you can see a lot of animals cultivated on the walls of the buildings or gates such as monkeys in the picture above, elephants, and cats. All of the animals are symbolizing the peace.

Three monkeys

There are eight pieces of the relief and all the eight pieces together is showing the three monkeys' whole life. The three monkeys' life on the relief is symbolizing the pieceful human life. Mizaru (don't watch), Kikazaru(don't hear), Iwazaru(don't say) is teaching a lesson what humans should not do to face bad problems in their childhood.

Interview with a PR worker

Today, I had a phone interview with Mr. Robert from Edelman Japan. He is North Asia President at the company and managing a very hard schedule every day. The interview with him was very interesting and I learned a lot of things through the interview. I can't put the audio up because of some issues, but I have summarized the interview conversation below.

1. What is your main work?? What is your regular day like?
- Communicating with stake holders
- PR people-Information workers
- Eyes and ears for clients

Average day includes:Monitor the media, lots of e-mail with Journalists, clients meeting with their customers (PR people-cooperate customers)/ meeting with key opinion leaders, press conferences, writing documents like press release, researching the issues that are important for their customers etc…

How often do you go to over seas?
Once a month

2. What are the positive aspects about your job? What is the benefit for being in this field/company?
In Japan, there is a rising demand for PR, not the traditional one but new public relations of the future. For years, the public relations had been dominated by traditional advertising agencies which they don’t believe you can really buy trust in the market place but you must earn the trust, you have interact with the stakeholders like journalists. They don’t buy the media coverage but they earn the media coverage the way they will work with the press. There is really a pr revolution happening in Japan, the clients of the the traditional media is gathering momentum. Now we have social media like mixi, blogger, , social net workings that is what Edelman is so they have wounderful time making most of that opportunity.

3.What frustrates you the most while working in this field/company? What are the negative aspects about your job?
PR is still earning respect in Japan. Modern PR industry was born in the 1950s. At the time of big daily newspaper, press club, press release, big media event…not that much has changed until recently. The slow pace of PR’s change is challenging, but now with internet, democratization of the social media that is over coming some of these development frustrations. In Japan some Journalists still prefer to receive press releases by fax, that old method of distribution has not been used in other countries for over a decade. Using old technology for new industry is frustrating.

How do you think you can over come the situation?
By using the technology that we have today…for example, we have social media press release which is not based on the fax, it is not bunch of the words but key points fax, multi media, links, track backs, this is the new press release which communicates far more rich information. That is the kind of modern tool that we are using to over come the old technology.


4.What is your career goal?
He wants to stick with the PR field forever; it’s like a younger person’s business. If you look around the world, most people are in their 20s and 30s, and it requires passion, energy, and certain ambition. So he wants to apply the lessons learning in Japan and export these ideas to the world of PR, so we can grow the industry from strong platform of Tokyo, and his career will be connected to that.

5.Sales Point (what is unique about your company compared to other PR companies)
There are two things:
a) Edelman is the only major PR firm in the world that is not owned by advertising congrammered. PR field is dominated by Dentsu. Overseas PR is dominated by WPP or under come. Edelman is the only PR Company which is privately held so Edelman is free to focus on the relationships and long term results. And Edelman has PR centric approach ; Edelman likes to think the ability to practice PR in most events. PR is not after thought for them; PR is what we do all the time.
b) We are privately held and not publicly traded on the stock market. So they don’t have impatient shareholders. We are still a friendly after 50 years, so that allows Edelman to take a longer term view.

6. When you promote a product, what do you care about the most?
Is the clients’ expectation differing when you work with foreign or Japanese clients?
Korean Clients-Details of the tactics are less important, big picture of speed is more important, details are less important
Japanese Clients-the relationship and trust with clients are gradually developed, in depth relationship is developed over longer period of time. When planning a pr campaign there is more attention to the detail, the tactics of the program

7. What is PR Consultant Company?

They provide consulting services. When people think about PR, they think about something very simple, like press releases or news conference. Most of PR today is consulting which means giving top executives what to do, how to built a PR plan to support the business plan; who are the target audiences, what are the key messages we should communicate, how should we communicate those messages, who should communicate those messages, what fact about our business should be emphasized. So any PR agencies or firm should be able to do a press release or conferences. But the demand these days is not just for the PR arms and legs, demands are for the PR brain that can consult, can advise, and can provide strategic input to our clients. Strategic public relations is what its called.

PR research leading to the Interviw

The information below is researched by Edelman in 2007. In order to carry out an interview with a person from PR field, I learned these informations which is about the PR field in these days.

Importance of PR bussiness in Japan

The importance of PR function for companies in Japan has increaced, decreased or remained about the same?? 85% of stakeholders answered that the importance of PR has increased. Only 3% felt that it has decreased.

Better Quality??

When they were asked which region of the company offers the better quality and services, 52% of Japanese stakeholders said that Japanese corporations offer top quality products and services compared to 35% for Western corporations.

PR vs. Advertizing

62% say earned media coverage using a PR agency is more effective than paid media coverage using an advertising agency 29%.

From the study, I learned that the PR bussiness is getting bigger and it is earning the trust in Japan. The PR is also growing very fast and more people are starting to realize the importance of PR comparing to the Advertizing field.

学園祭/School Festival

The flyer of the school festival.

The school festival called Gakuennsai(学園祭) in Japan is very big thing for students. It is an important culture in Japan. The highschool, junior college, university usually have the school festival and students put a loot of work and time to prepare for the festival. They have so many booth such as food, drink, and game. There are performances by students such as dance, music live, play, contest to deside the Mr. and Ms. school and so on. It is the time for studnts to forgetstudy and have fun. There was one at Sophia University today, and there were a lot of people gathering at the festival. My favorite at the festival was a creap booth.

Halloween in Japan?!

HaLLoWeeN

There was a Halloween Day at the bar where I work at. A lot of people came with their costume and were enjoying the atmosphere which is different with the usual days. Even though, Halloween is supposed to be an Christian event, it is becoming one of the Japanese's event and they have parties all over.

The Getting Candles

When I was reading a newspaper today, I found a very interesting article which was saying that there is a similar event to Halloween in Japan. On August 7 in the evening, children go around their neighbor's house and say "Give me candles or we will scratch you!!" at the entrance. Then people at the house give them small gift such as a little money and snacks. It is called Getting Candles and it is a part of the Star Festival. This was mainly held in Sapporo and Hokkaido which was the northern part of Japan until 30 to 40 years ago. The article explained that it is still popular in some areas of Hokkaido.

The area where I grow up or neither of my prents' home town do not have such event. So this article was very interesting and I was very surprised about the fact that there was something similar to Halloween but has been done for something completely different event in Japan.

The Drill

There was the drill at Shirokane Takanawa today from 9:30-11:30. It was the community people gather together and experience the work of the fireman such as fire fighting and chain saw training, and experience the situation at the real fire.

The issue to think about

The disaster training were very useful to know what we should do at the real situation, however, people there were talking about a serious problem. They are worried about the foreigners who live in the Minato-word because foreigners do not know anything when there is any disaster. Therefore, they are trying to make opportunity to let foreigners to know information about the disaster by putting a translator at the drill training. However, there were no foreigners at all other than people from Temple. Usually, those drill trainings are for the neighborhood associations and people notice those events by looking at the circular bulletin. However, foreigners do not belong to those community and they don't know the way to inform such things to the foreigners.

The fire fighting demonstration by Shinagawa Prince Hotel.

People are watching the demonstration.

Emergency food tasting.

Minatoku Project: Interview with Nittasan

Leading to the Minatoku-kiumin festival, we interviewed Nittasan to interview him about the festival; how and why Temple started to join this festival as participants. We also asked him about the relationship with Minatoku now and in future.

Temple is perticipating some Minatoku community activities such as the festivals(Azabu festival as well), the drill training, teaching Japanese teachers how to teach English. Moreover, there are some students who goes to public schools in Minato word to teach japanese to kids who moved from abroad and have not been able to ajust to the Japanese school, culture, and language. According to Nittasan, local people know the name of Temple more than he expected. However, he wants people to know more about Temple and raise its popularity among the community. So maybe in future, in return of Temple doing volunteers and other things for this community, they will let up use their facilities and recognize us as a part of them.

Minatoku Project: the change of the theme

For the final project we were planning to do about Minatokuminn festival. Since it is Tokyo story class, we wanted to do something traditional Japanese. The traditional Japanese festival is something that is unique about Japan. So Nao and I were going to do project about Minatkuminn-festival.

But after we went to shoot the festival we had chance to talk with Nitta-san and we decided to expand the topic of our project. We got the idea from class today. So our theme will be "how it is for foreigners to go into the Japanese society feat. Temple." We decided to include Temple's activities with Minatoku, because Temple is a foreign university which is trying to be a part of Japanese community as a foreign institution. As the second step of our project, we are having an interview with Nittasan to interview him about the Minatokuminn-festival and other activities that Temple is doing to interact with Minatoku.

みなと区民祭り / Minato Citizens' Festival

'07 Minto Citizens' Festival was held on October 6 and 7, for two days at Shiba park and the areas around the park, such as Tokyo Prince Hotel and Zojyo-Temple.

The areas were divided into six areas and each area had different concept. For example, Prince Hotel area was named as "Concourse of gourmand and alcohol from all over the world" and people could enjoy unique food from 13 different countries such as Cuba, India, Australia.

Moreover, there was "Home Product area" in front of the Minato word office. This area had food, alcohol, sweets from all over Japan and many people were enjoying different food from different areas at the table which was prepared in the middle.

Other than the booth, there were parade by 26 groups of 2000 people, and performance by different groups on stage such as dance, Martial arts, and chorus.

HISTORY

This festival was first started to create a place where people communicate with each other. The festival has been held for 26 years and number of perticipants increased year by year. Now this festival has grown up to one of the major event in Minatoku which mobilize more than two hundred thousand people. Compare to other festivals, this festival is very safe because all the booth are managed by shopping arcade community people and organization which is approved by Minato-ku, and it contains no Tekiya(mountebank) which is booth paticurally come to festivals to sell their products and most of the time it is related to Yakuza.

I had chance to talk with two people from Red Brick shopping arcade who has been doing booth at this festival since it's started. They said "it had no publicity when its started, and there were not many people who can buy our products which we were selling. So we bought food from each other's booth to help each other." They also said they are very surprized that this festival had grown to this big, and very international as well. 26 years ago, there were almost no foreigner at this festival but the foreign participants has been growing along with the festival growth. I asked them what they expect the festival to be from now on and they answered, "We expect it to continue growing and being held so people from Minatoku have a place to communicate. It is one of the very important tradition for Minatoku People and also for shopping arcade community in Minatoku. So we hope it to never die out."

TEMPLE

Temple was also involved in this festival from this year. There were volunteer workers from Temple which come and help out this festival from several years ago, but this year was the first time for them to be deeply invorved. Total of 4 groups from Temple joined this festival and make Temple's name known to more people.

Three Days Project

DUBLINER'S (DUB)

It is an Irish Pub in Tamaike-Sanno station. It is located on the B1 floor in the Tameike-sanno Park Tower which is a very tall office building and contains a lot of well known both Japanese and foreign companies. I have never closely observed this pub before. There were new interesting findings which I had never been aware of.

There are three reason for me to choose this place for my project.

1. I work here and to know my working place more from the customer point of view
2. I was curious why people choose to come to this bar/ What motivate them to come
3. I wanted to know what this place is like to people who often come here

In this building, there are also some other bars, cafes, and restaurants to go to. But they all are either Japnaese or Asian styled and the Dub is the only Western styled bar in the building.

OBSERVATION
Normally, this bar has about 1/4 of foreigners and 3/4 of Japanese. Customer's age group tend to be younger than other restaurants and bars in this building. Avarage seemed to be between 20s' to 50s'.
The first thing that I found was the different style of drinking between Japese
and Foreigners.
While drinking, Japanese people usually order a lot of food from apatizer to main dish and sometimes desert. They eat more than they drink. However, foreigners especially Westerners only order one or two finger food and they drink more.
Period of time they stay at the bar also differs between foreigners and Japanese. Japanese stay for the longer period of time compare to foreigners.
The second interesting that I found is about the tables.
There are three types of tables in this bar; high and low tables, and counter tables. Counter tables are connected to either bar or the narrow table which you can maybe put your drink and maximum two plates of food. And low tables are as tall as the ones you see at a regular restaurant. The interesting this along with these tables are; foreigners tend to sit on either tall table or the counter, and some don't even sit and just stand while they are drinking. On the other hand, most of Japanese prefer the low tables.

INTERVIEW
Through the observation and the interview, I found that a lot of people tend to be the "repieters" who come here quite often. All the people whom I interviewed first came here because their co-workers brought them here. Most of them have been here for quite long time since they first came here. The longest time was nealy four years and even the shortest one have been here for a year. Here is the interviews that I had with both customers and a worker.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT DUBLINER'S??

INTERVIEW ZUESTIONS
Why did you started to come here?

What motivate you to continue coming here since then?

What do you like about Dubliner's?

If you discribe Dubliner's in one word, what would you say?

INTERVIEWS*~Audio~*

• Customer

(Male worker, 24 years old) *Click to hear*

(Female worker, 29 years old) *Click to hear*

(Male worker, 43 years old) *Click to hear*

(Female worker, 25 years old) *Click to hear*

• Staff

(Female, 23 years old) *Click to hear*

SPACE

Living Space

Japanese people pay more money for less living space than people live in other countries. Especially if you are living in the city, you must pay huge amount of money for a tiny 1LDK apartment. For example, my friend was living by her self in an apartment in Philadelphia. The apartment was in a pretty nice area and she lived in a two LDKs apartment. She only paid $600 a month for the apartment while she was paying about $900 a month for much smaller apartment in Tokyo. Living in Japanese cities are very expensive and cramp.

Moreover, everything must be squeesed into a small space since the living spaces are very small. The word "rabbit hutch"seems to be the best definition to express the situation of Japanese houses in the city. It seems also true that a lot of Japanese people only go back to their house to sleep. Some peopole do work, hang out, relax, and much more things at home. However, people are more likely to go back to their house just to sleep.

Other Spaces

I strongly agree that the home for Japanese have much less meaning compare to Western people. In the U.S, almost all the collage students go back to see their family during the vacation even if the vacation is short. When I was staying with my host family for a year, my host brother who was softmore in college came back every single vacation even on the weekends even if he had to drive three hours for one way. My host mother and sisters were also very crazy about him comming back home. It was very supplizing and even too much for me at the time. But later I figured that it is not the strange scene to be seen in the U.S.

I don't fully agree with the author when he stated " the Japnese male enjoys a plurality of homes... the office, the favorite bar, the favorite coffee shop." I don't think those places will not be like home for them. Those places are certainly their favorites and the space where they can relax and be apart from their pressure of their life. Moreover, as it was mentioned in the reading "Frusato" is the term which expresses the meaning of home in Japanese.