Colin McGuire

Kyushu, Summo and My Final Thoughts

Well, I am back in Scotland now so I thought I would share with you the highlights of my week in Kyushu and sum up the incredible experience I have had over the past 66 days.

I started off my trip in Fukoka which is a very modern city with some stunning architecture. They are also big fans of Ramen and I have to say, the ramen I had in Fukoka was the best I tried in Japan.

I spent my day there just wondering around and enjoying the atmosphere.

After Fukoka I visited Nagasaki for a day and a half. I visited Hiroshima last year and found Nagasaki had a similar atmosphere. It is a pretty city which feels a lot smaller than it is. The weather was very nice there which made it great to wonder around. As you can guess the atomic bomb plays a big part in tourist attractions and the atomic bomb museum is quite heavy and saddening. Scattered around the hypercenter are several relics of the bomb including some ruined shrines and churches.

Nagasaki also has some beautiful temples which some how managed to survive the atomic fires.

Perhaps the most interesting Nagasaki related story which is relevant here is that of the Scot, Thomas Blake Glover. Glover, born in fraserburgh in 1983, moved to Nagasaki in 1859 and is widely respected for his contribution to modernizing Japan. He started as a merchant and dealt with tea before moving onto guns and ammunitions. He was responsible in 1865 for bringing the first steam railway locomotive called "Iron Duke" to Japan and helped fund the shipbuilding company which later became Mitsubishi. He also was involved in constructing Japan's first coal mine and dry dock and founded the Kirin brewery. In recognition of these achievements, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (second class). In Nagasaki there is a garden devoted to Glover which contain several western-style buildings belonging to glover and other traders. I took a strole there at dusk which was a nice time to admire Nagasaki.

The Scottish connection also created an abundance of shortbread in the gift shop.

After Nagasaki I went to Aso-san which is a volcano. I did some great hiking around there with some guys I met and enjoyed a nice open air Onsen beside a waterfall. The highlight though was going to the Volcano rim where you could peer in and see this turquoise coloured water with poisonous gas seeping from it. The pictures don’t really justify the colour, it was truly incredible.

After Aso-san I went to Beppu and spent a night in a Japanese style hotel which had its own private Onsen, so I spent a nice night relaxing is naturally hot water!

My last trip was to Usuki to see some stone Buddhas. These Buddhas were carved into the rock created by Aso-san during the 12th centenary.

When I returned to Tokyo on Sunday Bahariah and I went to see some Sumo wrestling. This was the second time for me but it was still very interesting. English commentary was provided by radio which made the whole thing a lot more interesting. The big new in Summo at the moment is the banning of two Russian Summos for being caught smoking Marijuana. I still can’t get over how big these guys are. I think several of them are three times as heavy as me... and I am not exactly light.

The day after the sumo I flew back to Scotland and that was the end of this Japan saga!

During my week travelling I had a bit of time to reflect on my internship with Fujitsu and living in Japan in general. I realize now I learnt a lot more from my internship than I appreciated at the time. I have learnt a lot about how large IT companies operate and feel a lot more confident now that I could fit in with one. Learning about mergers and acquisitions and how companies target sectors of the market and keep an eye on the competition was very interesting for me. Everyone I met in Fujitsu was so helpful and patient which allowed me to learn a lot and hopefully do some useful work for Fujitsu.

I would like to thank everyone again for their help and support. Living in Japan was a wonderful experience. I think I fitted into the Japanese culture quite well and would have no qualms living in Japan again. When I returned to Scotland I actually experienced some real culture shock! I am sure the whole Saltire experience has influenced me in several ways, perhaps all of which are not visible yet. I have made many good contacts and undertaken an experience I am sure no other internship programs could offer.

Thank you everyone for reading my blog, hopefully you have learnt a few things and had a taste of my experience.

Colin

The Final Week at Fujitsu

Well, I am currently in Nagasaki as part of my one week tour of Kyushu (the most southern of the three main Japanese islands) and thought I would recap the final week at Fujitsu in Toyko. I plan to round up the whole trip and my week in Kyushu when I return to the UK on Monday. Anyway, onwards!

On Tuesday I finally presented my work for the Intel Alliance team. I presented in Kawasaki to about five people so it was quite relaxed. I was surprised how smoothly it went considering I had prepared the slides almost two weeks ago and had not changed them too much since. Although everyone seemed to understand my key points, I felt I was still lacking some core elements to the plan, but as I only had one week to prepare it I think my work was reasonable.

Wednesday was a busy day for me. I the morning Alex, Leonor and myself left Nakahara at 6 am (that meant getting up at 5:30) to go visit Tskiji fish market. I had visited before so knew what to expect but it really did blow me away. There were so many interesting looking fish and although we arrived late by Tskiji standards (7am) the place was still packed.

I wanted to try some early morning Sushi but Alex and Leonor weren't too keen so I left it. All three of us were wearing our work clothes and somehow we miraculously managed to avoid all the fish guts, oil and blood and made it out unscathed.

I was also fortunate enough to attend an Oracle Japan event called meet the guru for a seminar on Wednesday afternoon. For this event one of Oracle's senior engineers was presenting some information about the new Oracle database (11g) and its key features. Although I knew very little about databases before the session, it was at quite a nice technical level so I could understand most things. The Oracle Japan team also did a little role play in Japanese about the different ways to administer a database so I had to use a provided headset for real time translation to English (which made me feel like one of those guys in Brussels actually doing something important!). I was very impressed with the translation, it must be a tough job, although with all the different people talking at the same time she got a little confused, leading to me getting a little confused. The session was very useful and I came out knowing a lot more than when I went in; mission accomplished.

On Wednesday night I had some leaving drinks with some Fujitsu colleagues not in my group organised by Tomiya-san. These are people I have had lunch with or chatted with etc. so it was a nice occasion. We went to a nice Mexican restaurant and enjoyed the Japanese-Mexican fusion food and plenty of alcohol.

From left to right: Ichirue-san, me, Kats-san, Masaki-san, Tomiya-san and Paul

On Thursday Alex, Zach, Stephen Baker and Frank Boyle were interviewed by a woman from Immigration News. It was an interesting experience, a first for me. I kind of froze when the women turned suddenly to ask me questions brandishing a huge old Sony recorder. I actually felt a bit nervous; its strange how a casual conversation can turn into a serious conversation with such a simple gesture. We were asked about why japan and the differences in culture etc. and had some pictures taken. Hopefully we did a good job promoting Scotland and the programme. Baharaiah and Euan joined us a little later and we were treated to some delicious food by the SDI guys. Alex and I even tried fish eyes. In case you are wondering, fish eyes are very chewy and taste of egg, not fish; I kid you not. After a brief karaoke session I headed home as I had a lot of work to do for my final presentation on Friday morning.

Friday was a hectic day. In the morning I had a real rush to finish my work and my slides before my final presentation to the Global Partnership Alliances team. During my time here I have become a lot more proficient at preparing presentations and almost ad-libbing them, which helped me a lot on Friday. My presentation consisted of a demo of the web pages I had made followed by some information about what I had done over the last 8 weeks and why it was relevant to the whole Global Partner Alliance team at Fujitsu. The presentation went very well and it was a nice feeling to go out on a high. I ended up adding three sections to the global partner alliance website:

1. Case study overviews - I selected 10 case studies of different Fujitsu and partner solutions in different industries etc. and created easy to read summaries to aid sales people.
2. Partner Keynote summaries from Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Oracle OpenWorld and SAP SAPPHIRE.
3. Information about my three projects and why they are important and useful to know (business intelligence, cloud computing and intelligence operations management).

Friday was also tough as I had to say goodbye to everyone. I have really grown close with many of my colleagues so it was sad to say goodbye. I guess that is the sign of a good internship.

From left to right: Kogure-san, Tomiya-san, Eri-Chan-san, Shimada-san and Hamada-san.

After lots of farewells Alex and I went to see a kabuki show (Japanese theater) and have some delicious food to celebrate a successful 8 weeks. The theater was a nice experience, aesthetically stunning but a little slow. The actors also used some strange voices, almost overacting. I had a woman with a lovely voice translating the story for my in my ear courtesy of a rented ear piece but the actual lines were no translated, so I couldn't understand all the jokes ect. It was still very interesting and I recommend it.

Anyway, I will update you on my final 10 days here when I have more time.

Colin

The Ramen Museum, Musical Robots, Hakone and the Last Week!

First of all, just to let you know if you check my last post again I've uploaded some nice photos so I recommend you have a look if you haven't noticed.

Well I have a little bit to catch up on.

On Wednesday Alex and I visited the Ramen (Japanese noodle soup) Museum in Yokohama. Now Ramen is loved by everyone in Japan so I'm surprised it took them until 1994 to open a 'food amusement park' dedicated to the stuff. The place is themed like Japan in 1958 (the year instant noodles were invented you see) and features outlets from eight ramen restaurants specially selected from around Japan.

Alex and I tried Ramen shop number 8, Ryushanhai, which according to the handy Ramen Museum floor guide "the harmony between the raumen and miso soup accented with fish and shellfish flavoring is also quite superb". I have to say it was nice but not as nice as I had hoped. I guess I will have to go back and try the other seven!
There is also a small museum tracking the history of instant Ramen which included a lovely exhibit on instant noodles of the world!

The rest of the week was fairly uneventful outside of work. I have been kept busy trying to figure out the strategy of Microsoft and Oracle by watching keynotes and speeches. It has been quite interesting, especially watching Larry Ellison (Oracle CEO). He has some great stories about his times during the Oracle startup including hiring the pizza delivery boy as CFO and naming their first software release Oracle database version 2 as "who'd buy aversion 1.0 from four guys in California". I recommend you have a look at the video here (Sunday Night Live—30 Years Behind The Scenes at Oracle, start watching 5 minutes in), I have to say I received some funny looks in the office when I started giggling.

On Friday the fact that I am leaving soon hit home for the first time. Nishikawa-san has been a very interesting person to talk to at work and has organised and helped me with a several things he didn't need to, which I really appreciate. When I was leaving work on Friday he came up to me and said he would be in Munich on business next week so this would be the last time we would meet. It really struck me then how much I am actually going to miss Tokyo and the people at work. I suppose I better make the most of my final days.

On Friday night Euan, Zhanar and her Russian friend went to supposedly the biggest club in Asia, AgeHa. I have to say it was pretty big and included 4 rooms, a swimming pool and a food court. We had a great time there and took advantage of the free shuttle bus back to Shibuya which was pretty handy at 3:30am (early night in Tokyo).

On Saturday Alex and I didn't feel like we had he energy to go to a museum so we went the bright lights of Tokyo bay. There we spent most of the day wondering around the malls and arcades and some pretty interesting things. In the Toyota Universal Design Showcase there was a trumpet playing robot. I guess it was kind of impressive but seemed awfully pointless to me at the same time.

We also saw some interesting future transport ideas from Toyoto, what do you think?

I think I discovered the most Japanese thing yet. It is an arcade machine like no other, recreating everyone's favorite past time, which had so far proven impossible to recreate in the virtual world, well that was until now....dog walking.

After a nice long sleep on Saturday night joined Bahariah early on Sunday morning to travel to Hakone. Hakone is according to my Lonely Planet the original Japanese tourist Mecca. It is famous for hot volcanic steam, beautiful scenery and pirate ships. I was scared it was going to rain while we were there but luckily the sky managed to stay clear and we had a wonderful day.

We used several kinds of transport; 3 trains, 1 funicular railway, 1 cable car, 1 pirate ship and 1 bus. We also did a nice hike for just under two hours across a mountain through a lovely forest. The volcanic steam was quite spectacular but was very overpowering due to the strong Sulphur smell. It created a really dramatic landscape due to the dead trees which really wouldn’t look out of place on another planet or apocalypse movie.

The pirate ship cruise was an interesting experience. There was even pirate GPS onboard.

The lake was stunning although I'm sure you would agree, it could easily be Scotland (it’s a nice country we live in eh?) although I doubt we would be courageous enough to fill Loch Lomond with replica pirate ships.

All in all a nice weekend.
Today was the start of my final week at Fujitsu. I can't believe it is almost over. I still have quite a bit of work today so I am sure I will be working hard up until 5:10 on Friday! My schedule for the week is looking quite busy!

• Tuesday I have my Intelligence Operation Management presentation in Kawasaki.
• Wednesday I am meeting the Oracle guru in the afternoon then going for drinks at a Mexican restaurant with some colleagues.
• Thursday the Saltire interns have been summoned for a meal and interview with "Immigration News" (sounds like a guest publication on Have I Got News For You)
• Friday my final presentation on the work with the Intel Alliance.
• Saturday we are visiting the Studio Gibli Museum
• Sunday Alex and Zach fly home and I will start travelling in Japan.

Hopefully I will be able to squeeze in another museum and some souvenir shopping in there too.

Colin

 

A Tough Week at Work, Modern Art, Kawaguchiko and Go Go Giants!

Sorry for the lack of updates, it has been a pretty crazy week.

This week has been pretty tough work wise. I was working on the Intel Alliance Intelligence Operations Plan all week in Kawasaki and Shiodome and spent a couple of evenings at work trying to get things done. I even ended up working a bit on Sunday (although not very productively) and this morning to try and get my presentation finished before meeting my boss, Murakami-san today. I had a meeting for about an hour with Murakami-san and we went over my work. He is a pretty honest guy as far as I can tell and he said he liked my work and thought it would be useful. He gave me some great advice about targeting presentations and how to engage with the audience which I found very useful. He has asked me to give two presentations later this week in two different offices so I have to prepare for those tomorrow.

As well as continuing with the intelligence I am starting my final Fujiｔｓu project with the Intel Alliance. I have three tasks which involve improving the Fujitsu internal partner alliance website by putting better information on it. Most of this involves summarizing bigger documents and presenting them in an appealing way (I think it takes quite a lot of skill to make case studies attractive enough to get sales people to actually read them). I will discuss more about the work when I get into it.
On Wednesday Bahariah, Zhanar, Sandy and me visited the Mori art museum and Tokyo Cityview at Roppongi Hills. I had visited Mori before and really enjoyed it so I thought it would be a nice thing to see. I have to say it was very nice. There was an exhibition called The Messenger by a French artist called Annette Messenger. She explores life and its polar properties and contradictions through some pretty innovative/strange methods. She seems to favor using stuffed toys in her works which is interesting, especially when Frankenstein creatures are created with Sparrow bodies and teddy bear heads. The Tokyo Cityview was also very nice with a beautiful view over Tokyo.

On Friday I went for dinner with several of my colleagues and my big boss Ohama-san. We went to a Kyu style restaurant (food from the region around Kyoto) which was beautifully decorated and had some delicious food. We also had a few drinks and discussed some of the Japanese region rivalries and history.

From left to right: Hamada-san, me, Nakamura-san, Ohama-san, Mamada-san (standing) and Eriko-san

After having quite a few Shochu (Japanese vodka) we headed for some Karaoke. Now definitely not a singer but something about Karaoke just gets me and I love it. We had a great time although I seemed to inadvertently force everyone to sing English songs. The highlight was hearing my SAP placement boss, Nakamura-san, singing Coco Cabana and Duran Duran classic Rio. I also helped him do a fabulous rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody as a duet. Thank you all for a great night again!

I especially like the picture of Mamada-san; I don't think I have ever seen a man so happy with a tambourine before (or ever will).

On Saturday I woke up bright and early at 8 am (still feeling a bit dizzy after not getting back until after 3am) and headed with Zach, Euan, Bahariah and Sandy to Kawaguchiko which is a lake beside Mount Fuji. Unfortunately the weather was not great as it rained the whole time we were there so didn't get the picture postcard view of Fuji. Luckily for me the last time I visited I did so I have posted it below for you.

We spent the day wondering around, enjoying the peace and quiet. We visited an attraction known as the musical forest which was basically a European themed museum about mechanical music devices.

We saw some demonstrations of some really impressive old musical machines. It is really amazing they could be so accurate with making these machines to play with perfect rhythm. The highlight was witnessing a quartet playing some Vivaldi followed by a demonstration of an automated organ.

Bahariah, Zach and Sandy decided to stay around and climb Mount Fuji through the night which I respect them for greatly. Unfortunately I do not trust my knee to climb so myself and Euan took a bus back and enjoyed a nice sleep rather than an 11 hour hike in the rain.

On Sunday I had to do some work for Murakami-san before going to see the Tokyo Giants take on the Nagoya Dragons in baseball. This was inside the Tokyo-Dome which is a 55,000 capacity indoor stadium. Before going I read a wikipedia article on baseball which really helped me as I didn't know anything about the game. The 2 1/2 hours were actually more enjoyable than I thought and although Tokyo was destroyed by the Dragons the atmosphere was worth the 1000 yen. It is very different to other sporting events I have been to as only the supporters of the team batting chant and cheer while the other supporters wait patiently... very Japanese.

On Monday I started my new project with the Microsoft Alliance. My project is to improve the Global Partner Alliances website by creating easy-read case study summaries and detailing the major partner's strategies over the next year. I will also be working with Nishikawa-san on an Oracle related project but I have no further information yet.

Microsoft are currently in town for some meetings with Fujitsu so I was invited for dinner last night with one of their business managers, Ted, Last night (Tuesday). Ted has worked in Japan before (which I didn't know) so I was very surprised when he started taking fluent Japanese. He gave me some useful advice about working in Japan and what is nice to see and do.

Colin

Tokyo National Museum and Disney Land!

This weekend I was culturally rewarded by spending Saturday in the Tokyo National Museum and Sunday as Tokyo Disney Land.

The National Museum houses over 87.000 pieces and is situated in Ueno Park. I visited last time I was in Japan and was thoroughly impressed, especially by the archeology collection featuring this nice 6th century terracotta dog (courtesy of the museum website) so I convinced Alex to come take a gander.

We spent most of the day wondering around looking at the vast arrays of scrolls, kimonos, ceramics and art there. I was particularly impressed by the gallery of Horyuji treasures. The architecture of the building was stunning and the inside was presented very well. I especially liked the collection of masks.

On Sunday Alex and I visited Disney land. I was concerned that it would be a bit dated, like the Universal Studios in Osaka I visited last year, but it appears that a lot of the rides have been renovated recently.

Highlights included Space Mountain (a indoor rollercoaster in the pitch black apart from some really impressive star lighting), the Pirates of the Caribbean (a boat trip through a variety of scenes featuring pyrotechnics and some really impressive animatronics, which must have cost a fortune) and the runaway mine train. The attention to detail on all the rides and around was really quite amazing. I don’t think I have ever seen so many smiling and waving people in one place. I am not sure how those Japanese Disney employees keep it up (long nights and tough discipline I suspect… Scottish management lesson number 1)

Unfortunately the heavens were not as excited about us being at Disney land as we were… it decided to pour down. This meant that although a lot of the queues became very short, we also got very wet. Eventually we decided to leave a little earlier than planned because we were so cold and wet (that is really a first in Japan).

Final note: They had an amazing variety of popcorn on offer which really surprised/impressed me. I managed to get through the soda and chocolate flavors and couldn't face the honey, caramel and salt; next time. For your information, soda flavored popcorn tastes like soda flavored chewing gum. For your information soda flavored chewing gum tastes like, erm, well, you'll have to try for yourselves.

One last picture - Alex has discovers his trademark look; magnum...

The Polysics and Intelligence Operation Management

On Monday night Alex and I went to Shibuya to see a band he had wanted to see for a while: The Polysics. They were supporting an old American band called Devo (whip it, whip it real good!). The Polysics have a bit of a reputation for being a top live band and they didn't disappoint. It's hard to pin down what style they are. In their own word they "Technicolor pogo punk" and their stage costume consist of orange jumpsuits and Star Trek style visors. Have a look at this video.

The main band themselves, Devo, were new to me too. Although all quite old now they were surprisingly active on stage. I'm sure the middle aged among you will remember them (they wore plastic pot plant hats).

This week I was building up to my presentations on Friday on intelligence operation management (IOM) and Intel.

The presentations went well, especially the IOM one and I got some good feedback. Unfortunately I made my first mistake here. I was asked to produce a presentation titled Intel Corporate Analysis and instead I made a presentation titled Intel Corporate Profile. My presentation did not include any analysis... oops! I was very apologetic and kind of annoyed I had made such a poor mistake; I just noted the wrong word down in my notes when I was preparing it. I will not make the same mistake again!

The IOM presentation had no such problems and we spent about two hours going through everything. I am now prepared to try and produce a framework for an intelligence process for Fujitsu to evaluate its partners. I have a good idea what to do but it will be challenging and time consuming. I am also to try and prepare an Intel white paper using the framework I develop although I am not sure how much I will be able to do before I run out of time. Murakami-san, the Intel Alliance Director, said he wanted to really push me as he has faith in my abilities. He also said he wants Fujitsu to adopt this framework so I might do something very worthwhile - no pressure!

I thought I would try and give a brief overview of Intelligence Operation Management in a business context using some diagrams from my presentation.

The diagram below gives a definition of IOM.

Goal: To answer questions or obtain advanced warning of events and movements deemed to be important to the intelligence gathering organization.

The Intelligence Cycle

The basic principle behind intelligence is the intelligence cycle. The basically shows the steps used to create intelligence and how it in turn effects the next cycle.

Direction

Intelligence is produced for the consumer (normally policy or decision maker). The consumer also sets the direction, i.e. what intelligence is required, how should this intelligence should be gathered, what resources should be used.

Collection

The next stage is collection. There are various collection disciplines but the ones most relevant to business are:

• OSINT (open source) - Information gathered from public sources like the media, journals, blogs etc. This information is useful for putting more detailed 'classified' information into context.
• HUMINT (human) - Information gathered from human interaction. For instance asking someone questions about a topic, whether they are friendly, neutral or the opposition. High level executive meetings between two companies provide HUMINT as strategies are often shared. This can provide valuable 'classified' information.
• FININT (financial) - Information gathered from financial sources. This can help determine a company’s nature and capabilities. For example if you look at a balance sheet and a company is sitting with a large amount of cash they may be planning an acquisition.

Processing

After collection comes the processing. This includes:

• Pre-processing the information into a form which can be easily stored or analyzed
• Evaluating the information to make sure it is useful
• Analyzing the information

The diagram below shows the whole stage and the outputs which feed into the dissemination stage.

Some features worth explaining are the database and indication checklist.

The database is in my opinion an abstract concept. It includes both physical information in the forms or reports etc. and also the knowledge and experience of the analyst. It is used to help evaluate and analyze the information.

The information checklist is used to create warnings. A consumer might create a checklist of events which they think are very important and often require immediate action.

Dissemination

This is the process of delivering the product (intelligence) to the consumer. Several different methods can be used depending on the type of final intelligence produced by the process stage but I will not go into detail here.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this will give you some idea of intelligence operation management. Next week I will prepare a framework and some processes based on the basic concepts described here.

Colin

Cloud Computing, The Great Buddha of Kamakura and the Intel Alliance

On Friday I completed my second mini-placement with the Cisco alliance team.

This involved me presenting my report about news, the major players and their relationships, collaborations and acquisitions. The presentation went very well and was followed by quite an interesting discussion and questions. I think my audience were quite interested in this new area of IT .

I have become very interested in this subject so I thought I would post a few of my thoughts about it.

Cloud computing is a concept which has been around for a while but is now starting to gain some traction with vendors, enterprise and consumers. There are many interpretations of it so my version may be a little different if you are familiar with the subject already.

In my interpretation the cloud is situated on the net or network and encompasses everything. By that I mean a user or enterprise simply requests information and passes information from/into the cloud. I don't care what hardware and software is providing me with information, where the hardware is situated or how it is linked together, I am just interested in my information or service.

The cloud has several components:

• Grid computing - Using a lot of computers, loosely coupled together to process a complex task. The computers share the processing and enable data to be processed quickly. Typically in the cloud lots and lots of low end computers are used.
• Virtualization - Virtual servers with the specification I require are created using software on top of the physical hardware. It provides a layer between the huge computing power of the cloud and developers/users
• Infrastructure as a service - Utilizes virtualization to allow people to effectively create what ever infrastructure they need, quickly and cheaply.
• Utility computing - allows developers and users to effectively rent processing power, paying by the clock cycle and scaling up and down as required for maximum efficiency. An analogy is with buying power from the national grid - you only pay for what you need; now this is with computing.
• Platform as a service - allows developers to quickly build and deploy applications without worrying about hardware, specification and OS.
• Software as a service - this has already come; think of Gmail, hotmail, Google docs, salesforce.com. This provides software as a pay-by-use service, were the user does not have to worry about expensive hardware and long software installations. This is all handled by the cloud, updating software as needed. It is also very quick to scale - users can be added by paying for another login.

This is my interpretation of cloud computing and I am sure you will agree it is very exciting. I am currently trying to think of products which would exploit this trend towards software as a service and cloud computing. There might be a fifth year project in there somewhere - watch this space!

I also finished my report about the Cisco-Fujitsu alliance Extra-Net and gave it to Kogure-san. My finding suggested that APAC subsidiaries wanted to have access to other subsidiaries' resources and skills. As you can imagine, the difficult part in this process is finding a suitable method for subsidiaries to document their skills and successes and provide incentives to share them. I made some suggestions in my report of possible methods and suggested some next steps. Hopefully I will receive some feedback this week.

On Saturday Bahariah, Sandy and I visited Kamakura. Unfortunately we did not make it there until early afternoon so we did not get to see everything, but it was still very nice.

We visited several temples and shrines starting with Engaku-ji which features the largest bell in Kamakura.

The temple was set in beautiful gardens and was a nice visit. The bell was not as big as I had hoped - I was expecting more from Kamakura!

After the bell disappointment we visited another temple, Kencho-ji. This temple again included several lovely buildings and nice gardens. These kinds of places really do help clear your head.

We decided to undertake the Daibutsu hiking course which leads from near Kenco-ji over a wooded hill to Daibutsu. The word hike makes you think it would be slightly challenging but it was an easy pleasant walk. It’s nice to get out of a mega city like Tokyo and do a bit of walking. Unfortunately we missed one of the temples I really wanted to see, Zeniarai-benten, were you can wash your money for good luck. I guess I'll just have to visit again!

At the end of the hike the Daibutsu, otherwise known as the Big Buddha greeted us. It is pretty impressive I have to say. Just look at how shocked Sandy and Bahariah were.

The statue was cast in Bronze, is 11.4m high and weighs to 850 tonnes... pretty big. He also has a pair of pretty big slippers too.

After browsing what seemed like and endless chain of souvenir shops and meeting a friendly Moroccan man who gave us cat magnets we went to Yokohama to visit the Landmark Tower. The Landmark Tower is the tallest in Japan at 70 stories (296m) and has one of the world's fastest lifts (45km/h). From the top we were treated to some stunning views of Yokohama.

On Sunday Alex and I visited the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo Bay. It is quite an interesting museum and had some interesting interactive exhibits explaining the internet, robots, maglev and various other technologies. The highlight was a demonstration of Honda's walking robot, ASIMO. It was quite impressive and attracted a big crowd. As a robotics student Sandy was quite excited.

That evening we met Abe-san from Fujitsu to watch the fireworks over Tokyo Bay. Abe-san invited us to join his friends to watch from an office block overlooking the bay. We had some pizza and beer and enjoyed the show. I managed to get some nice long exposure pictures so some are below.

I spent Monday at the Kawasaki office speaking with Murakami-san, Mamada-san and Ichiko-san about my new task for the Intel Alliance team.

Murakami-san is very interested in military history and was inspired by the presentation on business intelligence I gave back in week two. He told me he was very impressed so decided to give me a more challenging task than he had previously planned. He is interested in taking the idea of military intelligence and applying it to business. So my task for the next two weeks is to create a plan on intelligence operation management with regards to the Intel alliance and to write a white paper on Intel. Sounds like an interesting task.

So far I have been researching intelligence methods and the intelligence cycle (I will discuss this more in a future post) as well as background information on Intel. On Friday I have to present an overview of Intel and intelligence operation management. We will see what I come up with!

Colin

Week 4 Already?!

Well another weekend down and into week 4. I can't believe I am almost half way through the internship already. Still a long way to go though; can't wait.

On Friday Euan, Zhanar and I spent the night in Roppongi to sample some bars and clubs. We found a couple of nice cheap bars (sub 400 yen beers) before trying a couple of clubs. Although the clubs were free and the drinks expensive we had some fun. The places we visited were packed with some decent music so it was nice. Luckily Zhanar and Bahariah have a lovely flat in Roppongi and they were kind enough to allow Euan and I to spend the night there and avoid an expensive taxi. I have to say the carpeted floor was softer than the futon bed in my dormitory room which was a pleasant surprise.

Saturday Bahariah, Euan, Sandy and I visited Yokohama, although a bit late due to the night before.
Yokohama was nice and quiet which was not what I expected. We wondered around for a while before heading to some amusements on the waterfront. We tried a few of them which were all a little tame I'm afraid. We ended up eating dinner not at the Ramen Museum as I had hoped (I WILL visit it) but in China town. The food was a little expensive but OK.

On Sunday Sandy and I headed to Harijuku to have a look around. It was incredibly hot; like, very hot. We wondered around in the streets admiring all the alternatively dressed teenagers and bemused tourists before heading to the park to have a wonder. In the park I actually bumped into a friend from Singapore, Romain which was very bizarre. We all agreed it was too hot and headed to the beer museum in Ebisu to meet Zack and have a drink. As you can guess on a scorching Sunday afternoon the beer museum was packed but we had a nice drink. The picture below is from left to right me, Romain and Zack.

On Monday the Cisco Alliance team headed to a Fujitsu data center near Shinjuku for a visit. This was very interesting as it is a brand new data center and they are planning to make it fully automated in the future so there are lots of interesting security features. It was kind of like I was in a film having my hand scanned repeatedly, going through airlocks and being tracked by well over 40 CCTV cameras. It was my first time visiting a data center so I was quite impressed. The racks of servers were a lot bigger than I expected. It was nice to actually see some of Fujitsu's products in the flesh rather than just on paper.

Yesterday I had a discussion with Takahashi-san who is responsible for negotiating a new Fujitsu-Cisco alliance. He has had an interesting career including acting as VC for Fujitsu. He told me in one year he met with over 100 CEOs. He gave me some nice advice about business and obtaining finance which I really appreciated. Afterwards the Cisco alliance team took me for dinner at a sashimi restaurant. We had some very nice fish and a few odd delicacies including tiny ram baby squid in soy sauce and whole miniature prawns which were crunchy finger food. Nice!

On Friday is my presentation for this project so I still have a bit of work to finish so tomorrow will be a long day. I am going to visit the platform solution center which is where Fujitsu show customers the products they will buy so that should be interesting.

Anyway, this weekend it is looking like Kamakura will be the destination which will hopefully involve me, a nice beach and the sun.

Colin

10 Minute Just Cut, Curry Doughnuts and other Culinary Delights

Well this week has been interesting so far.

Alex and I decided to go for a haircut at ‘10 minute just cut’. This is a fairly organised process starting with purchasing a ticket from the machine then sitting in an ordered queue. The haircutting itself is as high tech as I’ve ever seen, they vacuum clean your face with a huge attachment to get rid of those annoying post cut loose hairs. The haircut itself went better than expected when you consider my lack of Japanese and my hairdresser's lack of English. Lots of gestures and buzzing noises by me seemed to get my point across and I emerged with quite a nice haircut for 1000 yen. Alex wound up with a nice side parting which actually suited him quite well... I’m not sure what they made of red hair!

I also tried my first curry doughnut. It is actually sweet and crispy on the outside but when you bite in you are treated to a delicious meat curry. I decided to treat it as a desert; I’m still not sure if that was the correct classification, I’d appreciate your opinions.

Last night my group had a mini night out. We went to nice small restaurant packed with other work groups enjoying cheap food and lots of beer. I was lucky enough to sample some interesting food including chicken cartilage, raw pig trotter and pig brain... quite a treat I'm sure you will agree. The brain was actually not too bad, although it makes your mouth very dry after eating it. Not sure if it would catch on back in Glasgow. I had a very nice night though and we shared some nice stories and drank a lot of Sake, beer, plum wine and what I think was a mix of brandy and whiskey. For some reason Japanese people enjoy (yes enjoy) buying me drinks. In the picture from left to right is Takahashi-san, Nishikawa-san, Eriku-san, Tamiya-san, me and Kogure-san. Thank you all for a wonderful night!

Work has been fairly uneventful. I have received a couple of completed questionnaires I will process on Monday but apart from that I have just continued my research. Today I visited the Kawasaki plant with Hamada-san to speak with an Intel alliance team member, Ichiko-san about his job. It was an interesting meeting and I found out quite a lot about how the companies interact and maintain their relationships.

There was a possibility of me being able to sit in on a meeting between a UK telecoms company and Fujitsu about network requirements which would have been interesting. Unfortunately the company has had to postpone the trip so I think I will miss it. I am a bit disappointed as there would have been some important (VPs and Ps) people there and I am curious as to how these meetings work.

Still no plans this weekend. I will post about it once it has happened... I’m sure it will be memorable.

Colin

A Quiet Weekend in Tokyo

Well, what a nice relaxing weekend it has been.

On Friday after a not too stressful day at work, Alex, Leonor and myself attended a meeting of the Fujitsu intergr8 organization. This consisted of a presentation about the group which has been formed to aid integration of international worked in Fujitsu. During the presentation they launched their website and gave a rundown of their plans which sounded very interesting although not really relevant to us as we are just temps. We did get some free M&Ms though.

Afterwards we wondered around Ginza and there was some sort of event going on with lots of food and drink stalls as well as entertainment. We saw the Japanese equivalent of line dancing when we came across a stage with dancers and a drummer surrounded by a revolving mass of synchronized, dancing Japanese.

On Saturday we went to see the spectacular fireworks at Asakusa. Now let me give you a couple of statistics pulled from the website; 20,000 fireworks, 1hr10min and an expected crowd of 980,000. Crazy eh?  Alex, Leonor, Euan and myself went along to watch. Firework watching etiquette in Japan appears to consist of getting there early and putting down some tarpaulin on the ground to mark your space or simply writing your name and drawing some borders using gaffer tape. We arrived about 4 hours before the show and walked around trying to find a spot but didn’t have much luck. Just when we were struggling Alex and Euan managed to find a place right beside the launch site with an amazing view as a family had just vacated their spot! We were very lucky and enjoyed the fireworks with some nice beers. It was a very nice atmosphere too.

Nice pictures eh? P.S notice the smiley face?

Anyway things to look forward to this week:
Wednesday night my division is going out for dinner which should be fun.
Thursday I am going to Kawasaki to see my division's presence there.

As well as being quite productive at work today I also got quizzed on brands of short bread and received an email entitled 'Native check please!'  asking me to check some English so it has been a fun day. Roll on Wednesday.

Colin