Today started out bright and early and a line for breakfast 15 minutes after the restaurant opened. Apparently the hotel is getting quite full and is the perfect opportunity to see the Europeans that are visiting and the high school aged Japanese girls and their style. Every girl has an extremely individual style and most of them involve high heels with fun, printed socks and varying degrees of bleached hair.
Onward to the Tsukiji Fish Market this morning during rush hour. Something I'm learning from the Japanese is that no matter how many people are jammed in a subway train...there is ALWAYS room for more. But the key is that you don't make eye contact with the person and you back into the train. If you back in then you can push people back with your backside and your nose can graze the door as it shuts. You also learn that sometimes you just need to take the seat on the subway because you may be on board fro awhile. Well unfortunately the fish market was closed today for a holiday (still trying to figure out what holiday is being celebrated) but the outer market was open. Wandered around and found a variety of fish being sold and some great photo opportunities in the land of bicycles.
The afternoon was spent with a couple of case reports and a quick outfit change to business casual we headed to the JRLine to go to Tokyo Station for a meeting with the owner of a venture called J-Seed Ventures, Inc. This was quite interesting and we learned that small elevators will yell at you when you're over the limit and someone will have to get off the elevator. We also learned that glass elevators get a bit warm...especially when you stop at every stop along the way.
The conversation with Jeff from J-Seed was extremely interesting, he spent some time in the US going to school for his law degree and the in Silicoln Valley before moving back to Japan. He has started up 19 companies and shared his story with us. During our time talking to him I asked him about women in the workplace and in Japan (this is starting to change) there are two pathes, career, which is dominated by men and support which is tailored the unmarried woman to serve tea. If a woman makes the choice to jump into the career path then that is her dedication and focus. There is no time for focus on children and/or raising a family. We also learned that Tokyo is constantly growing as people move to Tokyo for a job, there are few jobs outside of Tokyo. Education is interesting, the Japanese are focused on learning facts and the how-to's behind all topics compared to the US where we focus on critical thinking and always asking why. There is also a lack of graduate degree work in Japan because employees work their ways up inside of a single copmany, there is minimum incentive for completed and advanced degree.
On our way from Tokyo Station to our hotel there were many many stops...I learned the JRLine has it's own music soundtrack....sounds like an ice cream truck gone mad and I'm waiting for some creeped out no-name character to come running out of a hut somewhere to dance and throw glitter. It just amazes me that for something so grown-up like managing and navigating mass transit to an extent be so juvenile.
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