28th March 2011:

I have just returned from a few days in Tokyo…

… which was a slightly surreal experience.  From a business perspective it was a good trip.  The newly established BDO Japan is developing well – early days (it was only established on 1 January) but making good progress and building on the success of its two constituents, BDO Sanyu and BDO Toyo.  The deal in Japan has been well received by clients and staff of both firms and has been positively received by others, including the JICPA, with whom I met whilst in Tokyo.

Tokyo itself was much quieter than usual.  On arrival I was the only person in the ‘foreign passports’ queue (I had flown in from Malaysia not the UK) although the bus from the airport to the hotel was busier than usual (I subsequently discovered that the train from the airport wasn’t running – which is presumably why only two people on the bus were actually staying at the hotel).  The hotel was quiet but it was very much ‘business as usual’.  The Japanese themselves are quite remarkable – the joint disasters of earthquake, tsunami and problems arising from the damage to their nuclear power generators would be a challenge for most people yet, outwardly at least, that Japanese are taking it all in their stride.  They are doing lots of small things to save power – for example, many escalators and hot air hand dryers are switched off; lighting levels are lower; heating is turned down or switched off; kettles in the hotel room are switched off with a polite notice asking guests to switch them off again after use.  All little things and no real inconvenience – but I am sure they make a difference.

There continue to be tremors/after shocks; the first one (I was on the 15^th floor of a building when it started to shake) caught me by surprise and left me feeling like I was suffering from motion sickness but as soon as I realised what was happening I was fine.  My hosts were unaffected – just commenting that this meant the elevators would not be running for about 15 minutes and that the underground/subway trains would also stop for a similar time.

In fact the only real inconvenience was British Airways who, for unspecified ‘operational reasons’, cancelled their direct flight from Tokyo to London so that I had to fly via Seoul, adding over 4 hours to my journey home.  I bet if the airline was run by the Japanese it would have been ‘business as usual’.

 International Business  1 Comments March 28th, 2011