Day 14 - Mar 5 2010 - I've been here two weeks...

Day 14 - Mar 5 2010 - I've been here two weeks...

The first week felt like a month... so much to see, so much to learn, everything foreign, everything new, so many unknowns.

The second week flew by... I knew where I was working, I knew where the train station was, I knew where to get breakfast, lunch and dinner... Settling into a routine is very comforting in a foreign land. When that happens you can focus on relaxing and enjoying your time and when you do that, time ends up flying...

Day 14 was a Friday and it started off by heading back to the Chiyoda ward office to get my alien resident card, which I must keep on me at all times. It's an ID Card, letting them know that you aren't a short term tourist, who you work for, where you live and is a requirement for foreigners residing in Japan longer than 3 months. It's good for 5 years. After that, we walked over and finalized our Japanese bank accounts that our headquarters can use to auto deposit any travel and business expenses we rack up over here locally... The bank was across the street from NTT Communications Headquarters. My fellow Japanese employees are quick to comment that the Hibiya building is old and not nearly as fancy as the new ones... but this floors me, because I think its looks perfect for a modern 60s style building that is sitting across the street from one of the oldest parks in Tokyo, Hibiya Park and just down the street from the Imperial Palace... Sometimes new isn't better... Shame they can't actually use those cool balconies that line the building.

I got back to the Tamachi building after a fantastic sushi lunch and finished the first draft of my global pricing methodology presentation. I've been thinking about how to redesign the way our internal wholesale global pricing methodology works for quite some time, but have never had the time, nor the position to do so... Not being in my office in Denver, no one walks up to me to ask questions, my phone doesn't ring and I rarely get urgent emails because all of you reading this are at home sleeping... It's amazing the work you can do over two weeks when you aren't interrupted and you haven't fully engaged yourself into a new business because half your new department is in London at a conference.

When redesigning something that has never been designed properly and you are expected to actually make a difference, I find it's best to shoot for the moon. Aim high... Aim really high... I won't go into boring details, but I was very pleased with my first draft that I will get to present next week and begin working the next layer of details. After that, I was invited to go out to dinner with some of our partners out of the Philippines who were in town for the Arcstar carrier forum this week. Lots of excellent food was consumed, even some more raw horse, which is fantastic and lots of Japanese beer.

The weekend is here... time to rest and tour...



smugmug pics here


During Dinner, we realized Benjamin's birthday in July, is on Bastille day, this was very exciting for Yann