Apologies for the delay in the latest instalment of my blog but I’ve enjoyed another epic week out here in the old Nihon.  This working week has been quite long especially in the middle of the week when I was feeling like a salaryman.  In Japan, the salaryman is a title exclusively reserved for men whose lifestyle revolves around long hours in the office.  I felt like that for just Wednesday and Thursday but that’s enough for me thank you very much.  Leaving the apartment at 7.30 in the morning and returning at 7.30 at night does not go down well with me.  

My fellow DHL interns think I do nothing down at my warehouse office but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  I have met with the general manager of all terminals for DHL Supply Chain Japan.  His job is important because he determines where the best strategic locations are in Japan for DHL to have distribution centres.  Although he is not my direct boss he is manager of our facility and responsible for my project.  I have to try and improve the layout of the area in the warehouse designated for Fujitsu’s WEBMART online shopping business.  Apparently it’s a tough task to I’m looking forward to getting stuck in!  The first couple weeks were about introducing us to the major areas of DHL’s business but now it’s becoming more involved.  We are going to Fujitsu’s mobile phone factory on Tuesday for a site tour.  We need to take the bullet train to get to Nasu so I’m looking forward to that! 

One thing I know I will be better at when I return home is presentations.  My boss loves powerpoint so much!  I have to make a slideshow for any task I am assigned.  Its something I’m beginning to get very used to now but I’m enjoying the opportunity to give presentations more often.  This week we attended a DMAIC refreshers course.  It was aimed at ‘initiative champions’ who had undergone this training before but we were given the opportunity to go along too.  The lectures were in Japanese so we had a translator for 2 days.  We even got an earpiece.  It was like being in a UN Summit!  The course was interesting and the case studies were based upon DHL operations and in our groups we had to work through to find a solution to the problems.  Late last week we also had a site tour to a distribution centre in Kashiwa.  The place was insanely warm and there was no air conditioning.  I was dying after 5 minutes.  I have absolutely no idea how any work could be done in that heat.  At that site we met some recent graduates who had just joined DHL and are around our age too.  It was interesting to see what they had been doing in the 3 months since they joined.  It highlighted to me how great an opportunity I have here.  In the 3 weeks since I joined DHL I have been out to dinner with several managers and had many other tours and enjoyed special treatment in general.  Sadly, I doubt that the recent graduates have had the opportunity to do these things.

Last week we were out for dinner with Dr Stephen Baker who is the Country Head for Scottish Development International.  It was very interesting to hear what SDI does and the excellent opportunities that they help Scottish companies capitalize on.  The dinner was phenomenal too.  I ate raw horse and raw prawns for the first time!  Andrew’s reaction to eating the prawn is probably the funniest thing I’ll see in this country!!  I’ve tried to be adventurous with the food as much as possible but I think I’ll stick to cooked prawns in the future.  We were out for dinner and drinks with colleagues from work on Wednesday night and everyone was trying to get us to eat ‘interesting’ food.  I ate something that I thought was liver but it turned out to the gland that a chicken has to filter out the sand and grit from its food.  Deep fried stingray wing is fast becoming a favourite of mine here.  I’m running out of things on my ‘to eat list’ but I want to eat whale!  That’s very rare now since the rest of the world seem to disapprove of killing whales.

On the cultural front I have been busy again.  Last weekend I was in Shinjuku and Harajuku on both Saturday and Sunday!  There was an amazing shrine called Meiju-Jingu and I was lucky enough to see a marriage happening there.  It was really impressive to see.  The Japanese pop sensation, Ayumi Hamasaki, was playing at the national stadium and there was a collection of strangely dressed teens kicking around.   I managed to get my picture taken with some of them!  At dusk, we went up the Tokyo Metropolitan Office Building and the views were incredible.  Later on I want to the Golden Gai area in Shinjuku.  The bars here are so small and some can only fit 5 or 6 people.  It was like nothing I’d ever seen before.  There was also a Shinto ceremony on the street last night!  I couldn’t understand what it was about but they gave us some beer and rice so happy days!  It’s just another example of how wonderfully nice everyone in this country is!

That’s all I have to report from this week.

Craig