The university has started officially. And it was a great day which started early, very early, with taking a ride to the famous fish market which gave me a lot of thought in terms of its structure. According to the Lonely Planet some incredible 2,200 tonnes of fish at a value of US-$ 15 mn change handy every DAY! The most exiting part to watch is the auction on the wholesale market at 5.30 am where huge Thunas are lying around where the pieces command prices up to US-$ 100,000.
In the subsequent step in the market come the middle men who are to a large entent into packaging and distribution of the goods.
A few retailers are there as well on the street for the bypassing crowd. The best, however, as the “value add” at the end at the chain, are the narrow tiny, narrow sushi bars for a great breakfast with raw fish and hot saki. “Kampai” (=cheers)!
At 5 p.m. the university was kicked off with the keynote from Yoshito Hori, founder and head of Globis. Yoshito is the founding member of EO Japan and has put a lot of time and effort in developing EO in Asia overall. With respect to his business he explains to investors: “Globis is like having Stanford Business School and the VC-firm Kleiner Perkins under one roof.” He narrated the story of his own business, his major learnings as an entrepreneurs as well as the change he perceives for the booming “Nouveau Japon”.
One of them being the perfect infrastructure that Japan boasts along with the techological edge of the country which one of our fellow EO-members from Japan has exploited to build dolls which move and talk that from 20 meters you do believe that they are real.
Food was excellent, lots of fish, mussels and water snails.
And after that, how it has to be, cultivated drinks where the usually very controlled Japanese as our fantastic hosts are well known to loosen up.
And a special hello goes out to all the friends and buddies from EO like Maria and David who could not make it this time. Will try my best with posts and pictures (whole set here) to ease the pain …
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