Mackens in Japan: November 2010

Last week, there was an Asia Pacific Meeting hosted by the Japanese in Osaka. Julie went to the conference which was really interesting and lots of fun, and included Samurai and Geisha displays, karaoke and an afternoon at Universal Studios (bit like Disneyland). It would have been really useful for Ross to be able to go too, but he wasn't invited and played baby-sitting duties - however, it was obvious that many people had invited themselves, and I convinced Ross that he must invite himself to the next one!

Anyway, the meeting ended on the Thursday, but a number of people travelled up to Tokyo and either came to Head Office or joined Ross's guided tour of the factory (I think he had 12 visitors in the end). Anyway, many stayed on the Saturday, so we hosted a Macken tour of Tokyo, with work people, Steve and Julia and the kids! The day started with a visit up the Tokyo Metropolitan building (a 45 storey view of Tokyo). Despite the fact that Ross and I have been up there about 6 times by now, Baba-san (who is a native) had never been up the tower! Then we went to look at the amazing 52 storey atrium in the Sumitomo building, then walked to the combini, bought a picnic and ate it in Yoyogi park, watching all the Tokyoites doing their thing.

After this, we went around Meiji Jingu (temple) at the weekends in November 3 and 7 year old girls and 5 year old boys are brought to the temple in full Kimono gear (which is normally hired as it costs apparently around £1,000!) to receive good luck blessings, so there were lots of really cute looking kids - many photo opportunities for the visitors! Next we took them down my fave Takeshita-dori (aka 'Tacky Shitty Street') to see the Harajuku fashions, then went on to The Oriental Bazaar' for some souvenir shops. After this, we went up to Shinjuku to visit Bic Camera (the engineering 'boys' wanted to see a gadget shop!), and then went to 'ni-hyaku-nana-ju en' (270Y) restaurant for a typically Japanese 'salary-man' and relatively cheap and messy meal.

The evening culminated in 2 hours of fab Karaoke where everyone joined in for a real evening of singalongs, replete with Bohemian Rhapsody air-guitar and even The Vapours 'Turning Japanese'! Felix proved his cool side choosing (and managing to sing) Metallica Sandman - with much satisfaction. An added bonus was that the rather high cost of the evening was picked up by the expense account of our rather generous visitors (Thanks Aidy - and Thanks Jon for signing off Aidy's expenses!)