TJCS 2013 New Years Party with Ambassador Clugston

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January 16, 2013 Tokai Japan Canada Society - Shinenkai Event Review

Wow, What a great evening!

For myself having lived in the Nagoya region for the past 11 years, it was my first Shinenkai event from the Tokai Japan Canada Society. The event, which was initiated by the members of the Business Committee, was an outstanding success. I could sense from the attendees that their was a real sense of optimism for the New Year. 

Mr. Bruce McCaughan, TJCS Shinenkai MC

The event began with Mr. Bruce McCaughan (WSI Consulting) acting as MC for the evening. McCaughan kept the evening light and humorous and everything seemed to go smoothly.

Quick Review

Inspiring and effectual speeches from the executives and VIPS. There were many local government and corporate leaders in attendance and the following are only a few.

From L to R, T. Nakamura, Matt Fraser, Mackenzie Clugston, Takashi Kamio, Hideaki Omura

Mr. Mackenzie Clugston; Ambassador to Japan; Government of Canada

Mr. Hideaki Omura, Governor of Aichi

Mr. Takashi Nakamura; Mayor of Nagoya

Mr. Takashi Kamio; Senior Advisor to Toyota Motor Corporation

Mr. Matt Fraser; Nagoya Canada Consular Office

Mr. Koji Yamaguchi and his troupe gave a great introduction to the traditional Japanese shamisen with a youthful energy which had the crowd fired up!

Overall a wonderful event that showed the TJCS continues to impress with wide variety of events that attract large numbers of attendees. Looking forward to seeing the organization grow this year.

Main Review

It was an event with two purposes, first it was a kick off to the TJCS 2013 year and secondly and I believe more importantly it was a welcome to the new Ambassador Mr. Mackenzie Clugston as his first official visit to the Nagoya region.

Mackenzie Clugston, Canadian Ambassador to Japan

Clugston gave a wonderful speech, spoken fluently in Japanese, highlighting the relationship between Japan and Canada and it was great to see the reactions of so many attendees at just how fluently and eloquently Mr. Clugston could express his ideas from the theme of cooperation between our two countries.

Mr. Takashi Yamamoto (TJCS President) gave the welcome speech from the TJCS.

Matt Fraser, Nagoya Consul

Mr. Matt Fraser (Nagoya Consular, Canadian Government) also gave a speech covering the local perspective of the Central region of Japan and the Canadian governments work in the region to promote each other’s initiatives.

After all the speeches were taken care of everyone was free to mix and the crowd buzzed with introductions and new friendships. Of course for myself there were many locals that I haven’t seen in a long while and we could catch up on how life is going and what are the plans for the upcoming year. It was great to see Mr. Julian Bashore (Bodycote), Greg Robinson (Bombardier), Jeff Genet (Power English), Andy Boone(andyboone.com), Sarah Mulvey, (Nanzan University) and many more. With so many people coming to Japan and staying only one or two years it is great to see people who have established themselves successfully here. All of these great photos were brought to us by the talented Andy Boone, link above.

The last event of the evening and for me the main attraction was the shamisen concert put on by Mr. Koji Yamaguchi and his troupe (one of which was my wife Mamiko). Koji always entertains the crowd as I have seen him a few times. However he was able to get a usually quiet and conservative Nagoya business executive crowd clapping along with great enthusiasm as he played traditional melodies while making the tempo rise and fall all with a youthful vigor that inspired us all. I am of course biased here, but I think Koji will continue to grow in popularity and hope he can grow his own brand of traditional Japanese music fused with his youthful energy and willingness to try new collaborations.

M. Fraser, T. Yamamoto, C. Walker, K. Yamaguchi, M. Walker, Ito san, M. Clugston, T. Kamio, Y. Fujiwara

For me personally it was a great personal kick off event, which has started my renewed ambition to put Canadian business together with business in the central region of Japan (chubu). This review is by myself and not the opinion of the TJCS Business Committee of which I am a member.

Twitter: rockyjapan

Social Media - Democracy - Use Your Voice

Social Media - Don't be Afraid to get engaged. 

You are a part of a ‘real democracy’.

Never before in our human history have we had the possibility to achieve so much. With today's technology and the ability for people to share resources, knowledge and work cooperatively towards improving the way we live we are now experiencing incredible innovation.

This will become even more evident over the coming years with our energy resource utilization, our local, national and global governance, as well as the way we continue to be connected to each other and recreate the traditional channels of media and distribution. This is what a true democratic society was meant to be. That is, to be connected to each other, to have the ability to make change for the better, and be held to the true value proposition that you can achieve, whether it be in business, arts and culture or through social improvement.

It is scary; we can be criticized or anonymous fools can easily point out the errors in our thoughts, you also can see it in the eyes of people who built their ideology on the old power structure. But no one should be afraid. Just learn how to adapt to the new reality. Get involved in the discussion, whatever it may be, good people will back you. I would be interested to hear of bullying cases and thoughts and strategies to counter cyber bullying, people want to be connected but we have almost all had run ins with these assholes. Any thoughts?

Your voice can now be heard and the more you offer, the more you can affect change and gain the trust of those you are connected to. Learn to grow a thick skin and know that many will support you, while others may ridicule you. For the trolls and the cyber bullies learn to accept that many people will not like what you have to say and often they lack the intelligence or the patience to write thoughtfully, they may even be right but if they contradict your thoughts and can’t write how and why and what might be a better idea, then erase them and forget them. Accept that trolls and bullies exist, but don’t let the bastards bring you down. Use your voice. Call the bullies out. blog about it and point the people back at them.

I have seen so many great things come from this new interconnectedness yet the most intriguing thing for me is just how we as a society will be able to govern ourselves and create change with each other as it evolves as the group en masse wishes. Traditional channels of media, wealth distribution are now being completely rewritten and will lead to a redistribution of wealth not based on status or current power but will instead depend on the value proposition, that is whatever you add to the pot will be scrutinized and the group will decide its true value, the more people that review what you do the more correct the final valuation will be.

There are many cases where social media has gone awry and often it seems to correct itself, but we cannot run away from the most powerful tools, the ones that give us a voice where before all we had was a remote control to change the channel, now we write the channel. These are my thoughts.

Thoughtful ideas and even contradictory views are welcome, with ‘thoughtful’ being the operative word.

Winter SOULstice 2010 Weeks 1 and 2

Winter SOULstice 2010

Weeks 1 & 2; December 21 January 3
Optimizers Program; I have devised a way to 1) think (use imagination), 2) plan and 3) execute my intentions in order to pursue my dreams. We all do #1, some of us get to #2, and some of us even get to #3, but we fail to keep doing it. The program is simply a way to measure my own key performance numbers and follow my progress. This blog is also a way to show how my progress is moving along and to describe the unique lifestyle that is for a foreigner living in Japan. I wish to share these experiences and my progress with you. The program is becoming a monster and I will eventually publish all my reasoning and results but the reasoning will also be revealed here.

Maximum Points Available for two weeks:
50 points per day x 14 days = 700 points
The intention is between 500 and 550 points, below is how I fared on those intentions.















Weeks 1 and 2



Week 1 and 2: Overall 88% 437/495 Points
Weeks 1 and 2 were quite interesting. As I spent a great deal of time creating a bigger version of this program, I also had a few days of holiday time where nothing was accomplished in some of the foundations. This should be looked at in advance when setting goals for certain foundations i.e. exercise and economic. 88% is quite good but it might be a good idea to lessen my goal in points so that I can reach those limits and move ahead as the program progresses.





















Above is a graphical representation of the first two weeks of my program in terms of percentage of maximum 50 points per day, the two lower areas were due to a couple night out and Christmas and New Years holidays.

Economic Weeks 1-2 96% 95.5/100 Points
Stabilizing: I have been doing very well with this, unfortunately it is due to low funds but it is still teaching me some humbling values. Be grateful for what you have. Be hungry to move ahead!

Moving Ahead: This has all been about planning and getting on track, most of the plans have been laid, I plan on finishing all plans by the end of this weekend and the background work to get them off the ground. It is now time to start pushing ahead with the plans and be open for changes to the plan but to keep pushing forward. We have some ambitious goals and now is the time to show ourselves what we are made of.

Optimizers: This has been the bulk of my time, as I can’t move forward without a plan, re-doing this program has helped me become extremely organized. The next 75 days will tell if it has been worth it. I have decided to go back to what originally made me so successful, that is to decide overall what my intentions are for the entire 90 days, then bring those intentions into weekly and daily actions, this is with money, my body and health, my connection to family, friends and the universe as well as my studies. I now sit back looking at a massive spreadsheet which by the time I am done may prove to be the beginning or may have to be completely re-written, however for now I am starting to increase focus and should be able do some real good in the next 3 months.

Temple: Week 1 - 2 85% 89/105 Points
Fitness: Well the first week was a bit of a write off but the 2nd week proved to be quite good. I worked out as planned for the week with the exception of one day. The problem remains to find new interesting exercise routines which can be done at home with no or minimal weights. Any ideas send me an email positiveattraction@gmail.com

Nutrition: Again with the holidays and all the traditional foods all over the place this was tough to follow. The program is now becoming a monster again and as I want to have every single meal planned and prepared for the next 28 days this will take more time to develop. Anyone have any great food ideas please let me know by dropping an idea below.

Environment: Wow, this has been quite successful, while we didn’t get the full house cleaning done, I believe that if I follow the plan as I have laid out we should have all the house cleaning projects handled by the end of the month and when we come up for our next monthly organizing we can start to manage other bigger tasks such as all the home ownership documents, making the wedding albums and filing and organizing all our personal life files. For now though these will have to wait.

The following are the tunes that will push me through my exercises, please let me know of any great tunes for exercising or what motivates you.

Music List
Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow - Rooney
Another Way To Die - Jack White & Alicia Keys
Mississippi Queen - Mountain
Somebody To Love - Jefferson Airplane
Be Aggressive - Faith No More
I Believe in Miracles - Eddie Vedder/Zeke
Fix You (Remix) - Coldplay
Dream On - Aerosmith
When the Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin
Sweet Emotion - AeroSmith
I Believe I Can Fly - R.Kelly
New York, New York - Frank Sinatra & Tony Bennet
Who Wants To Live Forever - Queen
Should I Stay Or Should I Go - The Clash
Bachman Turner Overdrive - Taking Care of Business
Hey You Bachman - Turner Overdrive
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet - BTO
Shes So High - Tal Bachman

Mind: Week 1 - 2 74% 67/90 Points
Relatively weak as I didn’t do as much studying and still have not cracked the Japanese textbooks. These intentions simply must get stronger and will do so as the routines of the main new business become more established and I can easily set aside 30 minutes.

Connect: Weeks 1 - 2 91% 109/120 Points
This was again the true strength for me, of course during the holidays this should be. While the graph shows lower numbers for some foundations, this can be forgiven as it is one of the time of the year where we should be mainly thinking about our family, friends and community.

The next year will see me increase my intentions to connect to family but will also see renewed emphasis with the Tokai Japan Canada Society (TJCS) and Santa & Friends Japan – Nagoya with another great volunteer idea that actually gets me quite excited thinking about but it will have to wait.

Spirit: Weeks 1 – 2 87% 96/110 Points
Quite good, this is also key to continue to get up at 5:30 am and sit in the pose to meditate properly as well as continue to have a feeling of gratitude every day, this should never be a chore but a good part of my day.

Business:

GDI Exports: GDI Colin
With a new year come the promise of a fresh start and a chance to do what we wanted to originally. That is, we aim to actually provide what the customer wants, we aim to do this in an open and transparent way, we want everyone to know what we are up to, we will only succeed in this business our way if we can show the customers what they need to know, how much we are actually charging them and for what. This business is unfortunately soiled by sad and untrustworthy people, I have seen it and heard it. Our customers will receive what they deserve. Honest and clear communications and a true understanding of what they will receive.

We created a new mission which reflects our personal missions and our professional goals, that is in order to satisfy our clients with the best products and service in the industry we will: provide the Best vehicles, with Transparent pricing, and Open and sincere service. By Best vehicles we aim to only go after cars that we know will bring a smile to the new owners, cars, trucks and machinery that is in great condition and will bring no headaches (through higher quality rankings and lower mileage), this only makes sense as a business that is aiming for long term sustainability, we want to make our customers happy, this will bring them back, I think this is so obvious yet is so missed by so many. The newer idea of Transparent pricing aims to show our customers that they will always get the price that they expect, there will be no surprises and everything they are paying for can be explained and is understood. We stand by our cars and know the owners will be more pleased with the results. Our cars will re-sell faster, because they are good, but they also won’t come back to the re-seller as the quality will keep your customers happy with their new purchase.

President Hedden, (James) Ms. Kitamura and myself are also happy to offer Open and sincere service, this of course sounds easy, yet why is it so many businesses really don’t offer open service? We want you to understand what is happening and what step of the process we are in to provide you peace of mind, this is crucial as you may be trusting our business from a different continent and the only way for you to trust us in the beginning is for us to go out of our way so you understand who we are and how we aim to help you.

Lastly, As we do move toward the new year and a new beginning , I felt you should understand where James and I met and how we came to be in business together. We both joined our local Canada friends in Japan group otherwise known as the Tokai (region in Japan) Japan Canada Society (TJCS) back in 2004 and 2005, I started as a founding member and James joined a year later. WE both ended up becoming Co-chairs of the Social committee and to shorten the story we both fed offer each other and we started to really succeed and making things happen. We applied this synergy to the business committee this last year and we hope to continue building on our successes, please have a look around the TJCS website and you may see for yourself what we have been up to. http://www.tjcs.jp) James was also busy creating a Christmas present giveaway to orphaned children in the Nagoya region. This was recently a huge success as the mayor of Nagoya can attest, his newly named Santa & Friends – Nagoya group delivered 269 presents to children with no parents this past December 21. Please have a look at our fanpage (Santa & Friends – Nagoya http://bit.ly/7sI5BA ) on facebook or the blog http://www.nagoyaorphans.blogspot.com

All in all we have built a business around our volunteer activities, someone I respect once said ‘You get out of it what you put into it’ with that mantra our success with these volunteer endeavors gave us tremendous planning and preparation experience and helped us create the new look GDI that will push forward in a down economy by building networks with people who want to be treated well, and look for good service and can expect it.

We are looking forward to a new year and a year where the customer will have more to choose from, as they should, the power is with the customer where it belongs and the winners in this economy will be those who can serve these educated consumers, we want to serve you in this way, and we will all look back on this 2010 as the year it began to change for the better.

Humble and Best regards,
Colin Walker
Sales Representative
GDI Exports

Mission Statement:
GDI Exports / GDI Car Exports mission is to provide you the Best vehicles and machines through Transparent pricing with Open, and sincere service.
Only the best products are pursued on behalf of our clientele through low mileage, Japan standardized testing and in-house best practices. Our transparent pricing comes to you as part of our ongoing initiative to be honest about our operations and who we are. First-class service is our team commitment, we promise to be open and honest and go beyond your expectations, and we aspire to give back to our community as part of our work responsibilities.
BTO Standards Always! Our #1 Goal is to make the purchase and delivery of great vehicles and machines stress free! Guaranteed!

Making progress and the next step will be reaching out to all those interested in earning more income with high quality vehicles by importing into your home country or if you live here we can assist you in exporting vehicles to your family and friends.

Email: colin.walker@gdicarexports.com
Website: www.gdicarexports.com
Blog: http://www.gdicolin.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/gdicolin


Power English:
A slow end of the year has actually forced us to put more effort into this for the beginning of the year, we have a few new plans that are moving ahead and I will be teaching English in various ways for those who would like to learn more about our new plans please send me an email or check out Power English:

Website: http://www.powerenglish.jp/
Email: positiveattraction@gmail.com

The Optimizers: The program is simple, but takes time to understand how to implement. The current program was started on December 21: Winter SOULstice 2010.
I will be going it alone and will keep you posted, the program needs to be refined and simplified before I publish how to do it, please keep watching and I will let you know how it is going.
Email me at positiveattraction@gmail.com

Tokai Japan Canada Society - Canada Means Business

Canada Means Business; Speakers Corner

Volume 2: Ron Haigh

Toyota Motor Corporation; Overseas External Division

Learning from Mistakes and Remembering Why We are Here

“Mistakes are a part of life. It’s your response to error that counts.” - Nikki Giovanni, Poet

We are pleased to announce another successful event, the second volume in Canada Means Business; Speakers Corner series was held this past Thursday November 5^th with over 25 attendees from Japan, Canada, USA and Australia. Introduced by our lovely Business Committee member and MC for the night Ms. Rika Tanaka; our guest Mr. Ron Haigh highlighted the history of the automobile, and how Toyota evolved into the international success we all know today. Beginning with company founders Sakichi Toyoda and Kichiro Toyoda we learned how the company adapted from early mistakes to continually improve its operations. One of the key principles to this ongoing improvement explained was Monozukuri, which is a key component of Japanese industry but is also a mainstay of the Tokai business scene, monozukuri (モノズクリ) states that the goal is to add value to society by producing things of exceptional value and to do so under the spirit of kaizen or the ‘spirit to produce excellent products and the ability to constantly improve a production system and process’.

Another key principle introduced by Mr. Haigh is Jidoka, (自働カ ) which is the process of man and machine working in unison to create products in order to benefit society. This was highlighted in the viewing of the Toyota assembly line through a DVD presentation showing how Toyota continually improves it’s processes utilizing it’s employees to add value at all aspects of the production process.

The closing portion was an explanation of how Toyota continued to learn from mistakes with it’s launch of Lexus in North America and how even though the cars were recalled Toyota went far beyond anyone’s expectations and sent technicians to owners and through this and many other measures earned the respect of the North American market with it’s dedication to one thing and one thing only, the customer.

The presentation was concluded with the future of hybrid technology and how Toyota is moving ahead with the Prius model and it’s latest release the hybrid only model which will be on sale in Japan on December 7. With only an hour and ten minutes, Mr. Haigh delivered an entertaining and powerful presentation, which left the audience eager for more.

We hope to have Mr. Haigh back for a follow up event early in the new year to finish his story as there is so much more to know about this extraordinary company.

A special thank you goes out to Mr. Haigh for coming down from Tokyo for giving us a great presentation. As well I would like to thank Ms. Rika Tanaka (MC), James Hedden (V.P. & Co-Chair), and Bruce McCaughn (Communication Committee Chair) for all the help in making the event possible. As well I would like to thank Mr. Allan Edwards from the Consulate here in Nagoya and Mr. Paul Thoppil, Commercial Minister, Trade Commissioner Service (Embassy of Canada in Tokyo) with their continued support we can all look forward to more events in the near future.

We are looking forward to finishing our 2009 Canada Means Business Series with the final installment being the Meet n Greet on December 2^nd.

We are also looking for new members who would like to join the committee for 2010, please send an email to business@tjcs.jp and join us for another great year!

Colin Walker

TJCS Business Committee; Co-chair

www.tjcs.jp

Comments from our guests:

This bi-monthly business seminar is a great way to learn about business in Japan and interact with many people involved in international business in Nagoya. TJCS invites speakers from a wide range of backgrounds and industries and the networking is amazing! インタナショナルビジネスはここからスタート！私のお勧めです！

- Steve Burson

President,

H & R Consultants

Contact Steve Here

With a company the size of Toyota, I figured that there must be other Canadian employees, but had yet to run into anyone until the Canada Means Business seminar. I started working for Toyota in 2007 after five years working for a tool and die maker in Takahama City, Aichi Prefecture. Through my years in Japan I have learned that "senpai", or superiors, are regarded as a great source of wisdom and advice, so I was eager to meet Ron Haigh and hear about his experience at Toyota over the past 20 years. Ron's speech about how Toyota has learned from its mistakes, yet remained steadfast to its principles, motivated me in my work as well. Many of the concepts were familiar to me and I already apply them everyday on the production floor, but Ron's personal anecdotes added humour to the story and made it very entertaining. Events like these give me a great networking opportunity and I look forward to participating in the future.

- Allison Teasdale,

Toyota Motor Company