Asia Trip Day 3: Banks, Boredom & Sushi

May 29, 2007

Today we visited two banks in the morning. One was a consumer oriented/retail bank called Tokyo Star. Their business model has been to differentiate themselves from the typical Japanese bank by providing a unique banking experience centered around educating about Financial Freedom. The CEO, an LDS businessman named Todd Budge, presented some slides about the way they were able to take the bank from disaster to profitability. Mr. Budge is the first CEO of a Japanese bank and has really been making waves (in a good way) over here. In fact, he has written two books (in Japanese) that have sold well and one was on the importance of Work and Family Life balance. Apparantly it is very common for the Japanese to not only work really long hours, but when the work day is done to go out drinking until midnight or later.

A big part of what Tokyo Star has done is they remodeled the entire layout of their banks to emphasize learning over transactions. I would imagine that if any of you have more interest in the way they have designed their retail banks you could find them on the web. Another part of their philosophy is that Tokyo Star has allowed free ATM access to anyone using their ATM. They are the only bank in Tokyo to make this available.

Mr. Budge used a lot of what we have studied in class. For example, he is focusing on growing a company that is “Built to Last.” “Built to Last” is a book written by the same author as the book “Good to Great” which we studied in some detail. Mr. Budge also showed us how he applied what we call a Seven S model that we learned. His discussion was really great! The only problem was that the AC was not working and boy oh boy did that room get HOT!

The next visit was to the Deutsche bank. It was really cool to see the trading floor at the bank, but frankly most of the rest of it was more like a sales pitch for Deutsche bank than it was something I could try to apply to my career. Although, they had about a million charts and graphs encouraging investing in Japan.

Since I was having a hard time staying awake at Deutsche bank, I spent a lot of time looking out the window. We were up very high and had an excellent view of the city. It was quite a nice view and I guess in a way that made this visit worth doing. The contact at the bank seemed pretty excited about being an ex-patriot in Japan. He thinks the international schools here give even more opportunities for his children than the schools back home would. He seemed to especially like the fact that for sports and other competitions the kids will travel throughout Asia. He also talked a lot about how the church has a strong network, in fact there is an entire English speaking stake here in Tokyo. It sounded like the church was a huge help in his wife being able to handle living in Tokyo.

After the bank visits we had the day free to explore Tokyo. We took the subway around town and had a good time. I continue to be amazed at how clean everything is here. While we were travelling around one of our friends, Nate Dunn, just sorta went off on his own. No big deal as he was able to get back just fine. However, reflecting on the way he went out on his own reminded me of a story from this trip that I haven't told yet. When we were coming into Japan from the U.S. our bags had to be scanned. It turned out that Nate had been hunting last week and left several bullets in his bag. Of course, the ammunition was not caught by the SLC airport. In the end nothing came of the ammunition in the bag. In fact, the Japanese people are so kind they wrapped it up all nice and gave it back to him!!!

We also did some sightseeing and shopping around the “technology district.” It was pretty fun. My favorite was this super cool Massage Chair. Turns out though that there is one button that must say “extreme pain” in Japanese. Seriously I think it put me in some sort of death grip and was never going to let go. Its okay though…I made it out of the chair alive and learned a valuable lesson about not pushing buttons you don't understand.

For dinner we had Sushi, which isn’t really my thing, but it was kind of fun having Sushi in Japan.

I think my favorite part of the free time was riding up to the 45th floor of the government building across the street from our hotel. We did this at night so the lights were pretty outstanding. They had an observation tower that provided an amazing view of the city. It was an absolutely breathtaking view. The building is some sort of a government building and actually had two towers. I think Regan got a picture of the model of the building that was on display so that we can show you when we get home.

Tomorrow we move on to CHINA!!