Global Training in Malaysia

Hello all,

I am back in Japan and I can't tell you how good a shower feels after 7 hours of flight!
But maybe I should start from the beginning:

Last Wednesday we met at 9 in the morning at Narita Airport to fly to Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaysia. With 7 hours the flight was surprisingly long and I had time to watch some movies, unfortunately I wasn't really able to sleep. We arrived around 8 in our hotel and everyone was extremely hungry. So we set out in groups first to change or withdraw money (which took an incredibly long time because of the Japanese decision making process, namely standing around for ages not deciding on anything concrete). But we finally moved to the Midvalley Megamall (one of the biggest Malls in the world) joined to our hotel and there had our first Malaysian dinner. And on that day my party period of 8 days began. Of course I mentioned we went to have a training in KL, but about 50% of the experience there was more like a school trip, and that is how everyone behaved on their off time. We drank until 2 in the morning the first day.

Second day, and first day of training we had to get up around 8 to have breakfast (big breakfast buffet with food from all over the world) and then met for our first training session at 9.
I wont go into detail about my training but it was a kind of case study in english with final proposal presentation. We were groups of 5 people everyone with their strong and weak points and we got to know each other in the course of the training. We developed a good dynamic after day 2 and were able to put out high quality results faster than other teams. Even though I don't have trouble with english, like many of my colleagues I learned a lot about brainstorming, creating proposals and so on and I am confident I will be able to use my newly learned skills when I am finally assigned to my first project.

Over the next couple of days it became a routine of getting up early, training until around 7 and then going to dinner and have a party at someones room from 11 usually ending between 2 and 3 thirty (at least for me). The alcohol of my choice became tequila, I managed to be drunk but not too drunk that I would feel bad the next day, actually being used to having 8 hours of sleep I have to say I managed very well over these 10 days only sleeping about 5 every night.

The big highlight of our trip was of course the weekend (which for us was Sunday and Monday). On the first day I went shopping in the mall and to the swimming pool of the hotel. On day number two I tried to squeeze in time for presentation preparation with my team in the morning and afterwards going sightseeing to the most famous places in KL (Batu Caves, Petronas Twin Towers, Central Market and China Town). We were definitely ripped off by some of the taxi drivers we used (a lot of taxis in Malaysia don't have meters, and it is not easy to argue a good price).

The last days of training went by very fast and our final presentation (like our presentations before) was a huge success and we received the Excellence Award! We are still very proud.

Our last day ended with a party and from there we had to leave directly to the airport, we took our flight at 11 and arrived in Tokyo at 7 in the morning. What an experience. Here are some more impressions.

 Brainstorming Work in progress.

 Poolside of the Hotel.

 Japanese card games!

 Batu Caves

 Petronas Towers

 Typical restaurant in China Town - it was a little bit scary and also unclean but very good!

 Everyone talking to themselves while practicing for presentation.

 Preparation for fairwell party

 All participants + trainers and supporters

 My super awesome team (Dan from China, Koya, Natsuki and Keita from Japan)

Our excellence award!!!

Nikko

Hey everyone,

the Global Training will start tomorrow and the weather is finally hot and dry. Well not really dry, it's humid but it is not raining anymore, thank god.

I had one of the best weekends last week, and of course I want to share it with you.
On Saturday I went to Nikko, a city about 2 and a half hours north of Tokyo. It is a very popular tourist spot, and I can only say, that if you ever visit Japan you should really go there.
There is a lot of history in the region, but also beautiful nature, and I think I got the best of both.

First we went to Toshogu shrine where the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu (a very famous and important shogun and the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunat in 1600) is located. The place is also very famous for its wood cavings of the three monkeys called "see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil".

We ate Yuba for Lunch, which is famous in Nikko. It is the skin of Tofu and tastes very good. After lunch we drove up the Irohazaka a winding road up a mountain to visit the beautiful lake Chuzenji and the Kegon waterfall.

On Sunday I spent the morning with cleaning, around lunch I meat a friend from work who went shopping for food with me and helped me cook German food. At night some other friends came over and I could finally show them, that German food is not only sausages. And I really hope they liked it.

The Yukata quest

Hi everyone,

another two weeks have passed and nothing really big happened. It is still rainy season in Japan, which means it is raining everyday sometimes all day.
ABAP training will be over next week and I learned a lot. Turns out I am actually not bad at programming and I really enjoy it so I hope I will have the opportunity to learn some more programming on the job.
For the last couple of weeks we have all been preparing for the Global Training (in Malaysia), which will be in 10 days. Everyone is trying to brush up their English and discussion skills. The team leaders feel the pressure of leading a team for the first time but we are all excited that we get to go abroad and make new experiences.

Now to something not work related: I have been trying to buy a Yukata (summer kimono) for the last couple of days, after deciding that I wanted to visit some Festivals (called Matsuri) and Fireworks this summer. Finding one that I really liked was much harder than you might thing. All in all I probably visited 10 different shops. The result can be seen in the pictures below. I am not really 100% happy with it yet. Maybe I will go and buy a dark purple belt (called Obi) to wear next time.
I am very proud to say that I managed to put it on all by myself in less than 20 minutes (I was in a hurry to meet my friend JP from Mexico and his dad).
The 3 of us went to Tanabata Festival in Hiratsuka outside of Tokyo. It is one of the biggest Tanabata festivals in Japan. Unfortunately it was raining all the time.

The Tanabata festival, also known as Star festival comes originally from China. According to legend, the Milky Way separates the two lovers Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair respectively), and they are allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month of the lunisolar calendar. In present-day Japan, people generally celebrate this day by writing wishes, sometimes in the form of poetry, on tanzaku (small pieces of paper), and hanging them on bamboo.

Afterwards we went to Yokohama where we rode the big ferries wheel at the harbor and had a spectacular view of the city.

 

I also went to the aquarium two weeks ago! With two of my colleagues and it was a lot of fun! I really want to go to the zoo next, but I will have to wait until the weather gets better. Other plans are going to Fireworks and visiting Nikko (a city north of Tokyo, where I haven't been yet, but always wanted to go). So please look forward to my next entry.

Corporate Social Responsibility aka. gardening at Mount Fuji

Hello hello,

SAP exam is over, and thanks to the very good preparation of our trainer we all managed to pass it. Now we can call ourselves SAP Finance professionals. A really nice feeling.
The next step in our education to becoming the best consultants in Japan is to learn the programming language of SAP, called ABAP. Here we also have one month to learn, and so far it is great fun. I have always liked programming and everything we did learn so far is not too hard.
Writing small programs is very rewarding. You type some text and at the end you push some buttons and there will be something to show for it at the end.

A short break in our training routine was on Friday where we all went to Fujisan, the most famous and beautiful mountain of Japan, as a CSR activity. I was looking forward to that trip for weeks and really wanted to get out into nature. Unfortunately we have entered the rainy season and it has been raining on and off for days. And Friday was unfortunately no different. We hiked a little bit through the forest at the foot of the mountain and our guide explained plants to us. We really learned a lot of new things. After a very good bento box for lunch and some speeches about Corporate Social Responsibility and also the work of making Fujisan more beautiful in the last couple of years, we went out to rip out weeds at the side of the street. These weeds, although very beautiful are very dominant and take away the space of other plants around them. It was physical work and a very nice change to sitting at the desk all day long. And at the end we had bags full of plants to show for the hard work.

And before I forget about it:

I was interviewed by a Japanese TV channel, and I really hope I will appear on TV soon the day would be 7th of August at 8 p.m. 

Beach Time

Hey everyone,

not much to tell lately. The SAP exam is getting closer and we are all studying so we might pass on Friday. But I am confident that it will work out for all of us. :-)

There is really not much to tell beside SAP. But from Thursday I had a visit from a good friend from Nagoya. We had a lot of fun, at it was a great change to my otherwise boring weekends. Even though it had rained a lot on Friday night we decided to go to the beach in Kamakura on Saturday. At first it didn't look like it would be very hot but the day turned really beautiful and we had a lot of fun. The water was still to cold to go swimming (for normal people), but there were a lot of surfers out on the water. We just took a walk along the beach and saw all kinds of animals, like starfish, a little octopus and even a ray. Unfortunately I got home with a horrible sunburn, and I will stay out of the sun for the next couple of days.

But I really can't wait for the SAP exam to be over and have more fun!

Here are my impressions:

Thank you Marc Colling for some of the pictures.

SAP

Dear all,

I am in high spirit, while my Japanese colleagues are on the brink of insanity. Why is that? Because the SAP Finance training has started last week and it is in English. Which means everything is considerably easier for me (compared to the Japanese core training we had before) but a whole lot harder for all the Japanese who do not feel at home speaking or even listening to English. The whole thing gets even more complicated, because our teacher, as much as we all like him is not a very good English speaker and the topic we are supposed to learn within the next month is challenging in any language. BUT I on the other hand have no problem following my teachers broken English, I can read the (badly translated) English script and seem to have a natural understanding for the German SAP program. So now I just try my best and give all the kindness that I received in core training back to everyone by helping and explaining whatever they did not understand during the days class. It turns out this is also a good way of checking my knowledge and reviewing everything we have to lern for the test we have to take next month. It also gives me the opportunity to make friends, and I think the impression people have of me has changed rapidly over the last week. They started calling me Lena Sensei or even Master (as in "Teach me Master").

Staying late every day to explain SAP to my friends and colleagues has reduced my free time even more, but I really don't mind it. Sitting at home alone doesn't really do me any good anyways. Last weekend I was alone at home, cleaning and studying. Not really exciting.

Yesterday on the other hand I went hiking (yes me, hiking, my own free will). I seem to have needed a little nature and work out. We went to Mount Takao (高尾山) west of Tokyo, the climb was really beautiful along a river and took about one and a half hours. At 600 meters hight we ate lunch and icecream and then went back down by cable car. At 3 o'clock we took a bus to the nearby Onsen where we cleaned up and relaxed for two hours and afterwards went to an Izakaya to have dinner. It was the first time that I felt like I belonged with my colleagues.

Here are some impressions:

The beginning of our hike left to right (Taichi, Sha, Saori, Saku, Zoe, Anna and me)

At the top

 My pet on the way

Some holy tree (there were a lot of temple on the way, very beautiful) 

Lunch

Golden Week - Kyoto

Hello everyone,

I have been busy for the last couple of weeks, and of course I want you all to know what I have been up to.

So last week the only noteworthy event was a 女子会 a Girlsnight with my female colleagues. We went to a restaurant in Shinjuku and had 3 hours of all you can drink with a 6 course menu. I wasn't expensive and tasted fine, but when we left we were still hungry, so we decided to go have desert and then go home. We talked mainly about boys, what else can you expect when 10 girls come together. But the atmosphere was really great and we all had a lot of fun!

The day before we had our first party with almost all members of our class, which was also a lot of fun. I am trying to make friends, but its not easy to really get to know any of my colleagues. In Japan relationships are usually very shallow.

No to the really interesting part! From Saturday until Wednesday was the so called Golden Week in Japan, the longest national holiday and the opportunity for Japanese people to go traveling for a couple of days. So everything is really expensive and packed no mater where you go. 

I had been planing to go to Kyoto from the day I knew for sure that I would be in Japan for Golden Week and booked my Shinkansen Ticket one month in advance! It wasn't cheep but I was there within 2,5 hours!

I met a friend from my german university and a mexican friend from my time as an exchange student. The highlight was my meeting with my hostmom from my Kyoto-stay last autumn. She is in the hospital right now because of a knee operation in March and took the time to meet with me anyways, I was so happy.

I went to a lot of Temples and Shirnes, as always (Kiyomizudere, Ginkakuji, Kamigamojinja and Shimogamojinja etc.). We also went hiking in Kurama north of Kyoto. I got my first sunburn of the year (on Saturday it was 29 degrees celsius). I also went to the public bath and just enjoyed my free time with a lot of delicious food and sunshine!

Here are some pictures.

My bento on the way to Kyoto - 4 kinds of Fish on rice (sooo delicious)

Kiyomizudera - one of my favourite

Ginkakuji - the Silver Pavilion that is not silver because they ran out of money

Steak-rice-bowl yumyum

A sheep with omikuji (sheets of paper that tell you your luck) as fur (It is the year of the sheep)