Another Australian contingent hits Tokyo! My my, are we trouble or what... but in that group was my work wifey and I was soooo happy to see her, to catch up and tell me about new developments at home. 

I am pretty sure a whole week with more foreigners is just about as much as some of my local colleagues can take! But Japan were the last market unit to complete the Transformation Workshop and having done it twice, I much preferred the Sydney edition.

It was a fun and absolutely exhausting week. We went out 3 nights and whilst I think we all thoroughly enjoyed it, we all looked liked we were about to shatter by Friday evening. Sushi, cocktails, kaiseki and more cocktails is kind of cool - we even had karaoke (that I have on video! - need to find a way to make the video brighter), went by a street of small bars in 'Golden Gai' and drunk dialled our latest fellowship colleague from Singapore because he doesn't drink. HAHAHA he's a good sport!

So I showed my colleagues around Tokyo on the first weekend they arrived. We went to Asakusa (Sensoji Temple and the Sanja Matsuri festival was on... yay!) and Kappadashi followed by Ginza shopping and on Sunday we went to Roppongi, Shibuya, Omotesando, Meiji Shrine and Harajuku. Not a bad weekend - we stopped by a great (but expensive) cafe on Saturday afternoon for coffee. It was probably one of the best coffees I've had in Japan but I'm not willing to fork out Y980 (around AUD$12) every time!

Being away from your daily job for 2 days for a workshop really takes it out of you. There is a lot of work to catch up on and well, the culture in Japan is something I am still getting use to. I have to say that I have my AEs very well trained in Australia. Yes, they are pushy but they understand limits and when it is appropriate to escalate. Here in Japan, everything is urgent and you aren't even given enough time to process the information. Not cool and I am thoroughly unimpressed - by both the teams that I am supposed to work with to support the front office and by the salespeople themselves. It's amazing that they are able to get Market Unit of the quarter when the processes are in such disarray and I'm kind of hoping they have a 'crash and burn' quarter so that some of these issues surface to the top. *insert frustrated emoticon*

I did something daring yesterday with Sonia... and I'm not sure I actually would have done it up until the point... we ate BLOWFISH RAMEN!!! Some call it pufferfish and in Japan it is called "fugu". It was just white fish meat really... a bit chewy and tough, slightly bitter and not much flavour to it. There were no tingling or numbing sensations so if you ask me if I'd do it again, my answer would be a pretty firm 'no' - nothing special about it.

We had another day of shopping before Sonia had to hop on her flight... it was a good day and she scored quite a few last minute purchases - food, sake, whiskey, clothes and random stuff and we squeezed in a visit to the Shiseido Parlor Cafe... fancy schmancy!

Once I dropped her off at the bus stop, I did some more shopping myself hehe... I really like Lalaport Toyosu and Odaiba so that's where I spent the rest of my weekend. Scored some things on my shopping list so it was a successful weekend. Daiba was super windy again today so good thing I stayed indoors. Kind of wished I had a personal shopper or something so I don't have to carry my purchases around... wahahhaa... I kind of lose interest in other shops these days once I'm carrying one or two bags from other stores... I'm such a princess!