MTV Crips - Tokyo Special

Dear family, friends, fellow graudates and colleagues,

Hope that you are all doing well and enjoying life like I am :-)

It has now been just over two weeks since I arrived in Narita airport with my two suitcases ready to take on the great city of Tokyo. Much has happened during these first two weeks and I am already very fond of the city. I live in an area called Roppongi, which is an area with many restaurants, bars and very conveniently also clubs. The area is only 20-25 minutes away from NNPL (Novo Nordisk in Japan) and is close to all central areas in Tokyo. Quiet a few expats and (according to my Japanese friends) also Japanese actors live in this area. One of the largest Japanese TV channels actually have their office just across the street from where I live. Maybe that is why I was picked out to participate in a MTV Crips - Tokyo Special episode, which you can see here:

My first weekend here I went out for dinner with a Japanese girl (Aono-san), who I met over the summer in Copenhagen through my friend Gabriel (thanks Gabriel), and her friends. They were all very open, fun and kind to me. We had a lot of hot sake and I taught them the "finger on the glass" drinking game, which I am sure some of you are familar with :-) All in all a great start on my Tokyo adventure.

The first week of work had been very busy. Due to low sales growth we have to cut a lot of costs to reach our target in NNPL. After just one day in the office I could really feel that working in the Japanese affiliate is very different from working in HQ, but that only makes it that more interesting. Also, on the first day I was given a small tour of the office and was introduced to a lot of people. During that tour my Japanese lessons really payed off as I knew how to do a proper Japanese introduction. It was, however,a little akward with all the bowing, but an enjoyable cultural experience none the less:-) 

In my second weekend Beatrice and Elena came to visit me from the Beijing office. Friday evening we went out to a pretty fancy sushi restaurant, where my Japanese sushi virginity (read = first time I had sushi in Japan) was taken. An experience I am sure I will remember for a long time :-) After a lot og really good sushi we met up with Aono-san and her friends and went to a club called Alife. A pretty large club in three floors with bars, lounge area and a big dancefloor. Clubbing in Tokyo is a lot of fun. We danced together with over a 100 very drunk Japenese people on a pretty crowded dancefloor. Imagine a 100 Hello Kitty's, which have played and lost the "finger on the glass" game too many times,  jumping and dancing and you have a pretty good picture of my first Japanese clubbing experience :-) The Japense were in general very drunk in an innocent way - sort of like the first time we got too much to drink in primary school. A cool thing that happened that night was that I met the owners of NN07 (a Danish clothing brand) and luckily I was wearing NN07 pants that night - perfect timing :-) They were on inspiration tour in Tokyo and I had a couple of beers with them.

Saturday we walked around in the streets of Tokyo enjoying the sun, Yoyogi park (the largest park in Tokyo), Shibuya and Harajuku. 

Sunday we went to sumo wrestling on the opening day of the tournament, which is one of four annual tournaments. They take place in September, November, February and May and last 2 weeks. Even though sumo wrestling has more minutes of rituals than actual wrestling it was still a lot of fun. Seing two very overweight almost naked men bitch slap eachother is actually pretty good entertainment :-) 

That was it for my first update. Hope that you all are doing great. Stay tuned for next blog post - my adventure @ Mount Fuji.