I’m planning an ‘international relations’ tour: The address of Chongryon took forever to figure out and there aren’t any directions. Yasakuni shrine/museum is only a little easier to find. Otherwise my trip is fairly standard for tourists and anime fans, Akiba to find my gundam exia, Otome road for my suitemates, and wandering around Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuki and Ikebukuro… Fresh sashimi at Tsukiji and Senso-ji in Asakusa for the whole ‘cultural’ thing. I went to JTB today to pick up my ghibli museum ticket, god its expensive ($15) but I guess that’s the price of finding the real Totoro. I’m going to get me a real Totoro.

I will probably check email/facebook once a day when I get back to the hostel, if their charges are not too exorbitant, so I may not post every day. Certainly not with pictures anyway. My long-awaited Tokyo adventure is about to begin (doki-doki!) and 2008 is off to a great start. Mata ne!

1. Oak Hotel single at 5780Y per night, the only place where my stupid ISIC card provides a discount. For once in my life this card will come in handy as something other than ID. JR Ueno.

2. Tokyo International Youth Hostel dorm at 3860Y (?) per night. Really sweet location – the 18th floor of a high rise next to Iidabashi Station – but also pricier for what is essentially a shared dormitory. Also kinda regimented: doors are locked at 11 (which kind of defeats the point of staying in an awesome location) but it’s not as if I’m going to be wandering around the city late into the wee hours of the night.

3. Ks House dorm at 2800Y per night. Kurumae metro station, 15 minutes walk from JR Asakusabashi. Very backpacker look to it, no curfew.

The cost differential between the 1st and 3rd options adds up for the duration of my stay, and cost is a big factor. Security is also an issue – I will not be bringing my laptop to work on it since this is meant to be a holiday, but I will be bringing my camera. Location is also a factor, but it’s hard to tell how accessible/inaccessible it is since I know absolutely nothing about the Tokyo subway system – densha otoko and other dramas didn’t exactly explain it. In any case, I suspect availability will be the most important factor and have made inquiries.

[update] Availability was indeed the most important factor. Ks House was unable to provide me with a room for the full duration of my stay at such short notice, which I suppose testifies to their value proposition. Lesson learned: the promises of friends are often unreliable and I should always hedge my bets for all possible outcomes.

…we received a total of 82 submissions from 22 different countries for the competition this year.

After a strict screening of all the essays, the four submissions below have been selected as the Prize Excellence of the competition in 2007. Unfortunately, however, there was not one that the Selection Committee members should strongly back for the Grand Prize of 1 million yen.

Competitor analysis: I am the youngest of the 4 winners, though not by much. Of the other 2 non-Japanese winners i.e. the English-language entries, one is an exchange student at Nagoya who won this year’s ADB competition, and the other works for a strategy consulting firm in Beijing. I look forward to meeting them both, they have pretty interesting backgrounds.

Going forward: 82 entries is lower than previous years and I predict next year will be less competitive. Also, previous winners (at least the Japanese ones) tended to be much older. I will work harder next time around to clinch the top prize. Before this, there were very few English-language winners to refer to as a model. When I am there I will talk to the judges to assess the relative standing of our essays and thus find out which approach (academic vs mainstream, micro vs macro) is favored.

Reality check: Oh well life goes on, and I’m happy that I won a free trip to Tokyo, which is pretty awesome by itself. Also, it’s pretty cool that I managed to write a serious paper with the made-up word ‘Gundamnomics’ in the title. I really do hope to do empirical studies of the anime industry/subculture someday, and maybe some future scholar will cite my essay. Who knows, I may have coined a term that future reports about the anime industry may use. Or maybe not. It wasn’t that appropriate a metaphor: Generally Gundams don’t really ‘transform’ though some from recent versions like Gundam 00 do.

Thus unfortunately I am not a ‘millionaire’ like Geoffrey is. Even though in nominal Yen/Won-to-USD exchange rate terms my prize is larger, it isn’t when adjusted for purchasing power parity: Given how expensive Tokyo is, I’ll probably end up spending all my prize money on metro fare and instant noodles, while Geoff has a ‘chuka party’ at the Lotte Myeongdong. I wonder if they say ‘omedetou party’.

We would like to express our gratitude to you for submitting your essay to the JFTC Essay Competition 2007. After a strict screening of all the essays, we have selected your essay, “Gundamnomics: Transforming Corporate Japan for the Challenges of Global Capitalism” as a candidate for an award. The final result is scheduled to be announced on Friday, December 14, and the winners will be notified directly. The Awarding Ceremony and our New Year’s Reception will be held from 16:30 to 19:00 on January 9, 2008 at Hotel New Otani, Tokyo, Japan.

During the IHS advanced topics seminar in Washington, I skipped the open bar social, stayed up all night in my hotel room, and fell asleep during the workshops, all because I wrote this essay at the eleventh hour – even at the train station and on the ride back to New York. The only drinks I took from the open bar were cans of coke. (I should really stop this habit of procrastinating about essay deadlines) But it was all worth it if I get to go to Tokyo, which has been my dream ever since my love for Japanese culture began in high school.

The essay abstract:

It is no surprise that in August 2007, Michael Bay’s Transformers debuted in Japan with an opening weekend of ¥631.3 million, the number one at the Japanese box office. The Transformers franchise, from which Bay’s film was adapted, began with a 1980s animated television series that was not only based on designs by Japanese toy manufacturer Takara and produced by Toei Animation, but was also inspired by the classic Japanese animation genre of giant transforming robots that includes Voltron, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Mobile Suit Gundam. If this genre was a metaphor for the successful postwar transformation of the Japanese economy into a global powerhouse, Transformers is not merely a part of Japanese cultural imagination, but may well be the history of corporate Japan – and perhaps also its future.

With the passing of the ‘lost decade’, it is time for corporate Japan to undertake a new strategic transformation to meet the dynamic challenges of global capitalism. In this essay, I argue that the collapse of the asset-price bubble and subsequent banking crisis created fundamental systemic changes to Japan’s political economy and institutions, and heightened its sensitivity to international capital markets and global economic forces. These challenges will require Japanese companies to achieve an efficient allocation of physical, financial, and human capital by adjusting their human resource management policies to leverage on foreign and female talent, adopting a more meritocratic and flexible corporate culture, and changing their approach to corporate governance.

If I visit Tokyo, I want to pay homage to the mecca of all anime fans Akihabara, crash a Todai/Waseda class, eat street stand ramen, walk Shibuya crossing and pet Hachiko the dog, climb Tokyo tower… reading about SY-sempai’s adventures, it just blows my mind how many things I want to do there. I also want to visit old friends and classmates, meet local contacts in the libertarian network, and talk to alumni there about investment banking in Japan. Of course, it would mean I have to crash course myself in nihongo, which means postponing my crash course in hangukmal. I really hope I get to go, because there is no way I could justify the expense without airfare and accommodation covered.