Hägglunds

We have, thanks to Hägglunds Managing Director, Takaaki Takanose, gotten the opportunity to visit their sales office in Yokohama. We are, as always, thrilled!

Inspiration

We are gathering as much information as we can before the trip, not only on companies, but valuable facts and stories about the Japanese culture as well. We found this clip on Youtube that inspired us. It is filmed by the artist John Mayer.

Next inc.

It is with great pleasure that we can present the next company on our list of visits, Next inc. A Swedish based communication firm in Tokyo, which provides integrated communication and advertising solutions for businesses. The meeting will take place on Friday, September 18th, at 2:00 pm.

We are thinking of asking the company if they have an “after work”, and if we can join.

Tickets are booked

Last night, we booked the tickets. The advantage of doing it this early is that we got them really cheap, and that we have a definit date for everything. On the 12th of September, one of us will go from Umeå to Stockholm, and from there to Copenhagen. The other two will go from Oslo to Copenhagen. From here the group will go together to Tokyo.

E-mails and languages

Even though it is obvious, we forgot the importance of it. When you e-mail a Swedish company, with questions written in Swedish, about visiting their Japanese office, always have an English translation of the same e-mail attached, since this will save  a lot of time for the respondents, who then can e-mail their branch at once, instead of replying to us about getting a translation.

As the category says, lesson learned!

Letters to companies

Since the dates are (almost) set, we have now started to contact companies. The following letter has been sent to more than 80 Swedish companies operating on the Japanese market.

Godspeed to it.

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To whom this may concern,

We are three students from the Umeå School of Business (USBE) who has been awarded a scholarship to pursue a project which we have chosen to call “Japanese Dreams”. It is a SIFE project, which aims to promote contact between students in Japan and Sweden, while offering students a more detailed idea of the company’s internationalization. We intend to visit Japan, during week 38, 14-18 th September, and then visit Swedish companies working in Japan.

We know that the way to the right contact in Japan can be long, thus we chosen to contact your Sweden office first, in the hope that you can bring us forward to anyone at your Japanese office who can answer the following question, if there is time and willingness to allow us to visit the office. Our intention is to make at least two visits per day, and we are willing to possibly travel outside Tokyo to meet with stakeholders.

SIFEs thoughts on entrepreneurship, environment, and sustainability will be included in our discussions on the spot.

It is hoped to set up a friendship, which we then can take back to Umeå and apply to stage two when the three new students will return to follow up what was done in phase one.

We hope that you are interested to assist us with your knowledge and your contacts. We look forward to hearing from you!

Best Regards

Emelie Nordell – emelienordell@hotmail.com
Johan Olsson – johan@johanolsson.se
Tommy Åhlén – tommyahlen@gmail.com

For more info on:
Project: https://japanesedreams2009.wordpress.com
Umeå School of Business – http://www.usbe.umu.se
SIFE and SIFE Umeå – http://www.sifeumea.se

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Swedish Trade – Check

One e-mail, and one hour later, Johan Rugfeldt at Swedish Trade in Tokyo replied back and said that we were welcome to their office on September 14th, at 10:00 Am. This means that we have our first meeting booked.For more information on Swedish Trade and their work in Japan, please see the blogroll to your right, or click here: http://www.swedishtrade.se/sv/vara-kontor/Asien/Japan/

The ball is in motion, and it is rolling fast!

Date is set (almost)

Yesterday, at 10:00 pm, the project group sat down and planned the trip. After a minor discussion we finally set a date for Japan.

Week 38, or from the 12th to the 23th of September.

This is the best choice, since schools do not start until mid-September, and that we in the project group can start school as well and have everything sorted out before leaving.

Swedish Embassy in Japan

Good news on the contact-side, we received an e-mail from Henrik Wretenfeldt, a trainee at the Swedish Embassy in Japan, who wrote and said that they could, and wanted to, help us. He needed some more time to check with schools to see if we could visit them, but for now, he suggested a website were we could find Swedish companies that are located in Japan, http://www.sccj.org/index.cfm?members – Swedish Chamber of Commerce. This was also a great help for us, due to the minor setback mentioned earlier with Swedish Trade. So this week the project group will start to contact possible companies.

Wish us luck!

Swedish Trade

Unfortunately, Swedish Trade is running on limited resources in Japan/Tokyo, and can therefore not help us to come in contact with Swedish companies that operates there. The only suggestion they could give us was to contact those companies in Sweden and from there see if we are more lucky.

Very sad news indeed, however, we see it as a minor setback since we have enough time left to fix it ourselves. We also hope that we can stay in contact with Swedish Trade and maybe have a meeting just between them and us, which could give us a lot of information and an introduction to the japanese culture.