I am always thankful for you. I am Shima from Shima Company Ltd. I am at the Starbucks near Sendai station and drinking Soy Latte with writing my blog, right now. I am concerned about my health too much, so I start my day with vegetable juice (a bottle a day), yogurt (R-1), vitamin juice (acerola is better). And they make me feel already full even in the early morning.

 

 

The other day, the CEO of KORAKUEN, who has made the largest food-service industry in Fukushima, came to our company!! We can not ignore the mysterious turn of chance. So, I was in a hurry back home from Osaka really looking forward to this meeting .

 

 

 

Sales Amount  Consolidated Sales volume \35,584,000,000

(Period of March 2010)

 

Capital Stock  \2,664,662,423

(As of March 31^st, 2009)

 

Number of Employees 1,103 altogether 1,107

(As of December 31^st, 2009)

 

 

"I want to make the biggest restaurant in Fukushima." This was his words of commitment when he was 18 years old. He was working really hard to make his dream come true. That was his starting point. It is said that if we do not give up, dreams will come true. It was really resonating to me since it was a word from the actual achiever. Someone's strong determination can really make things happen.

 

When he started his restaurant called "Ajiyoshi Shokudo (means tasty restaurant) with two other members, their capital stock was from his father's retirement money. And when he turned 38, his dream came true. He opened his restaurant in Sendai. His dream of "making the biggest restaurant in Fukushima" came true.

Ordinary men tend to feel empty after achieving the goal, but he was different. He shared his next dream with me. He said, "Ray Kroc who was selling food materials to MacDonald (it was not popular at that time), started to collect money when he was 53, and he bought MacDonald from Macdonald brothers. Within next 20 years, he opened 8,000 MacDonalds. Today, there are 30,000 shops in the world. So, I will open 8,000 of my own Ramen shops till I turns 83. We will open the first Ramen shop In Thailand this year. Within next 2 years, there will be 5 of them, and in 10 years there will be 100 of them." His energy and passion are amazing.

Also, his model company is obviously clear and he takes all their successful points to apply.

 

The key to the success of MacDonald

1, Price

2, Steady Quality

3, Service

4, Clean store interior

 

Korakuen does the same.

 

At the end of our meeting, he told me, "have a dream that makes people want to mock you." The dream that can come true in 2 or 3 years is no good. You have to have a dream that takes 20 years to come true.

"I will make all the goals( including numbers and due dates) clear, I will commit myself to my dream, and I will have a dream that takes 20 years to come true and could get mocked by people."

 

I could get a lot from him. Thank you very much.

 

  

We went to Kokubuncho, Sendai, for barhopping. This time, Mr. Ito who became a member of us at Miyagi branch, Mr. Akiyu, who kept his ducktail style since he was born, Mr. Yuhara from ELV department (who claims to be on diet, but he doesn't seem like trying it), and Mr. Kawaguchi, who is a good sales staff.

 

Barhopping literally means go to bars to bars in the night in the neon city (we don't use this expression anymore, do we?).Usually, we go barhopping with our co-workers and friends, but it seldom happens to spend 6 hours with the top of the company.

 

Even more, when the size of company gets larger and larger, it gets harder and harder for staffs to communicate with a president. In our daily conversation, it is impossible for  us to know everything including their character, their inclination, and what they have gone through in their past. If we do not become one as a company, we lose our power by half. That's why I try to plan this type of drinking party.

 

In general, almost all people envy our life as a head of a company since it is said that we go and eat around at fancy restaurants and drink with beautiful ladies. However, each Nomikai (drinking party) has own things to do. I will tell you later... but it is very difficult to explain our life as a top of a company.

 

 

 

The purpose of Shima's Nomikai is to solve the problem of reduced sales and reduced profit caused by less communication between staffs and us. We do this for raise our sales results.

 

But,

 

We do not talk about business. President and vice-president do not preach in the party. It is not what we meant to do, and it is out of our purpose. It ruins everything.

 

We take them to a very expensive restaurant and fancy bars with beautiful ladies and we have really fun time together.

 

However, I use this as a very useful opportunity to find talents and characters. Some of them drink really expensive liquor without any hesitation; some feel constraint to drink at all; some are really friendly to bar hostess and some are the other way around. Through this, I can see their strong points, how they would achieve their goals in the future and what I expect from them.

 

 

   

 

Sales staffs know best about our customers, not president and vice-president. I do not blame economic trend. I try to listen to our staffs and make good communication with them.

 

 

Is POKEMON more popular than DORAEMON?

 

Today, I finally see who Yuko Oshima, who is a member of AKB 48.

I am a vice president of Shima Company Ltd, Shima. The girl who I called Yuko Oshima turned out to be Minami Takahashi.

I did not want to be like this kind of adult.

I ended up being a man who I did not want to become.

That is me.

 I am getting closer to the middle age.

But my enthusiasm is still on fired like being born yesterday. Yes!

 

The other day, I went to visit POKEMON OSAKA CENTER.

 It was on the 14^th floor of DAIMARU department store.

 Once you enter the center, you see the whole different world there.

There are very shiny and sparkling white walls and full of children's excitement.

I was surprised to see how popular POKEMON is.

Their cashiers are more like Disney land's.

They only use un-wrinkled bills and new coins. That's how perfect they are.

 According to the story I heard from others, Disney felt threatened when POKEMON came to America.

Some say that POKEMON temporarily sold more related products than Disney....

It is a counterattack by SHIROFUNE (implying KUROFUNE of Commodore Perry) 

 

I try to analyze why POKEMON can keep children interested for such a long time.

One of the reasons is their participatory style.

 It is not just watching cartoons on TV or movies, but children actually can get involved with other friends by sharing the world of Media together.

This is a very crucial point.

Other Japanese cartoons don't have this style. It might have good influence on our shallow interaction in our neighborhood nowadays, and I hope children would lean the culture of "participatory style".

 "KANKERI (Kick the Can)", and "KEIDORO (A Police and a Thief)", which I used to play with my friends in my childhood, are much better.

Actual interaction with each other is better than the communication using an avatar without meeting face- to face.

 

 Second reason is that they have fans from different generations, isn't it?

Children from kindergartens to elementary schools have each way to enjoy POKEMON. For example, children of kindergarten use POKEMON lunch boxes, lower grades of primary school collect POKEMON coins and play a dollar game, and upper grades play NINTENDO DS, ALMIGHTY and POKEMON cards. My personally mentor told me to develop 25% of products in 5 years. But if I try to do it each group of children, it would be extremely overwhelming. But POKEMON does it. That is why POKEMON is popular.

Let me go back to the first reason why I think POKEMON is popular.

 

I believe our life is made of meeting people. Especially after the earthquake, while I jog, more people tend to talk to me. I think many of us felt importance of bound or tie among us.

 

 I try to be aware of that it anytime and anywhere I go, and I will put on my last spurt facing the end of this month.

I am always thankful for your support.

 I am a vice-president of Shima Company Ltd.,

Kazuki Shima.

 

Every time I introduce my name to Chinese people, many of them think it is weird.

 I want you to imagine the meaning of my name in your mind.

 It is exactly the same picture of Japanese cartoon,

 "Hyokkori Hyoutan Jima".

 

 "A tree standing on a island (＞人＜;)"

 

 

I came to Nagata-Cho, Tokyo, to help "revive,Japan".

It is something that I met them, so I have been helping Mr. Nagao.

 I shared my testimony on my experience of 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake.

 In 30 minutes, the meeting is going to start.

 

I am not really good at making a speech in public, but I am getting used to it since I've had many opportunities. Then, I began to feel .....

、

 

More Facial expression

Talk with higher-pitch, and with loudness and softness

Have togetherness with the audience

More body language

Use sound

Speak slowly about what I really want to tell

------and so on, many books and people have taught me a lot.

 

、

But the best of all,

 

"Don't try to be more than myself, but just be myself. Share my story with passion and with my own words."

That is all I need.

I have been told,

 "you get better at it when you keep doing it, including both bad things and good things."

... so I will keep trying.

 

According to the rule of Mehrabian, "

the ratio of how we influence on each other is following: the content of the story and linguistic information is 7 %, auditory information like how fast the person speaks is 38%, visual information like how the speaker looks like is 55%."  

I am always thankful for your support.

I am Shima from Shima Company Ltd.

 I am writing this blog in a train heading to Tokyo. I noticed one thing in the train.

 

 I found it faster to type by a second if I put my elbow on the armrest. it was just a small notice, but it was still a notice.  
"Awareness"

In our company, we do not put much focus on our employees' intellectual faculty or their athletic ability.

I consider their ability to find differences to be the most important. Our innate faculty is not the same, but how we nurture ourselves makes people change a lot.

 

The well-known story of "Amala and Kamala raised by wolves" shows exactly that our innate ability and talent does not make us what we are today, but how we are nurtured matters.

 "Amala and Kamala was behaving like a wolf.

Their joints of elbows and backs were really hard, and they could not stand up or work like a human.

 

They went on all fours.

 They preferred to eat raw meat and milk. When they ate, they did not use their hands but ate like wolves.

They had keen sense of hearing and nose.

 

They could even sense entrails of a bird dumped 70 meters away from them, and they ran toward it with their fours.

They could see really well in the dark, and their eyes were shining. Instead, they did not seem to see well in the daytime.

They were not sensitive for cold or hot weather.

They did not utter any words except howling in the middle of the night...."

"Awareness" can nurture our sense through their environment and discipline. It is difficult to nurture our ability because we are all different.

 

However, when we walk around a town, "how come MacDonald always uses red, yellow and blue?";

"This Shinkansen has plugs." Any notices are good including small ones. I tell executives not to do everything on their own. If you do it, you are bad bosses.

 They are taking their workers' opportunities to grow more by noticing differences.

Our company has a system to "encounter new things".

 It is benchmarking in our company and outside of our company. At each benchmarking, they have to write down at least 20 to 100 notices.

And then, I make them read what they write for each other. What a person can not notice makes another realize more.

100! The number may surprise you. Studying is repetition. While they are writing 100 notices, they sometimes write the same thing without realizing.

It is still O.K. By repeating the same thing, it can nurture them, anyway.

Employees with high job involvement get inspired through those realization thinking

"I am not good enough. I can not be like this."

 That company can do that, then we can do more!

 If my colleague has reached that high level, I should make effort to catch up with.

The light in their heart is now fired.

This psychological reaction create good motivation.

 

Because my company told me to do so.... Because of my boss... you can see the whole new and different world.

 

My personal mentor taught me that "forcing my men to write down 50 notices makes them to have more ability to notice".

 

 

Giving my employees environment and the chance to discipline is one of my jobs.

 

Thank you very much. I give thanks.

I am writing this at a coffee shop in Shinjuku.

Thank you very much.

I am Kazuki Shima from Shima Comapany Ltd.

Even though it is non-smoking area,

I still can smell of it since the shop has wide space up to the ceiling.

 

By the way, I hear people say,

"we cannot buy quality anymore".

 

 A lady I met in Indonesia complained not being able to replace the iron pan inside of a rice-cooker.

 Strictly speaking, she was grumbling about not being able to find a product made in Japan.

 She was saying,

 

"it has a picture of elephant.! And it was the best elephant!!"

 

I guess the Japanese brand she wanted was "Zojirushi"(meaning a mark of elephant).

It is really hard to find that brand right now.

 

"none."

 

 Outside of a rice cooker is made in Taiwan, and the inside of it made in China.

 One product has no nationality.

we can not trust products (people) that do not have citizenship   

 

That's why we can not trust the third beer, either.

 But we, fathers can not drink real beer because of deflation and their empty purse.

 

For German, Japan's Asahi beer is not beer, either.  Then what is the real beer.

Regulation and competitive price make our life fake since we can not buy quality.

 

Instead, we see so many liars and lies.

 It is getting harder and harder to find the real ones.

 

We are getting into the vague world.

 

Am I the only one to feel this way?

I am always thankful for your support.

 I am Shima from Shima Company Ltd.

The other day, I saw a car running on the median strip.

 I got off my car and talked to the driver.

 He said that he was in a hurry to the airport. He had been waiting for tow truck to come for almost 3 hours.

 

 I wanted to help him out, but I could do nothing....Shame.

 We can not be careful enough for driving a car.

"a perfectionist can never praise himself, and keeps putting himself on the edge."

Even when he could achieve his goal, still he is aiming higher and he would never get satisfied in his life time.

 He just gets stressed out all the time.

 When he cannot perform well, he blames himself almost too much considering himself such an idiot.
He puts his goal really high, and when he looks at himself in a mirror, he tells himself

 

"you do not seem like a person who can achieve anything."

 

Because of this emptiness in his heart, he has to torture himself.
When I heard this, I thought I needed to encourage myself with praise more.

I admit that I try hard to look nice outwardly. And it made me a partially perfectionist.

Meanwhile, I remembered some magazine I used to read in my junior high and high school days.

It was "My Sky" from "Man's Dream and Man's spirit of romantic adventure" written by Hiroshi Miyamoto.

It has dirty contents and I got excited because of them.

I used to try to find them in used books and newspapers collected to exchange for tissues.

The story is about a son of noble family traveling around Japan seeking his future wife.

It is totally unexpected, has full impact, and dream and man's spirit of romantic adventure.

I thought I needed this kind of idea and lightness.

Without being loosen up like the life of a son in the story, I can not make the most of my desire to perform with perfection.

 

I could not make myself understood well, but I consider today is the last day of my life and I put all my effort.

I had water poisoning in Philippine three weeks ago.

But still I went to Indonesia without being discouraged.

I am Kazuki Shima from Shima Company Ltd.

This time, I did not have to suffer from it.  
Well, needless to say.

1.       Indonesia has No.1 latent rich natural resources in the world that we have not found.

2.       Indonesia has the third largest population in the world. And the people in Indonesia have stronger desire to become richer.

3.       In 2012, they are expected to have the highest economic growth rate in Southeast Asia. Since their government had been really chaotic, they were not able to catch up on infrastructure. That means there are so many projects coming up.

That's why Indonesia is fascinating marketplace. Especially, the growth rate of Java, Makassar (the forth largest city), and the districts with Mineral Resources is fabulous!

The townscape in Surabaya was beautiful.

 It has modern buildings without losing green scenery.

  Their way to develop their town does not exist in other parts of Asia besides Indonesia.

The price of gasoline was extremely reasonable: 50cents per litter. Actually, it should be $1/litter, but the government gives financial assistant: 50cents (40yen). Anyway, it was really low price.

By the way,

People say that "China is the factory of the world", they have taken the place of "the market of the world", and so on.

 But I got to see with my own eyes the scene that some Japanese companies fight back against this trend.

They are Yamaha and Honda, Motorcycle Makers.

They hadn't started electric two-wheelers yet, but they were boldly driving away those Chinese copy-cat products and other original makers.

Chinese two wheelers makers once tried to take its market share by lowering the price.

However, they are all gone now. Japanese companies have beaten Chinese Makers. Today, they own almost 90% of its market share.

...their strategies are...

"to try not to let them win with their low price"

Chinese only strategy is to keep lowering the price no matter what. The two tried their best not to surrender.

They had to have hard time, but it was only a temporary thing. They did not lose their customers without losing their market share.

 

That was their strategy.

They used their own experience and connections in Indonesia.

1.       manufacturing in their own decent factory in Indonesia

2.       their ability and flexibility to meet the demand when motorcycle parts are needed

3.       Chinese Makers' low quality and low price; Japanese sacrificing themselves keeping up their quality, and with lowering the price at the same time

After all,

4.       their excellent  after-sales service!!

China doesn't have the concept of after-sales service.

It is because of their national traits.

 They have not developed this field yet.

 On the contrary, it is said that Japan has the best after-sales service in the world. After March 11^th disaster, people in the world can not help praising our behavior with the heart of caring others.

 

This is the point that we can differentiate from others.

Rhis strategy taken by those two Japanese Automobile Makers to win the battle against Chinese products can work in different market places and countries.

 

Don't be discouraged by China.

 Don't be quiet!!

 

We can do it, Japan!

Today, I ran Iwaki marathon. And now I am at Narita Airport.

 

I am very sure that I will be able to sleep really well on the plane.
Our company has a teaming system to prevent each department from not knowing each other.

 In that way, employees from all the departments are able to communicate well.

 

It was started 2 years ago, and now there are 8 of them. SHIMARATHON TEAM is no included, though (laugh).

 

One of them is philanthropy team.

Last summer, the team helped local summer festival.

And they planted sunflower seeds at the local elementary school.

 

 This year, they donated Horagai(a conch horn) for Soma Nomaoi. They do various kinds of activities.

 Some of their activities were broadcasted on the local news.

The teams are more willing to contribute to the local society than I expected.

 

I am actually very moved by it.

Ozoni (rice cake in soy source flavor soup) they made brought tears into some of the elderly people they have helped.

They said it was the best Ozoni they had ever had. Then you very much for their encouraging comment.

I gave them OK to their ideas as teams' activities,

but they all came from my employees, not from me.

And this time, our president gave them words, saying

"it was truly for the local people and it was fun, too".

 

Arai, the leader of philanthropy team said

 

"I got something out of it".

 

It was very positive comment...Allof them are making progress. I just want to thank my employees for their hard work even on holidays. I trust them and will build a fruitful system.

 

I ended up writing a different content from the title.

 The decision I make as a executive should not be shaken not to ruin my employees' wonderful job.

 I will be on board with feeling of responsibility and excitement for what to come in our future.

 

 

People along cost side of Fukushima add vinegar into miso flavored Japanese Noodle.

 I put vinegar to chance its flavor when I am done with eating half of the bowl. I

 just ate miso flavored Japanese noodle at Korakuen in Soma, but I didn't add vinegar this time.

 

 I am Shima from Shima Company Ltd.

 

 

I have more opportunities to talk with overseas Chinese merchants (Kakyo) because of what I do for living.

There is something in common among successful Kakyos.

 

They extremely value "Smile" and "their gods".

 

They laugh a lot.

What is so funny about?

What made you laugh so far?

 We are in the middle of business negotiation, aren't we?

 

Successful Kakyo never cease to laugh or to smile.

 

 I once asked them why they laugh so much.

 Then they said,

 

"Smile brings happiness and can make everyone happy".

 

Their reason to smile always is based on other-centered spirit, not on self-centered motivation.

 

It is from other-centeredness.

Some said,

 

"it is better to have a smile on your face than to have a blank look, isn't it?"

 

This idea is almost too plain, but there are few people few actually practice it.

I see more successful Kakyos in those who smile more often. They do laugh and smile.

In this world, there are various kinds of gods according to one's own religion.

 

It's not about Kakyo, but more customers in the Newr and Middle East who are successful seem to keep their religious faith and I see many of them visit Mecca where Mohammed was born.

 

People who think they are the center of this world; people who keep going their ways without being able to see others or knowing how to brake themselves; people who thank others and their parents.

 

By giving thanks to their god and their parents, we can shift our ego-centered state of mind into neutral. Almost all Kakyo's offices have their parents' pictures and a statue of their god.

 

I am not saying all the Kakyo has those items have never failed in their business, but all the successful Kakyos have those two for sure.

 

I value smile and god. Thank you very much.