Our third day in Hong Kong was packed from morning to evening with company tours of:
Hong Kong Monetary Authority CK Infrastructure Group Esquel Group Link REIT Our lecture at CK Infrastructure was the most memorable because our speaker, Wendy, just so happened to be a Shidler graduate, and a Hall of Honor recipient for the upcoming year. She is an absolutely amazing and empowering woman who is working at one of the biggest companies in Hong Kong, and seeing someone like her in such a high position gave so many of the women in our group confidence that we can all achieve great things like her. After our last company visit of one of Link REIT’s shopping malls, the company had set up a dinner for us at one of their restaurants. This created lots of tension and drama because the restaurant had messed up one of two set menus, and the mess up was on our table. Our set menu came with one that was half the price of the other table, and people started complaining. The restaurant apologized and gave us a free dessert (steamed lotus root buns!) but it wasn’t enough to satisfy some people, and the ride back home was pretty awkward for some people.
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First day in Hong Kong was spent in Macau! Julie’s aunty Cindy took us there by ferry where we spent the day eating street food, going to the Ruins of St. Paul, taking a million and six photos, watching people gamble, and catching many deceitful taxis.
- - - - - - - - - - - - We had a free morning for our second day in Hong Kong so Julie’s uncle took us to his friend’s restaurant, One Dim Sum, where he treated a good number of us to lunch. A few of us went shopping at a nearby mall afterwards, before heading to our Alumni Mixer at Mui Kee Cookfood Stall where I FINALLY GOT TO SEE MY GOD BIG, KELLI AND HER NEW BF JACOB. Kelli is one of my biggest inspirations and a huge reason why I wanted to participate in this program, and I haven’t seen her in over a year since she graduated and joined the Peace Corps in China, so I was so so so excited to finally see her again. After dinner the whole group went out for bubble waffles and sightseeing at the Victoria Harbor. We had the morning free on our last day in Japan, so team Korea decided to head to Harajuku, because it was only one stop from our hotel. We walked through Takeshita Street, engaged in some cultural activities (aka taking purikura), and somehow made our way all the way to Omotesando. I FINALLY got to take a picture at Tokyu Plaza, where everyone posts the super インスタバイ reflective wall pics, and we dined on some crepes (mandatory snack when in Harajuku) before heading back to Shibuya.
We caught the Narita Express back to the airport, and all was fine and dandy except for the fact that they changed our gate ten minutes before our boarding time, to the OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE AIRPORT. We ran our asses there only to find out that they had delayed boarding time by a good 30 minutes. When we finally boarded, the captain informed us that the radio tower has instructed them to delay takeoff by ANOTHER HOUR FOR UNKNOWN REASONS. Butttt we got to Hong Kong eventually, and wow the humidity is real. The moment we stepped out of the airport, I felt like I was in a new, hotter world, and I would like to apologize for all the times I’ve ever complained that it was hot. Today was a free day, in which some people went on a cultural tour hosted by the Japan group, to a sake brewery.
I met with ななえちゃんand we went on a tour to my dream school, Le Cordon Bleu (!!!!!!!). We got to see the campus, including the rooms they use for lectures and practical’s. I got alllll of my questions answered, and we later had cake, bread, and tea in the cafe. We went to Ameyokocho, a cute lil outdoor marketplace, to shop and snack, before heading back to Shibuya (to shop even more haha). We went to LOFT to buy my phone case (which I had been determined yet unsuccessful to buy since day one of our trip) and a few other things before going to dinner at Tonkatsu Maisen, where I had one of the best tonktasu’s in my life. We made a short walk to Plug & Play Japan, a startup hub/accelerator that reminded me a lot of the company tours we did in Sweden and Finland. We got to learn about the startup culture in Japan and get tips on successful startup practices.
Our next visit was to ITEC Corporation, which was another healthcare-related company, that focused on supporting hospital systems. This lecture was the longest, and because we had just eaten lunch at the famous Mitsukoshi Department Store prior, everyone who wasn’t in the healthcare field was kanacking real hard (including yours truly). Our last stop of the day was Prospect Asset Management, a company run by a fellow Shidler graduate, who was also a Hall of Honors recipient a few years ago. Curtis Freeze and his team explained to us about the real estate market in Japan, and it was really interesting to hear how the increase in the aging population and the high literacy rates have affected housing in Japan. We went to dinner with Curtis, but had the worst dining experience I’ve ever had in Japan (and possibly everywhere else). To sum it up, the food took 2 hours to come out, almost no waters were given (but alcoholic drinks kept coming), and when the food did come out, we each got one bite and left the restaurant starving. Our first tour of our second day got cancelled, so my roommate Sam and I, along with two others that tagged along, went to find the hotel that we originally got lost at the day we arrived, because they had a beautiful umbrella ceiling that I just had to take a picture of. After being tourists and taking our umbrella and Shibuya Crossing pictures, we were off to our company tours.
After a good chunk of our morning getting lost, the President of Jikei University Medical Center gave us a lecture and tour of the hospital. We got to see the patient rooms on the top floor of the hospital, which looked like beautiful apartment rooms. In addition to these rooms, we were given a tour of their biggest, nicest room, where people pay roughly $1,600 a night for complete privacy with their separate secret elevator, a cozy bedroom with a view of Tokyo Tower, and equipped with a conference room, a room for a guest, a kitchen, and a bathroom that could give hotels a run for their money. After getting lost a second time to our next destination, we arrived at Kameda Healthcare Informatics Corp, where the CEO tried his absolute best to explain to us in English about their system, which included their new technology that helped group patient information together into one easy system. We ended the day with an Alumni Networking Event at Isomaru Suisan, where we networked with professionals and alumni in the Tokyo area. |