Yesterday our factory had a VIP visitor in the morning. Caroline Kennedy, the American ambassador to Japan, came by for a quick visit and tour of our factory. Since our company makes train and subway cars for both New York city and Washington DC subway systems, it was natural that she was interested.
Because this VIP was from America, I started getting questions from the executives of the company a while back, and the past week or so I have been busy doing interesting projects. I was online researching the proper titles to use when addressing the ambassador of another nation, finding background information that our executives could use in conversation, and also one top executive asked me to watch his presentation, pretend I was the ambassador, and give comments afterwards. I was sworn to secrecy on the visitor’s identity, but the day of the visit I think everyone in the factory knew. That kind of work was very interesting and personally rewarding – I hope I have the opportunity to do it again sometimes.
As you might expect, the company cleaned up, made a really nice presentation, and showed the best possible side to make a good impression on the ambassador. I was thinking that probably everywhere that an ambassador (or president, prime minister, or movie star) makes an official visit, they must think that everything is going perfectly well. Nobody ever states the challenges facing the company – they talk about the wins and not the losses. I wonder if that might influence the visitor’s point of view – everywhere they go there is no bad news. Luckily our company had plenty of recent good news to brag about, so it wasn’t hard to present ourselves in a good light. And one look firsthand at a bullet train being built – that would impress anyone.
Tonight after work I’m going into Kobe to meet Antoine. It has been a very long time since we’ve gotten together, and I’m sure he’ll have plenty of interesting stories to tell about raising his son and working on his projects online. We’re going to go try a “taco stand” restaurant – let’s hope it knocks our socks off!
