At 9:00 in the morning of September 18, 2019, Koizumi was alone at Taoyuan Airport in Taipei, biting into a sandwich and sipping coffee.
He was accompanying Ajira Vietnam on its annual "company trip" so that he could get to know the Vietnamese people as a new graduate member of the Japanese subsidiary.
At the meeting time, I found the Hanoi team members who had arrived, but there were "so many of them".
Even though they are usually separated between Japan and Hanoi and rarely work face to face, it was obvious that there were too many people for the Hanoi team members.
When I asked Mr. Hai, CEO of Ajira Hanoi, he told me that "family and relatives can join us. I learned that company travel and family service can be compatible, a knowledge that does not exist in Japanese society in 2022 (but may have existed in the Showa period).
The bus trip consisted of two days in Taipei, one day in Taichung, and two days in Tainan.
I was a little apprehensive at the beginning of the trip because of the language difference and the fact that most of the participants had never met each other before, but everyone in the Hanoi team and their families were very kind, and I was warmly welcomed by them (Koizumi's idea that he would do well because he was a Vietnamese major broke on the first day).
During the two days in Taipei, the participants mainly circled tourist attractions such as museums, temples, and natural parks, but in fact, I think it was the Apple Store and UNIQLO, which they visited after dinner, that strongly attracted the attention of the participants.
Both of these brands do not have stores in Hanoi as of 2019. UNIQLO in particular, more than half of the members headed there the moment it became free time.
According to Ichijo, who was the only Japanese member in Hanoi, he said, "Buy it while you can and use it in Hanoi" (Ichijo's postscript: Just recently, the first UNIQLO store opened in Hanoi as well!) ).
The second half of the second day - the middle day - consisted of an overnight stay in a lodge at a campground with a heated swimming pool, while moving through Tainan toward Tainan. During this trip, we spent a lot of time eating at souvenir shops for tourists, such as a matcha green tea store and a fruit market.
Incidentally, we learned that matcha tastes surprisingly good when mixed with Yakult (a lactic acid bacteria drink like Yakult).
The last two days of the trip were spent in the Tainan area, as we crossed the pass and reached the end of our trip to Taiwan. The Giant Buddha of the Pass was a popular spot for family photos with all the members participating with their families, and Koizumi was so focused on taking pictures that he forgot to include himself in the group photo.
Since the final flight to Hanoi departed from Kaohsiung Airport on the last day, we were able to go to the night market in downtown Kaohsiung on the last night.
There was a moment of great excitement on the last night, as we cheered on the young members who were challenging UFO catchers, and the young volunteers took part in a stinky tofu challenge.
By the way, I heard that they could not stand stinky tofu after all.
Early morning on the last day, September 22, 2019, at Kaohsiung Airport.
Saying goodbye to everyone who shared the 5-day trip with him, Koizumi headed back to Japan ....... However, he was told to go to Hanoi for a one-week business trip, so he took the same flight to Hanoi and stayed with us for a while in Hanoi.
Although Koizumi could only communicate in poor Vietnamese and English, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone at Ajira Vietnam for letting me join the group. Thank you very much.
To my horror, it has been almost a year since I joined the company after graduating from college.
It is true that I am not equipped with a standard for estimating a "start-up" organization, as I am not familiar with a typical corporate organization, but I can say without a doubt that Asilla is a tough place to work.
I do not mean "hard" in a bad way, but rather in the way that each individual's ability to structure his or her own work is questioned. Members are asked to participate in the construction of services and frameworks, rather than to operate efficiently within a fixed framework.
Instead of "because the rule is A, do B efficiently in accordance with it," it is necessary to "do D efficiently to achieve the objective C." The former and the latter are not the same in terms of efficiency, but in terms of the ability of the members to work efficiently. The meaning of efficiency may differ between the former and the latter.
I am not a jack-of-all-trades, but I do my business with a lot of thought in my own poor way.
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