Japan 2005 - Business Trip to Nichia

Our trip started with a dinner Monday night at the best Tempura place in Takoshima. We sat behind a counter and the chef battered each piece of food(fish, veges, bean paste, etc) as we ate it. It was delicious! The dessert was fresh stawberries that were incredible!

Tuesday morning we started out with a 2 hour intro and business meeting. Nichia and AED do have some similarities in work ethic and company organization. For lunch we dined at a French restaurant. The bread melted in your mouth and we experienced our first taste of spinach pudding. Also at lunch we taught the Nichia salesman the "cork trick". He was a very good sport about it as the picture shows below:

After lunch, Nichia provided a tour of their LED manufacturing facilities. We had to dress up in "bunny suits" to enter the clean room where the manufacturing takes places.

The tour was absolutely fascinating. Basically, we were introduced to an engineer's "playground" where their were hundreds of machines assembling microscopic components to create LEDs. The rooms were filled with clicks, clacks, and the hum of hundreds of servos that were cutting, glueing, welding, testing, and packaging millions of LEDs - blue ones, green ones, and surface mount ones. We were drooling with the thought of the designs behind these complex mechanical systems. Tim Allen would have been proud of our looks of glee!

After the tour, Nichia was kind enough to take us to one of the famous local siteseeing areas. It was a whirlpool observation deck underneath the bridge shown in the background of the following picture.

The glass bottom floors provided great views of the pools below.

For dinner, Nichia treated us to the "best Japanese restaurant in all of Japan". The food kept coming and coming involving a number of different types of Japanese food. We were happy to eat it all up! The Nichia businessmen were fun to visit with and we had several animated conversations.

Wednesday morning, we explored the city park in Takoshima before heading to Nagoya where we said goodbye to Brett. Bye Brett, it's been fun!

Random Pictures...