BUSINESS /
FOOD
Room at the top: Conrad Tokyo GM, Gregor Andréewitch, talks about life in the hotel industry
In praise of the persimmon / Introducing the pacific northwest and wonderful wines for Autumn
ENTERTAINMENT OPINIONS
On the set of OJ de Villager’s ‘One Nigeria’
Yakuza: Kind-hearted criminals or monsters in suits? / Losing one’s identity
INSIGHT
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BUSINESS
ROOM AT THE TOP Five years ago, Gregor Andréewitch was working at the Drake Hotel in Chicago. He had just received his green card when his boss asked him to go to Tokyo and be general manager of the Conrad Tokyo. Quick to hit the ground running, Andréewitch says he found the Conrad – which is Hilton Worldwide’s luxury brand – a very interesting and challenging property. During his time in Tokyo, he has seen the hotel industry survive upheavals such as the Lehman shock and the March 11, 2011 disaster.
GREGOR ANDRÉEWITCH General Manager of the Conrad Tokyo
Born in Vienna, Andréewitch graduated from the Vienna Hotel School in Austria. He joined Hilton Worldwide and was assigned to Hilton Brussels in the accounting department. He followed this with a corporate food and beverage management training program, after which he moved into various management positions with increased responsibilities within Hilton Worldwide, working in Germany, Lesotho, Bahrain, Venezuela, Trinidad, Malaysia, New York, Canada and the UK, before arriving in Tokyo in November 2007. One of Tokyo’s finest 5-star hotels, the Conrad Tokyo – which opened in 2005— boasts some of the largest guestrooms in Tokyo, with panoramic views of the Hamarikyu Gardens, Tokyo Bay and Rainbow Bridge. The hotel has been recognized through a host of awards and accolades including the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2012 which awarded its celebrated China Blue and Gordon Ramsay restaurant one Michelin star. Japan Today catches up with Andréewitch to hear more about the hotel.
Have you always wanted to be a hotelier? I wanted to work in a hotel when I was 16-17. I wanted to be in an organization that was global and would give me an opportunity to travel, meet people, learn different languages and cultures. Hotels seemed a natural way to do that.
What was your first hotel job? I started in the accounting department at Hilton Brussels. That is an unusual way to start a hotel career, but it was really good for me. You learn immediately to work with numbers, it sharpens your 4
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analytical skills and gives you an idea about costs and expenses that a hotel incurs on a daily basis. From there, I did a corporate food and beverage management training program.
You have moved around the world a lot. Do you find it difficult to adjust to new countries quickly? In the hotel industry, you have to hit the ground running. You need to get to know your team, clients, the environment, and the budget expectations for next year that somebody else prepared. You need to know the owners of the building and the culture, so it is always a busy first few months.
So how’s business? What sort of a summer did the Conrad Tokyo have? We had the best August this year since the hotel opened in 2005. That was because Japan hosted the FIFA Under 20 Women’s World Cup soccer and we were the headquarter hotel for FIFA. October and November will be very busy months, with many board meetings and international conferences. This is despite the strong yen which makes it tough when you are trying to attract incentive groups for meetings and conferences because everywhere else in Asia is cheaper. I believe this could be attributed to our strategic location in Shimbashi and Ginza, as well as the stylish and contemporary banquet and meeting facilities we offer that provide that luxurious experiences guests associate us with.
BUSINESS
What is the percentage of foreign vs Japanese visitors?
very lucrative and competitive business and we are doing well in that sector.
I always like to say that we run two hotels. It’s a corporate hotel from Monday to Thursday and an urban resort from Friday to Sunday. So with corporate clientele, it is 50% foreign, 50% Japanese guests. On weekends, it is predominantly Japanese.
Do you hire many staff each year?
What would you say are the Conrad’s advantages? No other hotel can offer the views we do – on one side, a 300-year-old garden, Tokyo Bay and Rainbow Bridge. On the other side, we are five minutes from Ginza. We have great connectivity to train stations and subways. We have three world-class restaurants, two of which are Michelin-starred Gordon Ramsay and China Blue, and our Japanese restaurant Kazahana was selected as one of the top 10 hotel restaurants in the world last year, a great spa “Mizuki Spa & Fitness” that is motifed with Water and Moon, and 24-hour gym. In addition, we offer some of the largest guestrooms in Tokyo—around 50 square meters for our standard rooms. We also have an extensive collection of contemporary Japanese art throughout the hotel.
Are online bookings increasing? Yes, but not as much as overseas. This is probably because Japanese like to use the e or travel agents I think the next generation will be more comfortable booking online. With that in mind, we are putting more resources into social media for marketing. We have a dedicated Facebook page and we use Twitter.
How is the wedding and MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) business? We have around 165-200 weddings a year. Unlucky days impact the wedding business in this culture. We have a sales department with 30 people. Ten of those take care of the wedding business from initial inquiries to the ceremony and taking care of everything in between. The MICE business is a
We hire 15-20 graduates each year. We are fortunate in that we have a very low turnover here. In Japan, it is a less mobile labor industry than in other countries. Employees tend to be very loyal. Once they identify with a brand, they don’t want to let their clients or teammates down. But of course, if there are good opportunities, they move. We also offer our employees the opportunity to work at Conrad hotels abroad to gain valuable experience.
What is you definition of a good hotelier? We are in the people business, so you need to be inspiring and motivated. If you have a happy workforce, they will be able to transmit that to the customers who will feel good about it. You need to be passionate about quality and details. You need to love what you doing and you don’t mind the endless working hours that are required in this industry. And a good hotelier is somebody who has a business sense because in the end, you have to get certain returns.
How important is it for a general manager to be in the lobby greeting guests?
Yes, I live on premises but that doesn’t mean I work 7 days a week. I have a great team, so I work fairly normal hours. Occasionally, I have work-related evening engagements. And when you are not working? I love sports. I have been in five triathlons. I broke my personal best last April in Ishigaki in 2 hours and 50 minutes.
In all your years in the hotel industry, you must have seen some interesting things? Anything weird you can tell us about? I was working at a hotel at London Heathrow. It is a transient hotel; people are in and out for short stays. We had a lady en route from Nigeria to the U.S. She gave me a big bag with a strange smell coming out of it. There were different parts of dissected snakes and alligators inside it. She was taking them to her family in America. I couldn’t understand how she got it through customs. Anyway, she wanted to store it in our fridge, but we couldn’t. I told her she’d never be able to leave Heathrow with that. She was very angry and threatened to sue me. Fortunately, she didn’t.
For more information, visit www.ConradHotels.jp
I think it’s very important. You want to make sure you welcome certain people – we get heads of state, ambassadors, celebrities, sports stars. Of course, some just want to go to their room after a long flight and don’t care who the GM is. But for other guests, especially repeat clients, it’s a nice touch. For me, it’s like welcoming someone to my home.
Are you a hands-on GM? I need to be hands on for promotional activities, finance and business development, training and hiring. I am also very hands on with charity events and food and beverages. Do you live in the hotel? INSIGHT ISSUE 11
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FOOD
IN PRAISE OF THE PERSIMMON BY VICKI L. BEYER PHOTOS BY VICKI L. BEYER
Whether astringent I do not know. This is my first Persimmon picking. - Chiyojo
One of my most vivid memories from my first autumn in Tokyo is of a persimmon tree in my neighborhood that I walked past every morning on my way to the bus stop. Being from the American Midwest, I had never before seen a persimmon tree and didn’t even know what it was at first. When I first saw the tree’s branches arching over a wall and toward the street, its fruit was still small and green. As autumn deepened, the fruit matured into plump orange balls. Even as the leaves changed and dropped, the fruit hung in there, adorning the bare branches like Christmas bulbs.
When the fruit first appeared in stores that autumn, bottoms up in packets of four, I was mystified. Was this some strange variety of orange tomato? Finally, a friend introduced me to the delights of the fruit. Initially, however, persimmons seemed a fruit with very limited potential.
It was only available for a brief period and didn’t seem that it could be juiced, cooked or canned. Being a farm girl and used to putting up produce for the winter, this struck me as a definite drawback. I’m told that in those parts of the U.S. where it grows, the persimmon tree is regarded as ornamental and the fruit is rarely eaten. Perhaps it is of the astringent variety. Certainly the tree is ornamental, especially in early winter when the brilliant colors of the autumn leaves have gone and the orange fruit on bare branches takes center stage. Their presence in so much Japanese art testifies that I’m not the only one to think so. But it’s only after living for years with a view of a persimmon tree from my bedroom window and observing the life cycle of the fruit that I have truly come to appreciate it. As Indian summer turns to autumn and the nights cool, the fruit begins to turn from green to orange. Then the leaves turn from green to gold and the fruit is temporarily camouflaged, to show itself again as the leaves drop from the tree. Finally the bright orange fruit is left alone on the bare branches. If it isn’t picked, much of it hangs on the tree impossibly long (from my Midwestern perspective) becoming welcome winter feeding for small birds. Watching this cycle, the seasonal availability of the fruit becomes part of its allure.
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While in the city we usually experience persimmons only as fresh fruit in the supermarket or on our tables -and occasionally on the branches of neighborhood trees -- in rural areas, the presence of persimmons is a distinct harbinger of winter. In some areas,
strings of persimmons hang from the eaves of houses to dry, once again proving the fruit is both practical and ornamental. Historically, the dried fruit was important to the winter diet in inland areas where the mikan doesn’t grow. In some country homes, I have found dried persimmon to be as ubiquitous as dried mango in the Philippines. One twist on getting full use of the fruit is the persimmon-flavored sake we found at a small brewery on Sado Island. Apparently astringent persimmons sweeten if sprinkled with shochu. I’ve learned that if you want to bake using persimmons — for example to flavor cookies or cakes, you need to add a teaspoon of baking soda to the pulped fruit. But you’ve got to work quickly as the soda will cause the persimmon pulp to congeal if you leave it sit too long. Even with so many alternative uses of persimmon, in the end eating the fresh fruit, peeled and cut into quarters, has proven to be one of life’s simple pleasures. It is, for me, a food to be savored once a year as autumn slowly turns to winter.
TRUE TASTE TOKYO
BY LAUREN SHANNON
Many people are aware that California makes amazing, award winning wines- but just a bit to the north- there is a lesser know wine heaven- a place that is perfect for wine growing, that has a 50+ year history of making great wines and a place that can give you more bang for the buck in every bottle. This terrific region? The Pacific Northwest including Washington and Oregon. These two wonderful wine states know their “terroir” — that’s the combination of soil, climate and geography that makes all wines distinct from each other. The Northwest encompasses the perfect combination of wine producing areas. Oregon’s climate offers the perfect growing conditions for the elegant and complex Pinot Noir for which it is famous. Washington, with its long, hot and dry summer days and cool nights, allows the Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon to thrive, and its cooler regions are perfectly suited for Chardonnay, Riesling and Gewurztraminer. Many producers in both states are farmers and devoted artisan
FOOD
INTRODUCING THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST WITH WONDERFUL WINES TO TEMPT US THIS AUTUMN
winemakers, who treasure the land and are devoted to making the best wine the area’s vineyards, have to offer. These days the wines of the Pacific Northwest are finally “on the map” here in Tokyo and across Japan. Amazing restaurants around the city are featuring these amazing wine regions in a famous yearly event - “The Orca International Pacific Northwest by the Glass Promotion.” This world-class food and wine event runs from September 1st through November 30th with over 240 restaurants in Japan participating. This is the fifth annual ‘Pacific Northwest Wine by the Glass’ promotion. This unique program will offer wine loving customers an opportunity to increase knowledge of this great wine region by introducing high cost performance wines from an exciting area that will still be a pleasant new discovery for even the most discerning oenophiles. For more information about the ‘by the glass campaign’ go to http://www.orca-international.com/en/join/promoTypeI. cfm?promoID=1 and you can find an A-Z listing of the delicious restaurants around the country where you can try 3 or more amazing wines from this region for the next 2 months.
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ENTERTAINMENT
ON THE SET OF OJ DE VILLAGER’S ‘ONE NIGERIA’ BY DREUX RICHARD PHOTO BY DREUX RICHARD
OJ de Villager’s music video shoot was all elbows: my laptop stood in for a defective boombox, rain threatened, the daylight was a cloudy grey, friends were late or didn’t show. None of it bothered OJ, who has invested a decade of DIY work in his music since immigrating to Japan. “Let me focus on getting my message across,” he said. On the platform atop Toyama-koen’s tallest hill, director Ernest “Anny” Nmanwoke wanted to juxtapose the distant silhouettes of Shinjuku’s skyscrapers with the Nigerian flag. OJ danced with the flag, sang to it, wore it across his back. Joggers and ambling senior citizens who happened across the shoot reacted with polite confusion. This carried on for an hour before park security approached and informed the crew (numbering five) that they’d have to stop – a week’s advance permission was required to film on park property. The security officer was polite. He provided a
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brochure with the phone number to call. The crew didn’t mind. Plenty of shots were already on tape. At the bottom of the hill, the group encountered a Japanese film crew. Nmanwoke pointed them out. Said one of OJ’s friends: “I think you’d better go make sure they have permission.” I laughed. “I’m serious,” OJ’s friend replied. I consulted the Japanese film crew: they did not have advance permission, they had not been asked to leave, they were on their way to filming another location in the park. If OJ’s crew were willing to reach certain conclusions, it was difficult to blame them; video shoot attendees included two victims of police harassment, one of whom had been severely beaten during an inexplicable, well-publicized incident.
OJ films “One Nigeria” at Toyama-koen
Contacted the next day, a park security officer claimed park officials were unaware of the 2nd video shoot. A member of the park’s custodial staff who declined to give his name (for fear of being disciplined) reported that the security office had fielded several complaints about OJ’s shoot from passersby. Though he did not claim to know the exact nature of the The shoot then moved to a rented dance complaints, he did note that the other studio in the Cosmic Sports Center, video shoot – which he saw – was not where OJ familiarized himself with the reported to security. space by jogging laps around the room’s perimeter. This drew appreciative laughter The second series of shots occurred in from the other six people in the room, the park behind the Shinjuku Cosmic all of whom were exhausted. Nmanwoke Sports Center. There, no one seemed wanted duo shots of OJ dancing with each bothered. Some spectated, including a of the video’s participants, which meant food deliveryman who paused for ten everyone got a break except OJ. “Everyone minutes mid-delivery. A few Japanese gets a break except OJ,” I suggested, families observed, and one small boy “would be a good title for your book.” chanced asking me what he was seeing. Replied OJ: “Even now, I’m writing it.” “A music video shoot,” I said. “The song is about Nigeria.” The boy replied: “A little At six o’clock, the shoot relocated weird, isn’t it?” to Paradise Village, OJ’s live house in Kabuki-cho, where – by way of Nmanwoke’s and OJ’s work ethic – it
ENTERTAINMENT
continued until midnight. For these two, inexhaustible energy is a matter of survival. Since arriving in Japan, both have pursued the potentially unachievable: Nmanwoke has striven to introduce Nollywood film to Japan, OJ to create a local African music scene by cross-breeding highlife and hip-hop. Both have taken circuitous paths: Nmanwoke as a now-and-again guest on Japanese TV shows and a martial arts trainer, OJ as a factory worker and hip-hop clothing boutique owner. It hasn’t been easy for either. Nmanwoke struggles to find Japanese collaborators with whom to share the scripting and subtitling process. OJ’s first live house in Shin-Okubo folded. However unrecognized his work thus far, OJ is unlikely to stop. “Since I was born, I was singing,” says the son of two musicians. He learned to sing in the church choir and recalls early exposure to the work songs of the harvest season
in his native Imo State. In Japan, OJ has self-released two full-lengths (“Rebuild the Nation,” “One Niger”), a handful of singles (including a Japanese-language track that received a fair amount of press), and has recorded an abundance of material circulated only among friends. OJ’s finished products are not amateur gestures or vanity pieces; they earned him a relatively lucrative Nigerian record deal, but the label wanted four months of Nigerian support and OJ couldn’t afford the time off. For now, he remains equal parts cultural touchstone and team mascot for Japan’s Nigerian community. Asked whether he thinks songs about Africa by an African immigrant musician can serve as the foundation for a new music scene in Tokyo, he responded with a question: “Why must someone always be on the outside?”
On a given night at Paradise Village, if you ask, OJ will perform one of his unreleased tracks – no matter how small the audience. Among the songs he sometimes chooses: “Promises,” which bemoans the empty rhetoric trotted out by the influential to justify their influence. Clean water, electricity, and transparent government (goes the song) are on the long, unfulfilled list. “There have been so many promises,” he sings, “with no action at all.” From someone about whom the opposite statement could be made, the lyric sounds honest.
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OPINIONS
OPIN IONS Yakuza: Kind-hearted criminals or monsters in suits? BY JUSTIN VELGUS Professional writer and blogger of japanese culture. Japan’s notorious homegrown mafia, the yakuza, is different. Sure they are a gang, but to compare them to Colombian drug lords or the Bloods or Crips of Los Angeles is not fair. Operations, publicity, and even acceptance of yakuza are on a different level than other criminal enterprises. The yakuza do care about their public image and that is reflected in their evil and good (!) activities.
An argument for evil This shouldn’t be too hard, right? The yakuza are criminals. They are a gang that commits many illegal activities, partly because they are allowed to do so. It is interesting to note that yakuza offices are out in the public. This helps them mark their territory and no doubt is an ego boost for the local bosses. Yakuza are not going around and telling every person walking down the street of the crimes they commit. Yet even if the crimes are reported, Japan does not have legislation similar to the U.S. RICO Act; thus it is much harder to tie gang leaders to crimes
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their underlings participate in. Growing amounts of legislation are putting a damper in gang activities, but the mere fact they can have public property openly shows the yakuza do not consider the police a real threat. The yakuza tend to be more sophisticated in the crimes they indulge in. It is true things like shoplifting or muggings are happening with a bad economy that has affected everyone, but things like credit fraud or business takeovers are becoming more common. This is done through various blackmail, extortion, money laundering attempts and some greased wallets of police or community organization. This shows a step away from their traditional and still much more popular bread and butter of drug dispensing, prostitution and sex industry services, gambling and hitting up local shops for protection money. Semilegal tactics of playing loud music, constant harassment at inconvenient hours, or refusing to leave businesses are also a well used tactic for yakuza to get what they want.
In a way, yakuza are contractors. They do jobs for money, yet the jobs are not always legal. They provide a service for the public, but then attack them for not making payments on high interest loans or compensating them for false grievances. In a hard hit economy, people and businesses can turn to yakuza for money that banks would never loan. If paid back, this can be seen as a positive attribute of the gang’s services, but more often than not, something “happens” where the yakuza need more money than before and then the real trouble starts.
An argument for good The yakuza have done their best to portray a noble image within the public sphere. They dress nicely, are respectful and talk politely – when not trying to make money. Violence for the most part happens between gang branches or non-yakuza gangs within Japan. The yakuza punish their own, sometimes infamously forcing the person who did wrong to remove the tip of a finger as a form of apology. The yakuza are even known to reduce some crime. They will often police themselves. Have you ever been through Tokyo’s Kabukicho entertainment district? Take a look next time. For such a crowded place you might expect an iconic police box or at least cops patrolling, but nope. Yakuza do protect places they collect money from because they don’t want other people to take that money. A petty thief or drug dealer looking for a new territory often thinks twice before operating in yakuza turf. The police catching you may be scary to a criminal, but worse is considering what the yakuza might do to you. Perhaps the strongest argument that yakuza do good came during some of the biggest disasters in recent Japanese history. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the more recent tsunami disaster that hit Tohoku last year, yakuza were there to provide aid. Some have said that since yakuza have been strongly connected to the construction industry, they were just scoping out legal and illegal work for the rebuilding process, but others like to think the gang members have a heart. Gang members are people too, even if they are not the best role models of an outstanding citizen. The yakuza used
their gang connections and efficiency to move supplies to unaffected areas to the people that needed food, blankets, and medicine. They even opened up offices and facilities to those affected and rented a transport helicopter for faster relief when it came to the Kobe incident. The government was much slower and less organized. When people are in trouble they want someone they can depend on and for the second time when disaster struck, the yakuza were there.
Closing words Are the yakuza more than mere criminals? By reducing petty crime and violence they often make local streets safer. They also were there in some of the darkest moments of Japan helping out fellow citizens. At the same time they murder, sell drugs and firearms, and practice extortion, human trafficking, and scare tactics. Even with a mountain of politicians, lawyers, police and organizations trying to expel the yakuza from society, they are not leaving. In fact, because the crime syndicate turns so many wheels in Japan from gambling and sex paid by demanding Japanese customers, to raising funds for political parties, it is hard to imagine society able to operate if the yakuza did not exist. So are these well dressed thugs good or bad? For the time being, the yakuza in Japan find themselves a necessary evil.
BY MAKOTO I was reading one of the magazines that I received from Japan this past weekend. It’s a magazine called haru_ mi. This magazine gives me not only cooking, interior design and sewing ideas but also inspires me on how to appreciate life. Just reading it gives me peace of mind
I consider myself to have adjusted to living abroad pretty well, when I encounter any information or news related to Japan (or sometimes other parts of Asia), I get such a special feeling; it feels like it quenches your thirst for your culture. The information penetrates into every part of my body, “Ahhh, I feel Japan.” Have you felt that way about your country when you lived far from it for a long time?
The editor-author Harumi
Yet a funny thing is that you realize you don’t belong to your own country when you go back. Do you remember an episode from “How I Met Tour Mother?” When Robin ordered a cup of coffee at Tim Hortons, she was treated as an American. When she was
I started missing Japan just by reading it and feeling the paper texture of the magazine: thick and delicate. The magazines that I subscribe to from Japan act as a doorway to keep me connected to my native country. Although
When I went back to Japan after having lived in Sweden for a few years, I started my new life in Yokohama. Oh, it was quite an experience. Tokyo is huge and I felt like it wasn’t the Japan that I knew. Nagasaki is so traditional. So
Kurihara is very international; she gets ideas from different countries. In the latest edition, she introduces lots of information from South Korea; cooking, restaurants, embroidery and a traditional alcoholic drink like sake. And, she presents it in such an elegant manner.
in a pub in New York City, she was treated as a nonAmerican. I totally understood how she felt. When I go back to Japan, especially my hometown Nagasaki, I know people get a different vibe from me and they treat me as a foreign object. Tokyo is different, though.
OPINIONS
Losing one’s identity by living in a foreign country … or defining it
being in a big city like Tokyo without knowing how things work there was quite scary at that time. I had no idea how to ride subways or trains; yet it was too embarrassing to ask anyone there. I felt like I was supposed to know because I was Japanese. Also, I didn’t know what to expect from Japanese in Tokyo. Oh well, live and learn, right? It didn’t take me long to get used to life in Yokohama, and I loved it so much. Being in a position like Robin doesn’t bother me. Living in the U.S., I know I am not an American. Being in Japan, I know I don’t act Japanese in the way that many Japanese people would be familiar with. But I must admit that I
feel comfortable being in this position. When I was growing up in Japan, I hated being there so much. Once I left and experienced life outside Japan, I started appreciating my culture and acquired a new ability to look objectively at what Japan is good at or not. Also, living in the U.S., I can see the strength and weakness of this country, too. I pick and choose from both countries. What is important for me now is to focus on the fact that I define who I am, and not let any culture or country define me.
Live Music Schedule: Oct 12: Mackie the band Oct 13: Sid’s 50th birthday Music with The Watanabes Oct 14: Grey area
Wotlie
Oct 16: Sluggo Acoustic Oct 17: Rock star jam session Oct 18: Wotlie Acoustic
sujis.net
Oct 19: Spazmatics
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