Japanese Gracious Hospitality

Okay, so I've been meaning to explain what I've been doing for MBK Homes and am finally getting around to it. About 6 months ago while we were still living in Japan I was contacted by a woman that I've known for years (she was actually my Sunday School teacher when I was a teenager for awhile). She had seen a post I had written on La Fuji Mama about an experience I had with one of our neighbors. Her company, MBK Homes, is owned by Mitsui Corporation, a Japanese corporation that is one of the oldest businesses in the world. One of the mission statements of MBK is to provide gracious hospitality and this friend was wondering what my perception of Japanese hospitality was. We talked for a bit and then she asked me to put some of my thoughts down and email them to her, which I did. I promptly forgot about it until she contacted me again in late July asking if I would be interested in putting together a presentation that would help educate the employees of MBK about their corporate heritage, give them some ideas of how they could implement some of that heritage into the way they conduct business and improve the quality of the hospitality that they provide.

In October I went to MBK and did an hour long presentation to their Sales Team which focused specifically on providing gracious hospitality in customer service. After that presentation I was asked to make a similar presentation at MBK's bi-annual conference for the executives. So last week I made a 45-minute presentation at the conference that focused on using gracious hospitality to promote team building within the company. It went well and I had a blast doing it. I've been really impressed with MBK through the whole process. It's nice seeing a company put so much effort into providing their employees this type of training.

Ok, now that you're all asleep, here's something more entertaining! This is a video of Savannah antagonizing Neko (one of our cats) and then scolding her ("Be nice!") when Neko gets a little bit annoyed.

Work, work, work!

Tomorrow I giving another presentation for MBK Homes on the topic of Japanese Gracious Hospitality, though my focus is on team building this time (the last presentation I did was for their Sales Team and focused more on customer service) and my audience is about 7 times larger than the one for my last presentation. As a result I'm just a little bit stressed and distracted. To add to the stress/distraction I finally got a calling in our ward, one that I'm all too familiar with--Primary Chorister. On one hand, I love the calling because it is very rewarding, but on the other hand, I dread it because it is WAY more work than any other calling I've ever had, including being the Young Women's President. After my presentation is over tomorrow I'm going to be feeling a whole lot better about life, I'm sure.

Nate has been more than a little busy as well. The weekend before last he was in Boston working through the weekend helping out with some bilingual interviews (English/Japanese) that needed to be done. Every day during the week he's in a different city visiting a client--poor guy doesn't get to rest! We're very glad that he's driving a hybrid, because boy is he putting miles on that thing!

Savannah continues to make our lives fun. A few days ago I bought a plastic storage bin to store Halloween costumes in. I had brought it in from the car and it was sitting in our family room waiting to be filled. I turned my back on Savannah to unload the dishwasher and when I turned back around she had filled the bin with some of her favorite things and a blanket and was lounging in the bin like it was a bath tub.
I finally moved and filled the bin this morning while she was asleep, but I didn't have the heart to take it away from her before that because she was enjoying it so much. Maybe we'll buy her one for Christmas.

Because I'm feeling particularly uninteresting, I'll leave you with something way more fun--a series of photos I took of Savannah. When I took the first one she didn't have any idea I was there. You can see as the photos progress that she's starting to be a bit more clued in to what I'm doing.

Spooky Resemblance

After my post about Trunk-or-Treat my mom emailed me with a side-by-side comparison of one of the pictures from my post and one of a Cabbage Patch doll. All I can say is wow, creepy!

Halloween Retrospective

Aaaah, the big day has come and gone and what do we have to show for it? Luckily, not much candy!
Savannah had a blast trick-or-treating, but mostly because she got to wear her pumpkin costume which she loves.
We went to a couple of houses on my parents' street and then drove down the Haimson's house (we had to take Savvy to see her Fairy Godmother Kathy of course!). She fell asleep in the car on the way there, but perked up once she saw their bowl of candy!