japan :: tokyo :: general

[feather]

Recommendations for women's shopping and cool design stores in Tokyo?

[herpsky]

mrip and I went to ebisu yokocho.

So many insanely hot fashion girls.

Mrip ended up talking to a head designer of joy rich for like an hour.

Awesome night

[riotC]

anyone be in tokyo for the next 2 weeks after sunday ?

looking for people to get smashed together .

[djrajio]

mrip and I went to ebisu yokocho.

So many insanely hot fashion girls.

Mrip ended up talking to a head designer of joy rich for like an hour.

Awesome night

I be back next Thursday. Lets hang out+++++++++

Introduce me to head designer.

Will repay in curry.

Edited April 17, 2013 by djrajio

[breams]

mrip and I went to ebisu yokocho.

So many insanely hot fashion girls.

Mrip ended up talking to a head designer of joy rich for like an hour.

Awesome night

I always laugh that there's a girl's bar in there and have yet to see any customers.

[djrajio]

Bloomberg published a "great" article on Heartland / Google / Goldman.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-16/goldman-traders-cede-tokyo-party-bar-to-google-apple-invasion.html

The champagne used to flow at Heartland, the bar in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills complex that drew bankers from the Japan headquarters of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. upstairs.

“Every day, there was a party,†said Mai Shioya, the 39- year-old manager, who started in May 2008 before the global financial crisis that led to Lehman’s bankruptcy.

Enlarge image

Google-Apple Influx Transforms Tokyo Bankers’ Hangout on IT Boom Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

A pedestrian walks past the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, operated by Mori Building Co., in Tokyo.

A pedestrian walks past the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, operated by Mori Building Co., in Tokyo. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Google-Apple Influx Transforms Tokyo Bankers’ Hangout on IT Boom Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Bottles of Heartland brand beer are displayed in Heartland, a bar in the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo.

Bottles of Heartland brand beer are displayed in Heartland, a bar in the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Google-Apple Influx Transforms Tokyo Bankers’ Hangout on IT Boom Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Pedestrians walk past Heartland, a bar in the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo.

Pedestrians walk past Heartland, a bar in the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Google-Apple Influx Transforms Tokyo Bankers’ Hangout on IT Boom Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

The Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, center, operated by Mori Building Co. in Tokyo.

The Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, center, operated by Mori Building Co. in Tokyo. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Bankers in well-cut suits would come in about 5 p.m., hand bartenders corporate credit cards and let their friends charge drinks to the tab until 2 a.m., said Michio Nakamura, 45, who’s been running events and entertainment at Heartland since its opening as part of the famed Roppongi Hills development in 2003. After the financial crisis, many disappeared, cutting revenue by 30 percent, Shioya said.

“Those customers and that age have gone,†she said.

The void is being filled by a new group of bar patrons: information-technology workers. While financial firms have cut staff in Japan, technology companies have boosted hiring, and as bankers vacated offices at Roppongi Hills, companies including Google Inc. (GOOG) and Lenovo Group Ltd. (992) moved in. As early as this month, Apple Inc. (AAPL) will also make the complex its home in Japan, two people familiar with the plan said in January.

“Hiring demand for IT workers is very high,†said Taizo Hattori, a director for information technology at Career Incubation Inc., a Tokyo-based recruiting and consulting company. “Many IT firms have doubled headcounts.â€

Vacating Floors

Goldman Sachs, one of the original tenants which has been reducing headcount and moving jobs elsewhere in Asia, is in talks with its landlord to vacate two of the six floors it occupies in the 54-story Mori Tower, part of the $2.2 billion Roppongi Hills complex developed by Mori Building Co. (MBDZ), two people with knowledge of the matter have said.

Lehman’s Asian business was bought by Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc., and its Japan operations were transferred to the Otemachi business district in 2010.

U.S. and European banks have been eliminating jobs and transferring staff from Japan to Hong Kong and Singapore to reduce expenses. Goldman Sachs led foreign banks in accelerating job cuts at their Japanese brokerages, according to filings with Japan’s Financial Services Agency.

Goldman Sachs’s Japanese brokerage unit had 847 employees as of March 31, 2012, down about 30 percent from 1,205 in March 2008, the filings show. Barclays Plc (BARC), whose Japan headquarters is also at Roppongi Hills, was another that reduced brokerage staff, according to the filings.

Visible Changes

The changes are visible at Heartland, located at the street level of the landmark Mori Tower, said Shioya, the manager. Originally opened to promote Heartland brand beer, brewed by Tokyo-based Kirin Holdings Co. (2503), it’s one of several bars and restaurants in Roppongi Hills, which also includes upscale shops, a hotel, apartments, a movie theater and an art museum.

“People used to be drinking more,†she said. “Some customers opened seven bottles of champagne for their birthdays. Some would ask us to prepare 100 champagne glasses for celebrations, and they were offering them to bar staff and strangers.â€

With fewer bankers and more patrons from the tech world, the atmosphere has become more laid back, Shioya said.

After business declined following the financial crisis, the bar began showing sporting events on its big-screen display to draw customers. Couches where well-dressed men and mini-skirted women once paired up to lounge and drink cocktails were replaced with tables and stools.

Clientele Change

“The bankers were often drinking with ladies who came here to meet foreign businessmen, who were looking to marry a wealthy banker and go overseas,†Shioya said, adding that now the women who come tend to be office workers looking to practice English.

On a recent Friday evening, male patrons in jeans or cargo pants, unshaven, wearing baseball caps or carrying backpacks were as numerous as men in suits.

“It’s changed a lot, especially the clientele,†said Felix Beatty, an information-risk-management specialist from Montreal who was celebrating his 36th birthday by drinking Heartland beer instead of champagne.

As their hangout transformed, some of the remaining bankers abandoned it for Rigoletto, a bar and restaurant on the fifth floor, said Beatty, who’s been coming to Heartland since 2004.

In April 2009, after overseas financial companies cut about 4,300 jobs, or 16 percent of their Japan workforce in 15 months, Heartland hosted a “pink-slip party†to help unemployed bankers network and find new jobs.

Google Expansion

Initially occupying 1 1/2 floors at Mori Tower, Google’s offices now take up the 26th, 28th and 30th floors, as well as most of the 27th. The Mountain View, California-based company declined in an e-mail to disclose its number of employees in the building.

Lenovo (992), the world’s second-largest maker of personal computers, moved its Japan headquarters to Roppongi Hills in April 2010. Google, operator of the world’s biggest search engine, relocated from Tokyo’s Shibuya district in August the same year.

Other information-technology companies in Mori Tower include Baidu Inc. (BIDU), operator of China’s most-popular search engine; Gree Inc. (3632), a Japanese social-networking game site operator; and San Francisco-based Salesforce.com, the biggest maker of online customer-management software.

“Roppongi Hills is sort of a tech hub,†said Joseph Schmidt, a spokesman for Salesforce.com. The site’s central location and gas-operated power generators to keep offices working during earthquake-related power cuts make it “second to none†for business-continuity planning, he said.

Valuable Proximity

For Baidu, proximity to other information-technology companies is valuable, said Kaiser Kuo, a spokesman for the Beijing-based company.

Lenovo, which started out with one floor at Mori Tower, has since expanded to a second, said Angela Lee, a spokeswoman for the Beijing-based company, which now has about 300 employees.

“Having our main office in Roppongi Hills has brought a positive impact on employees’ motivation and recruiting,†Lee said.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, will move to Roppongi Hills from Tokyo’s Shinjuku district as early as this month and will occupy one or two floors, the people familiar with the plan said. Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“IT firms are attracted because of the business environment,†Tomohiro Akita, a spokesman for Mori Building, said of Mori Tower, citing the in-house power generators, hotel and conference space.

Hiring Jump

Hiring at information-technology and communications companies through three of Japan’s biggest recruiting agencies jumped 23 percent from a year earlier to 3,093 people in the six months ended Sept. 30, the Japan Executive Search and Recruitment Association said in a report in November. Financial- services hiring rose 7.5 percent to 830, it said.

Demand for information-technology staff is outpacing supply and has been accelerating since early this year, Career Incubation’s Hattori said.

“Internet-service companies that target consumers are making money and are cash-rich,†he said. “They can afford to invest in human resources and are especially interested in people who can develop business overseas.â€

Rents for prime office space in Tokyo have fallen more than 40 percent from a peak in the first quarter of 2008, according to property broker Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., prompting more companies to relocate as they seek to upgrade office space.

Falling Rent

Rental value in the Akasaka and Roppongi areas in the fourth quarter of 2012 was 57 percent of the 2008 peak, according to Jones Lang. That’s attracted new tenants, cutting the vacancy rate in the area to 2.7 percent as of September from 3.3 percent the preceding quarter, data from Jones Lang show.

“Geeks have increased around the area,†said Hattori of Career Incubation. “Even some manager-level people who earn a lot of money wear jeans and athletic shoes. Probably they don’t have to care about their clothes as they are just happy as long as they can produce something interesting.â€

Technology companies have also transformed the commercial real-estate market in New York, helping offset sluggish demand from financial-services firms. Lower Manhattan office vacancies fell in the first quarter to the lowest since 2008 as technology and creative firms moved in, Cushman & Wakefield said earlier this month.

The chances of a resurgence in financial-firm hiring in Tokyo aren’t great, said Tetsuya Sakabe, managing director at Kanae Associates Ltd., an executive-search firm specializing in the industry.

[djrajio]

Kinda miss working at Goldman.

The 43rd floor gym had the best view of Tokyo skyline.

[herpsky]

mrip blacks out again. i find his 600 dollar glasses. i save the day. i got the VJ's phone number. life is good.

[herpsky]

she is 21. i ball hard.

[herpsky]

except i'm jobless.

[herpsky]

MRIP got kicked out of the club

[herpsky]

SUPRLEME

[herpsky]

i b waisted

[djrajio]

which club?

why did you guys get kicked out?

lets hang out Saturday night....

[djrajio]

Cept I got two girls and introducing one to Hiro.

Fuck.

Can I meet you guys after I introduce Hiro to the two girls?

[herpsky]

i thought hiro-kun had a gf but it didn't last?

sure.

we went to GLAD in dogenzaka. the club is in the love hotel district of shibuya.

i really don't know what happened to mrip but hope he is okay.

we drank lots of cheap dranks at 赤ã¡ã‚‡ã†ã¡ã‚“. he was def. all right when we went to the club. he was dancing with some bros then he like totally passed out on the floor.

[herpsky]

i was p wasted. i don't really know how i made it home in one piece. it was the hoppy that killed us.

[herpsky]

it was def. the craziest party night i've ever had on a monday.

Edited April 23, 2013 by herpsky

[herpsky]

We're up all night 'til the sun

We're up all night to get some

We're up all night for good fun

We're up all night to get lucky

[herpsky]

looks like djrajio is going to bail on us on friday b/c he's got some hot datez with some hot jbzs

S

A

D

looks like we have to go to M.U.S.É to drink some ROSÉ on friday

[herpsky]

also maki's 出会ã„系アプリ history is hella showing up on my facebook feed.

he works for rakuten. major failure.

[po_boy_fuuma_hatesbargerz]

except i'm jobless.

aren't you done with MD residency?

[herpsky]

i wish

[ShinyDuke]

Hello all,

I take it this is the general topic for Japan? I'm planning a trip to Japan at the beginning of next year with a friend. The only thing I have as an advantage is I know the language, and everything else I have no idea how to organise. Accomodation, where to go, etc. It would be perfect if anybody could give me some insight into this. I definitely want to do some shopping, as I love buying clothes.

[herpsky]

i love buying clothes too!

[herpsky]

also please post in nihongo

[herpsky]

i seriously think tripadvisor is a better place for asking generic questions like that

[po_boy_fuuma_hatesbargerz]

i wish

wait i thought you were doen???

[breams]

Always the Hoppy. Anyways, I'm back in on Friday night.

[herpsky]

oh yeah

hoppy in sancha killed me