My dear person who taught me new difinition of Marathon

Marathon encourages me to feel happly because I can learn a lot.
One aspect of Marathon which attacts me would be

"Meeting new friends"

Ever since I started marathon on August 2009, I met many people and I`m fully glad to meet wonderful fellows so far.
Among them, let me introduce Yoko Koyama whom I was impressed most deeply.
On 24th, June, I had a special dinner with Yoko.
I really appreciate Yoko who definitely transformed my sense of value.
Actually, I met Yoko for the first time on 4th December 2011 during a year-end party which was organized by Amino Value Running Club.
I`ll explain Amino at another time.

Yoko invented another running organization, "Kazeyuru", a charity relay marathon activity for the Japan 3.11 Earthquake. To be honest, I do not know the formal name of this running activity(Sorry, but I cannot chuckle).
As for Kazeyuru, we, runners gather on the running spot around Osaka castle and share distance of 42 km. This means that we take part in a relay until the total amount of distance reaches the distance between Osaka and Tohoku.
More than 100 runners take part in the charity event every month and they are willing to pay 6 dollar fees for participation, which are donated to the RedCross.
To my surprise, several sports equipment companies sponsor her activity.
Therefore, Sometimes they provide drinks or whatever for us.
In fact, Yoko was born in Kobe where the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck in 1995.
While she was thankful for volunteers all over Japan then, she noticed that this shoking memory was buried in oblivion, with increasing speed.
Therefore, she strongly felt the necessity of keeping hearty support and developing bonds with those suffering from this devastating disaster.
That`s why she established an organization which focused on charity relay marathon.

I`ve always been impressed by Yoko because she is a kind of person who supports others rather than herself. She definitely devote herself to assisting others as well as pleasing her friends.
She attracts quite a few people who are willing to invite their friends to join this activity, thus sparking off a chain reaction.
Yoko is like a shining sunflower that attracts a wide range of beautiful butterflies.

Thus, her club keeps creating pleasant atmosphere all the time.

I ran Nara marathon on December, just a week after I met with Yoko.
Many members of Amino as well as Kazeyuru took part in this marathon, so she came to Nara to cheer us up.
As for me, I was cheered up in a final 3km stage, and was able to restore energy. Actually, I was glad to receive many cheers and it was the first time that I was moved to tears during Marathon.

So far, I felt one of attractive elements of Marathon festival is being encouraged by local people and being cheered up by them during running. Yet, it turned out that a cheering from friends was worth tenfold that of others.

Later, I was motivated to participate in a marathon festival as a supporter on Osaka Half Marathon.
As a backer, I should have kept working as hard as possible to cheer runners up. However, at first, I was embarrassed, so I tried to imitate what Yoko did.

Contrary to my expectation, this supporting activity along the street was an enjoyable experience for the following two reasons.

Firstly, more runners than expected respond us.
5000 runners took part in the Marathon event and more than 20% of them answered us by saying "Thank you!" or " I`ll try harder".
I`ve never been thanked by 1000 people in an hour.

Secondly, supporters are moved by runners quite a few times.
Osaka Half Marathon strictly forces runners to keep their paces in order to finish races before determined deadline.
I was fully moved when I saw famous top-runners and my friends coming, but the most moving moment was when a young lady in my age tried hard enough to come in deadline and tried to keep her pace even though she was suffering from her muscle spasms.
I enjoyed a precious time of  being given too many thanks.

Now, I am at Kansai International Airport.
I received an e-mail from Yoko, which contais precious messages;
・Hard work encourages me to grow more productively
・Let my frankness remain the same as my strength
・Meeting new precious friends happens at the right time. The priority are closer relationships rather than longer ones.
・I wish you having a great time in Philadelphia and come back to Japan with trustful relationships with my classmates.

Self Introduction

Let me introduce myself( a little bit longer version).
I was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1982 and 29 year-old guy.
I was brought up in Joyo, southern part of Kyoto with no special impressions.
Then, I entered the U of Tokyo after failing entrance exam and re-taking it a year later.
At that time, I majored in Economics and focused my studies on macro-finance, though I hated to concentrate on my academic courses.
Instead, I focused on my practical approach, I mean, I tried to learn outside classes.
So, the biggest achievement was creating cooking club at university.

In January 2004, my friends and I invented the club at sophomore, and the club keeps prospering even now.
I tried to invite only men from the U of Tokyo, and set a rule to invite women of any background, which is very common at university.
Our main activity is to enjoy cooking at public cooking space every week.

As founder and president, I tried to achieve a wide variety of tasks including opening cafe at a school festival, arranging a training camp, giving presentation to publishing company and appearing on a cooking TV etc.
That`s why Cooking Club managed to keep prospering without focusing only on drinking party.
Actually, I went to cooking school and finally got a chef license.
In that process, I truly enjoyed the club activity and demonstrated leadership activities.
I am proud of this experience, which enabled me to broaden my horizons.
As for academic learning, I managed to graduate from the university with no special knowledges or skills on economics.

On April 2006, I joined Recruit Corporation after graduation.
When I was looking for a job, I tried to find a position where I can grow faster and learn a lot of skills at young age. As a result, I met many businessmen from trading companies. However, it turned out that workers in trading companies were not necessarily working intensively. While meeting over 60 businessmen, I noticed there were too many who lost their motivation. As for Recruit, I was impressed by each staff who said,
・Recruit Corporation resembles business school where you can gain money.
・I`m at Recruit 6 years cause my job is filled with fun, even though at first I tried to quit my job in three years.
・I wanna to transform the health-care industry in the near future.
I was attacted by them, and decided to join Recruit.

At Recruit, I worked as a sales executive and sold advertisement spaces of human resources. As a human-resources consultant, I tried to be trusted and solve the core problems of small and midium-sized companies. I made 100 phone calls every day and discussed many topics with company`s CEOs even at a young age.
I loved my job since Recruit has established the way its salespeople can keep their motivation higher.

After a while, probably a year later, I was able to improve my quality and successfully became a consultant of my clients.
I was satisfied with discussing more and more clients at dinner.
At the same time, I felt unhappy when I kept my viewpoints being one-sided.

Actually, on Nov 2007, I got a contract with my new client and received too many fees at that point.
This enabled me to focus on my duties and I was absorbed in achieving my tasks.
As a human-consultant, I helped my client by doing whatever I can do, including designing whole process of hunting, carrying out interview, presiding over kick off meeting and visiting professors to help students gain credits and join my client`s office.

Thanks to all those activites, I was asked to join Upohs, the second largest used-car company in western Japan. Well, I was headhunted as CEO of the company even if I did not have any experience as a manager then.
When I joined Upohs in 2008, I told other board members that I might quit in three years because I wanna to get MBA. One of them saild it was fine if I succeeded in reforming the company.

Upohs was invented in 1995 and board members expanded its business, but they could not reform the company.
As for me, I was asked to transform Upohs.
So, I researched the market condition and carried out a wide range of tasks simultaneously, including changing marketing strategies, revising contracts with franchisees, supervising franchisees strictly.
I tried to challenge many opportunites through my trial and error approach, which is one success under three trials.
In that process, I was fully shocked because I lacked comprehensive business knowledges as a global leader. Moreover, I wanna to look for sth inspiring on a global level. Furthermore, I would like to experience real educational system through attending business school and support transforming education in Japan. So, I believe MBA is necessary for me.
However, the priority for me is making friends worldwide and improving English speaking abilities more effectively.
From this August, I will attend the U of Pennsylvania, Wharton.
I am concerned about quiting my job during my precious business period(29 to 31 year-old), but I`m sure I can learn more and cannot wait to start my new life.

Launched my blog

My dream finally comes to, MBA studies at Wharton as class of 2014.
I created personal blog of my two year studies at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
The main objectives of this blog are as follows:

1)Recording my feeling
I decided to challenge for two year studies while I can learn quite a few things as a 29 year-old business person if I continue to work in Japan during the same period.
Yet, I believe I can learn more than ever at Wharton and I would like to record my feelings during this period. This is because I don`t wanna to forget my precious memories or discoveries with people on a global level. Thus, I will write my activities or feelings based on my own satisfaction, rather than that of readers. Please neglect grammatical errors or illogical opinions.

2)Sharing information
I would like to inform people all over the world that I am alive(haha), i.e. I am in the process of learning new things.
Therefore, I plan to write whatever themes I want, and share my feelings with close friends or whoever.

3)Meeting new friends
So far, I kept my diaries on my weblog at university around 10 years ago and I had experienced meeting new friends through comments on my blog.
Therefore, I decided to loaunch my blog both in English and in Japanese and would like to find new friends on a global level in the near future.

Those are the three main reasons that I keep my diaries.
Sorry for my Japanish English, but I will keep reporting my MBA life in English even if I face any difficulties, including lack of sleep or too busy-life.