Travel Report Nagoya University of Commerce & Business

Spring 2014

These are my honest experiences about my master level exchange term at the Nagoya University of Commerce & Business. The comments and insights are based only on my observations and insights and do not represent the general view on this university.

1. Preparations before the exchange

After Aalto Biz has nominated you for NUCB you have to send several documents to NUCB. Compared to my other exchange term in bachelors level this is not too much work. The documents are returned to Aalto’s international office so you don’t have to mail anything to Japan. Here are the documents required by the UNCB: 1. Application form 2. CV/Resume 3. 2 copies of Passport 4. Document for proof of English Proficiency (Not required from Aalto students) 5. Essay "Details your reasons for choosing to study at NUCB Graduate School/in Japan” – one page (This can be almost the same as what you wrote to Aalto but make sure you change some of the parts in order to match NUCB’s requirements) 6. Official transcripts from your school 7. Application for Certificate of Eligibility (Visa document) 8. 3 photos (color copy is NOT acceptable) 40mm x 30mm/Should write your name on the back of the each photo 9. Bank statement or Financial statement (Cost 5 euros in Nordea) After few months you will get your Certificate of Eligibility accepted by the Japanese immigration bureau. When you receive this you will be able to apply Visa from the Japanese embassy. You will get the Visa within a day or two. However, when thinking in retrospect, it might be better if you don’t apply for the Visa. I’ll discuss about this later in this paper. The airport procedures are very smooth going as well and I faced no problems. The trains from the airport to Nagoya leave almost every 10 minutes, costs 870 yen and takes around 40 minutes. You will also automatically apply for the scholarship provided by the NUCB or Jasso. NUCB has two types of scholarships depending on your GPA. Your GPA decides also in which student residence you will be living at. I received scholarship number two which was 30,000 yen per month and got offered the residence in Higashiyama that was a lot fancier than the cheaper Chiyoda but a little bit further away from the city. You will be put automatically to either one these residences so you don’t have to stress at all about finding a place to stay. These residences are relatively affordable but if you want, you can look for your own housing as well. Make sure you also have travel insurance before you fly to Japan. Normally travel insurances are valid max. 45 days so you’ll need to buy extra time for your insurance. I bought insurance from Eurooppalainen and in cost around 200 euros and it was the most affordable option in the market.

2 Another important thing you have to do right after Aalto has nominated you is to apply for exchange scholarship money offered by KY. I got around 700 euros, which covered my flight tickets.

Problems and comments Only problem or surprise that I faced before going to Nagoya was that I had to pay for the whole stay at once and I had two weeks to make a transfer of 302,000 yen (around 2000 euros). I had to raise my student loan from the bank because I didn’t have enough money on my bank account at that time. Also in the same e-mail it was stated that if my GPA was lower than 2.20 in Term 1, I had to pay back the whole scholarship of 85,000 yen in Term 2. This felt unfair since they announced this when my exchange was already confirmed. In other words, first they use carrot and then when you’ve already signed for everything they tell that you have to give the carrot back if you don’t follow the rules. To pay the rent was also quite pricey (around 20 euros) and complicated since they don’t use IBAN. The fact that there was a possibility that I have to pay back the scholarship put a lot of pressure on me and the first term was no way stress free or something I’ve used to in Finland since there was now a money incentive. Nevertheless, as a new exchange student I didn’t have any experience or knowledge about how demanding the courses were so I didn’t know the standards. Although it was generous of them to give me this scholarship I think it was not communicated correctly in the application process. Exchange students should be notices of any possible future payments. By the time of sending the application documents to NUCB, they only mentioned that in order to get the scholarship your GPA has to be over certain level in our home universities before the beginning of the exchange studies. This was however not the only surprise when I went there. I will talk about the other surprises in the latter parts of his paper. The campus was located in the center of Nagoya and was easy to find. I went to Nagoya 5 days before the check-in date, which was probably a little bit too much. Two or three days would have been enough to get rid of the jet lag and get to know the city. They had a specific check-in date where they drove us to our residence and gave us all information and documents needed.

2. Exchange studies

The courses were part of the English-speaking program called the Global Leader Program. GLP is an MBA program that adopts many aspects from the American MBA system. This is good to keep in mind because in many aspects such as in assignments and lectures MBA education differs from Master of Science degrees what we are studying in Aalto. In brief, MBA is more practically oriented using a lot of case studies. In addition, the assignments don’t have to follow academic style and often more practical business like styles are appreciated.

Starting your studies The school started on Monday the 31st of March by a weeklong orientation week. The orientation week was quite relaxed and didn’t contain too many activities. The first day included mostly general information about the school and living in Nagoya, and

3 we had lunch with the other exchange students together with the program coordinators. The next day we had an opening ceremony at the Nisshin campus which is quite far away from the city center and takes around one hour metro and buss ride to get there. The ceremony was very long but after the ceremony all exchange students were invited to have lunch with the president and the professors. However it did feel weird that only the international students were invited to have lunch and drink champagne with the president. It made us feel special but I also started to think if the Japanese students also got the same treatment. I think that at this point it is appropriate to mention that NUCB tries very hard to become an international university and sometimes their means to achieve this might feel weird for a person like me and other exchange students. For instance when you enter the Fushimi campus lobby, all you can see is many international flags and posters about their rankings and accreditations to make an international impression. In the opening ceremony all international students were seated along the middle isle where at least four photographers took pictures of us so that the parents of the Japanese students, who were watching the ceremony from the upper stand, could see how international the school was. In reality however, at least at the MBA level, there were only two Japanese students taking the English-speaking program. The rest of the students taking English-speaking classes were exchange students and double degree students coming overseas. Maybe it’s an Asian or Japanese way of trying to make a good impression to show only the good sides of yourself and hide the bad ones. The next day we went to do the registration at the Wards Office. Our student coordinator was with us because the office personnel didn’t speak English at all. At this point we were told that we have to pay the Japanese health care insurance even if we had travel insurance from home since it was mandatory. This came as a surprise and I started to think that it would have been better not to apply for the Japanese visa and just come here with a student visa because you can stay 90 day in Japan with a tourist visa and if you travel abroad, for instance to Korea, you get new 90 days when you come back. I’m not sure how they calculated my insurance premium because I got a different sum every month but in average I paid around 12 euros a month. It is not too much but it feels somewhat unnecessary because I was already covered by my own insurance. I also asked my other friend who was studying in Tokyo and she didn’t have to pay any Japanese insurance, which kind of made me think if there was a misunderstanding about the mandatory nature of the insurance fee. Japanese are generally very honest people but there are sometimes issues with the transparency.

General Information about the courses As I was doing master level exchange the courses were part of an English language MBA program called The Global Leader Program. As mentioned before, all participants were mostly exchange students or international double degree students and contained very few Japanese students. Undergrads were able to participate in some of the courses as well. All courses offered for exchange students at the NUCB were worth 3 ECTS. Because I needed 24 ECTS for my minor I had to choose eight courses. In NUCB the semester is divided into two terms and I chose four courses for each term. One term takes around two months and both terms had eight courses to choose from plus Japanese courses but I didn’t take them since I studied Japanese already in Finland. For me the amount of selectable course was not much because I had already taken comparable

4 courses in Aalto. Fortunately those courses I chose were generally very interesting. There were no compulsory courses and students can choose whatever courses they wish. Note that some of the courses are intensive courses that are only couple of days long. However they usually contain as much work as normal courses so you need to plan your other studies well because during the intensive courses you don’t have time do anything else than focus on those courses. It is also recommended that you do all preparations before the intensive course starts. Normal courses were held once a week and one lecture lasted around four hours. The classes were normally held between 2pm and 10pm since they were MBA courses. Before each term you can freely add and drop courses before the deadline that is usually couple of days before the term starts. After that you can still drop courses one week after the term start. I chose excessive courses and made my final choice after I attended the first lectures.

Casebook fee Another surprise for me was the mandatory casebook fees. Depending on the course the casebook fee per course is around 6000 yen. This fee feels also unnecessary because I could have downloaded all the cases from my Aalto database for free.

Courses I took

Term 1. Creative and Critical Thinking (GLP102_G14G) Professor Nigel Denscombe Grading: 20% class participation (quantity) and the quality of comments/questions 20% quality of group work/team presentations (Especially final day project) 30% mid-term case assignment 30% full written case report at the end of the term Content of the course: Creative and Critical Thinking gives key insights and important business foundation skills in order not just to be great prospective global managers with superior critical thinking, but to also display innovative and creative new approaches to management problems and new global business opportunities. Creative and Critical Thinking will not just focus on conceptual and abstract academic concepts and logic frameworks, but will go far beyond mind mapping and behavioral basics by using normal real world business case studies and group projects to foster creative and critical skills. Evaluation of the course: The course was mostly based on case studies. The professor presented the theoretical tools and frameworks that were used throughout the course. Each class followed the same pattern: first half was class discussions about the case and the latter part was comprised of group work and presentations. I think the course was useful for me and

5 introduced me to tools and frameworks that are very useful in future business decisions. It also broadened my thinking and improved my critical thinking when analyzing the cases. I enjoyed the relaxed and conversational atmosphere of this course and Nigel was a really nice professor. Sometimes I lost focus because he tends to ask a lot of irrelevant questions. The group tasks started to become a little bit boring in the end because they all followed almost the same pattern and the task was almost the same every time. A positive thing about the repetitive nature of the group assignments is that you really learn the tools, concepts and theoretical frameworks.

Managerial Marketing (GLP104_G14G) (intensive course) Professor Stefan Lippert Grading: 35% individual class participation 30% marketing plan done in teams (including written report) 35% final individual exam Content of the course: This basic course focuses on the marketing management of firms in the global marketplace. It deals with the concepts, tools, and principles of professional marketing plan formulation and implementation. The perspective taken is that of a marketing executive – students will explore a variety of functions and responsibilities associated with that role, which include analyzing the global environment, formulating and implementing marketing strategy, designing marketing organizations, and delivering and extracting value. Class discussions will be based on lectures, readings, and case analyses. Evaluation of the course: This course is also very much based on case studies. However, professor Lippert likes also to give a lot of real life examples and insights. His way of teaching is consultant- like and his lectures were really interesting. As mentioned in the content part, this course differs from other marketing courses by taking a managerial view on marketing and business decisions. He also gives very detailed instructions of how to do successful marketing decisions and how to be more professional in marketing presentations. In general I liked this course even though it was one of the toughest courses I took at the NUCB. The course is held over two weekends and we had to read and analyze dozens of case studies, make a marketing plan and study for the exam. Courses take normally the whole day so we didn’t have time do anything else but to focus on this course. In general it was a really helpful and interesting course but a lot of work.

6 Statistical Analysis in Business (GLP105_G14G) Professor Tomoaki Shimada

Grading: 10% class attendance and contribution 25% quizzes done in 5 sessions 65% final exam Content of the course: The primary objective of the course is to learn how to apply basic statistics to business analytics. Students will study fundamental concepts and practices of business statistics. The topics include measures of central tendency, measures of variability, probability rules, discrete random variables, continuous random variables, sampling distributions, confidence interval estimation, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, etc. Statistics that we will learn in this course can be applied to social research and marketing research (e.g., analysis of public data, analysis of questionnaire survey data, etc.), operations management (e.g., inventory management, quality control, queuing models, etc.), financial management (e.g., modern portfolio theory, cost of capital, etc.), strategic management (e.g., sensitivity analysis, risk management, etc.), and so on. Evaluation of the course: The content of this course was useful and quizzes on almost every session forced me to learn the formulas. Professor Shimada had a relaxed atmosphere but his language was sometimes hard to understand. Because he didn’t encourage students to participate in class discussions, the lectures were also sometimes quite boring and included only his monologue. In general though the concepts in this course are useful in business life and worth learning.

Doing Business in Japan (GLP506_G14G) (intensive course) Professor Ito/Iwasawa/Onaka/Nagasawa Grading: 50% final individual presentation 50% class discussions and contribution Content of the course: This class runs very unique approach. It tries to offer various concerns and point of views on the current Japanese business situation. This course includes quest lectures by various visiting professors and business professionals who give their own insights how the Japanese business life is today and how can we succeed on this market. The contents will cover risk production, people, risk, energy, economics, leadership, innovation, etc. The course also includes a Toyota factory visit.

7 Evaluation of the course: Doing Business in Japan was one the most interesting courses during my exchange mostly because it gave interesting insights about the Japanese market. Quest lecturers were mostly Japanese professors, consultants and business leaders and their stories were really interesting to listen. Even though it was an intensive course, it didn’t require too much work because it relied heavily on class discussions. Highlight of this course was professor Iwasawa’s lecture about the Japanese economy and the Toyota visit. However the Toyota visit was just a normal factory tour that was accessible for everyone. I expected to meet managers and directors so in that sense it was a small disappointment. Either way the factory was impressive.

Term 2. Operations Management (GLP202_G14G) Professor Tomoaki Shimada Grading: 10% class attendance and contribution

20% quizzes in four sessions 30% group project 40% final exam Content of the course: The primary objective of the course is to learn how to manage process flows between inputs and outputs using a quantitative approach. Students will study fundamental theory and practice of operations management in service industries as well as manufacturing sectors. The topics include process management, quality management, supply chain management, inventory management, environmental management, etc. Thus, the course is not only for an operations manager but also for a general manager who needs to revamp a company's business processes to establish competitive advantage. Evaluation of the course: The course included almost the same concepts as in Statistical Analysis but was applied on operations management examples. It also had more ‘theory’ parts rather than just mathematical problems. Even though the teacher mentioned that his class would include more class discussions, it still followed the same formula as the Statistical Analysis. We also did a business case report and visited Asahi Breweries with out team. In general, the course was helpful for my future career because it introduced the central concepts of operations management.

Competing in Emerging Markets (GLP204_G14G)

8 Professor Nigel Denscombe Grading: 20% class participation (quantity) and the quality of comments/questions 20% quality of group work/in-class presentations 30% case report written assignment 30% final exam written report Content of the course: Competing in Emerging Markets will offer a comprehensive look at emerging markets as they integrate with the global economy and increasingly become the global mainstream. Using case studies and other materials, participants will discuss and analyze emerging markets from multiple perspectives – from local competitors struggling to overcome resource and knowledge constraints to build global-oriented businesses, to emerging market champions, to multinationals from developed countries trying to tap into emerging markets for new growth. Evaluation of the course: I thought this course was really useful for me because understanding emerging markets today is crucial if you want to drive a successful business in the future. The case studies were interesting and presented very different approaches on how decisions are made in different markets. It also encouraged us to think multi- dimensionally of the problem. Nigel was enjoyable again but sometimes he repeated the same things as in the previous course. His very personal style of teaching still plays in my head.

The Energy Business and Geopolitics (GLP206_G14G) Professor Tatsuo Masuda Grading: 30% class attendance and contribution 20% workshops 10% insight report 40% final test Content of the course: This course will give an overview of global energy business and analyze the actual functioning of the international energy market, oil in particular. Efforts will be made to understand the interplay between commercial factors and geopolitical factors. Although the Impact of geopolitical factors is most obvious in the oil market, they affect almost entire business environment.

9 Evaluation of the course: First of all, professor Masuda is a true guru in his field. No matter what question you ask from him related to energy business or geopolitics, he has the answer. For a Japanese professor he also speaks good English. I enjoyed his lectures because he presented very useful material and information about how energy markets actually work. Since I’m very interested about energy business his lecture gave plenty of take- aways for me. Only negative thing in his class was the last workshop assignments, which were quite unclearly presented and we didn’t quite know what he was expecting from us. His cold calling style was also a bit weird since the person who got the call had to talk 5 minutes about the case. In general, it was a very good and interesting class.

Consumer Behavior and Digital Marketing (GLP203_G14G) (intensive course) Professor Stefan Lippert Grading: 1/3 of total grade – individual class participation

1/3 of total grade – marketing plan made in teams 1/3 of total grade – final exam Content of the course: This course focuses on analyzing and connecting with consumer markets. It will explore drivers of consumer buying decisions, tools and methods of consumer behavior analysis, the management of brand equity, the role and techniques of marketing communications, and the new rules of marketing and PR in the digital era. The perspective taken is that of a marketing executive of a consumer goods company. It will look at both B2B and direct sales channels. Class discussions will be based on case analyses, lectures, and readings. Evaluation of the course: The teaching was the same good quality as in Lippert’s previous class. However, this time we only had three lecture days and less time to do study for the exam and do the marketing plan. Fortunately we didn’t have to do as much work as for the previous class. The focus of this class was on digital marketing and consumer behavior, and I learned several useful things about those subjects. Really good class if you are interested of digital marketing.

10 3. Living in Nagoya and other information

General information Nagoya (名古屋市 Nagoya-shi) is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. It is the third-largest incorporated city and the fourth most populous urban area in Japan. Located on the Pacific coast on central Honshu, it is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Kitakyushu. It is also the center of Japan's third largest metropolitan region, known as the Chūkyō Metropolitan Area. As of 2000, Chūkyō Metropolitan Area has 8.74 million people, of which 2.27 million live in the city of Nagoya. Nagoya is a relatively conservative Japanese city and you can see it how the people dress and behave. Because there are not that many tourists in Nagoya the level of English is almost zero. In Japan in general, it is very frustrating first when you don’t understand anything and nobody understands you. The first time I was in a supermarket, I spend almost one hour to find ingredients I needed because the labeling is also in Japanese. Luckily the menus in restaurants have pictures. A good hint would be to learn Katakana alphabet because Japanese use a lot of loan words from English. Nagoya has a humid subtropical climate with hot summers and cool winters. The summer is noticeably wetter than the winter, although appreciable precipitation falls throughout the year. When I went there in the end of March I had to wear a hat during the nights but around May the weather gets extremely hot and humid. Because Nagoya is surrounded by mountains and ocean the air doesn’t move too much in the city of concrete jungle and the days can get unbearably hot.

11 Housing

Higashiyama Global Center As mentioned before, the university organizes housing automatically, which is convenient. I lived in Higashiyama Global Center that is 15 min metro ride away from the Fushimi campus. The place is almost a hotel. It includes fairly good breakfast five times a week, cleaning service once a week, clean sheets twice a month and electrical bikes. The whole premise is like a space ship camouflaged in a traditional-like Japanese style architecture. First months I really enjoyed living in there but after a while I would have preferred to move closer to the city. It’s nice to stay in hotel but only for short time. I’m also quite sensitive to dust, thus the once-a-week cleaning was not enough for me.

Living costs and other activities Living in Nagoya and Japan was surprisingly cheap. Public transportation was pretty much the same as I pay in Finland but all other things were much cheaper. However, this was greatly affected by the weak yen while I was in Japan. Travelling outside Nagoya can be fairly expensive if you take the Shinkansen bullet train. Shinkansen network is impressive due to its frequent departures, convenience and speed. It takes around 35 min to Kyoto, less than one hour to Osaka, few hours to Hiroshima and 100 minutes to Tokyo. Trains leave almost every five minutes to both directions. A student pays around 9000 yen to Tokyo and 4500 yen to Kyoto, but one should keep in mind that it goes almost 300 km/h and is much more comfortable than airplanes and three times faster than Finnish trains. For instance it’s the same distance from Nagoya to Kyoto as it’s from Helsinki to Turku but the trip takes just 35 min and costs around 30 €. If you want to travel budget you can take a buss (Willer Express) that can be very cheap if you book it in advance. The busses are really comfortable and usually include 135° leaning seats but are really slow. From Nagoya to Tokyo it takes around 6 hours with Willer Express. You can also get cheap flights

12 to other parts of Asia because several low-cost carriers fly from Nagoya international airport. However, because Japan is quite far away from the rest of the Asia, the flights are not as cheap as in Europe. In a nutshell however, Nagoya is a great place to travel to other parts of Japan and the rest of Asia.

Because restaurants and bars were quite cheap, it was favorable to go out eating and drinking with the other students. Since all of the sports and leisure activity clubs of the university were located at the Nisshin campus that was far away from the city, all my activities included mostly hanging out with the other students in the city. The school was also a lot of work so there was not too much free time available. Some students started to teach English to the locals and got some money from it but I didn’t have time for it. Overall, Nagoya had really good dining and nightlife, which surprised me positively. The school also arranged trips to Toyota factory, Asahi brewery, and to Takayama and Shiragawa (UNESCO world heritage village). They also arranged a tea ceremony and a calligraphy lesson where you could make your own Kanjis.

Here are some the prices of common products Eating: Coin restaurants: 500-800 yen Big Mac meal: 700 yen Bento box: 500 yen Conveyer belt sushi: 1200 yen Izakaya all you can eat for 2-3 hours: 3000 yen Drinking: Asahi Super Dry: 200 yen Beer in a bar: 500 yen Izakaya all you can drink for 2 to 3 hours: 1000-2000 yen Commuting: Metro card (Higashiyama-Nagoya Station): 5500 yen Rent: 55,000 yen/month (including the scholarship)

13 4. Final Comments

Would I recommend NUCB to new students? I have to admit I have quite mixed feelings about NUCB. In general I enjoyed the lectures and they were good quality but the administration of the school left me with a negative touch. First, I didn’t know that if my GPA wasn’t high enough after the first term I would have to pay back the whole scholarship. Second, we received the grades two weeks after the second term ended and the office only let us know one week before the school ended if we had to pay back the scholarship or not. Third, the grading was really unclear and caused a lot of confusion among new students. In NUCB info booklet they presented a normal grading scale with points and criteria to get a specific grade. Then they also mentioned that the grading would be based on a curve where a certain percentage of students fail the course, certain percentage gets A’s and so on. On top of that some professors told us that they won’t use the curve system but we heard that the office would ‘correct’ the grades if the curve was not used by the professor. In my mind this systems is bad for few reasons: as an exchange student I didn't have any clue about the level of the courses, which put me in disadvantaged position compared to the double degree or full degree students if the curve grading was applied. The curve system also made students to become competitors who fought for their scholarship. Thus, I didn’t enjoy studying in such atmosphere that was pressing and confusing even though the lectures were nice. I also got the impression from many of the professors that everything had to go trough the office and the office decided everything. So would I recommend NUCB or not? I wouldn’t personally go there again because I didn’t like the way how the office dictated many parts of the school. They should really try to be clearer and transparent for the students in order to create a better platform for grading. Sometimes I felt that we were in kindergarten with very strict rules and that is not how I like to learn. Another negative point about NUCB was its homogenous nationality mix of exchange and international students that were mostly French or French speaking. I seriously felt that I should’ve learned to speak French instead of Japanese. On individual level there is nothing wrong with French people but when over 50% of all students are French they tend to communicate in French and sometimes it might be frustrating to talk with them because they automatically switch to French. Sometimes I felt like I was in France because I heard only French in my residence and at school.

Other experiences All in all, as an experience my exchange was a very valuable time for me. Japanese culture is so much different from any other culture and you learn a lot about yourself and the surrounding world. I wouldn’t necessarily want to move to Japan again, but I certainly think that it was a good place for exchange. I’ve lived in several countries during my student years and Japan is probably the most unique one. The people in Japan are somehow so differently wired to this world and that’s what makes is fascinating as well as frustrating sometimes. If you have any questions, please contact me via your international coordinator.

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