This week, we are flying to a different destination. We cross the East China Sea from Guangzhou to Fukuoka, Japan to meet Kenya Oba (bottom right).

I met Kenya in Taipei through the introduction of his wife, Polina Oba. Polina is the COO of GourmetPro, a platform for market entry experts to which I belong.

Over classic Taiwanese breakfast, Kenya walked me through his experience in the Japanese seafood industry and how it led him to Taiwan for a new business idea.

In the face of rigidity in Japanese society, I could sense a man with commitment and conviction to do things differently.

It is no surprise that he will be back in Taiwan again to meet my Taiwanese importer and discuss his next venture, which is combining Japanese seafood and sake.

Now a proud dad of a one-month-old baby, Kenya took a moment to sit down with me to go deeper into his lightbulb moment from the Japanese seafood industry, his candid views on Japanese society, and his new venture in Taiwan.

I have always been interested in international trading.

When I joined Japan’s largest seafood trading company in Japan with 70+ offices worldwide, I was beyond the moon.

However, the team I was assigned to was the “Seafood sales team for local fish markets”

It was an old-fashioned sales team. All meetings were done 100% face-to-face and 0% online. Order sheets were sent via fax and no English was used. Even the spoken Japanese with locals was in dialect which I couldn’t understand fully on my first day.

The job resembled working in a Japanese company in the 90s. But I kept going to fish markets and tried to meet as many people as possible.

Oct 16th 2022, a causal encounter changed the way I view my job and my life forever when I met a 30-year-old sales representative from a very small fish market.

I was quickly drawn to his energy and pure joy on the job. He always greeted others with a smile, and he talked with everyone who walked past him - even an old lady he met in a cafeteria.

When you look closely, this guy was satisfying a fundamental human need - wanting to be seen and heard. It was very rare to observe this practice in business in Japan.

He was a prime example of practising a virtuous cycle whereby human interactions and connections are prioritised over mere sales KPIs. By relieving others of stress and anxiety, he was able to create positive sales experiences with them.

To date, this is the core philosophy on which I conduct myself and my business.

In my opinion, Japan is becoming a weaker economy on the global scene.

During the bubble economy (about 40 years ago), Japan was a force of nature. The economy was growing, and being a businessman of a Japanese company was a great status symbol. Money was in abundance. That generation didn’t have to worry much about their financial state.

This achievement is certainly worthy of remembering. But it is not enough to continue doing the same things with the same efforts as 40 years ago.

As Japan languished in growth, other countries started to fill the gaps that Japan had left behind. The devaluation of the Japanese Yen due to the reluctance of our central bank to raise interest rates is a prime example of being left behind.

In Japan, there are two types of people. On one side, people who are stuck in the status quo and possess the same ideology from the previous generations. They keep working with little regard for change or improvement. On the other side, there are people who see Japan playing less of a role on the global stage if nothing changes. The second type of people have no choice but to take things into their own hands or go abroad to pursue different opportunities.

You could say that I belong to the second type, and that’s why I’m going to Taiwan for my next venture.

During my research, I found that there are many Japanese restaurants in Taiwan but they either offer premium sake with average food or vice versa. The premises are mostly bars, cheap izakayas or super expensive restaurants. I want to take a different approach and provide my customers with a premium Japanese sake experience with affordable, high-end Japanese seafood.

Another point I want to offer is to not focus only on sales but also on creating a higher quality experience. I’d like to combine my knowledge of Japanese sake, share the story behind this exquisite liquid, and recommend the best food to combine it with.

Part of my mission is to bring authentic premium brands to Taiwanese consumers to try and educate them about the sake world.

“Real premium Japanese sakes are not available outside Japan.“

One thing I noticed about Japanese sake outside Japan is that quite a few brands are labelled as “premium” or “number 1 in Japan”. I’ve never heard of them.

The Japanese sake market is quite saturated and the competition is severe. There are well-established premium brands that it’s quite tough to get a hold of and consumers are willing to pay a lot for them. Such a reputation is built over many years. Cracking this system is very tough for new players.

So going international through premiumisation is a good strategy as foreign consumers are predominantly not familiar with the local Japanese players and a lot of Japanese premium brands do not export.