Wakimoto-san’s team invited me and a bunch of others to their teambuilding on Friday, which was really nice. It’s not my team really, but I work with their team a lot, so it was good that they invited me. It started at noon on Friday, but because I was giving a bunch of presentations on Friday, I had to meet them at the hotel (off-site team-building) for dinner and drinks. I got there a bit late, mostly because I thought it was closer to Tokyo than I expected.
It turns out it was on the land where Tokyo Disneyland is, so I got to see the resort a bit. It’s very nice, with lots of nice manicured lawns and gardens etc. This quite stands out in Japan, because in general, the Japanese don’t manicure their gardens. Most places just seem to grow wild.
The Toyko Disneyland is so big, they have their own monorail, which runs the circumference of the resort. The second stop was where the hotels were, amongst them the Sheraton, where our meeting was. There were a bunch of top hotels in that little cluster and they all had great views over Tokyo bay and the resort.
There were also hundreds of car parks! That’s very rare to see in Japan, but they had lots of room there! I suppose it’s all land-fill, so they could afford to put car parking in.
The monorail was quite cute – cutesy decorated and the handles from the rails looks like Mickey Mouse head (inclusive of trousers with the big buttons) and the windows in the train were shaped like Mickey’s head. Very interesting.
The teambuilding was very nice, and I went around to all the tables and poured beer for everybody and met lots of new people. The dinner itself wasn’t so great, considering it was from a very posh hotel. It was a western meal, so it might have been really nice for eastern palates, but for mine it was pretty mundane. Nevertheless, the beer was really good and we all had a good time.
After dinner we got ejected and had to go to the bar on the 12th floor, which had a great view over Tokyo bay. I drank a “blue hawaiian” which was unusual. I usually try to pick the more unusual drinks if the company is paying. Otherwise I would have stuck with beer.
I did get to hear a bit about the other teams and a bit about myself, which is really what teambuildings are about. Finding out about yourself and your colleagues in an informal setting. It was all good and I’m glad I went!