In the evening of 10th, I departed Narita for Abu Dhabi on a direct flight by Etihad. The objective of trip is to attend the Global Agenda Council organized by the World Economic Forum. The conference, for your information, was held in Dubai annually for the past three years. I saw many of my Japanese friends also boarded on this flight to Abu Dhabi for this meeting.
After arriving at Abu Dhabi early in the morning I checked in to the YAS Hotel, the venue, which is also the scheduled venue for the Formula One Car Race (Ref.1, 2) in November. The Car Race was being held at Suzuka, Japan from October 7 to 9, too. Anyway, I was amazed to see the strikingly gorgeous facilities of this Hotel.
I attended the full two days of the conference at the building standing next to the Hotel. I understand that this place is going to be used for the Formula 1 also. As for the meeting, I was in the session of the “Japan Council” for the whole day as the sub-Chair. Thanks to the nice support of Mr. Takashi Mitachi of the Boston Consulting Group and many others, we managed to facilitate good discussions. The problem was that there was not much information available from Japan after the “3.11” Disaster (not to mention that six Prime ministers changed within these five years….) thus offering issues for discussion was not easy, and we had to think hard in order to share views with each other. However, I am thankful that we had nice constructive discussions with many people.
The reception was at the Royal Tower of the Race Track. It had a nice view over the straight course of the car race. Many political leaders including the Prime Minster of UAE were present, too.
After attending the full schedule of the 2nd day, I took a car to Dubai, and boarded on a midnight flight to Washington DC.
It was a very full, busy two days.