At the luncheon meeting on Thursday, 16 May we could hear about the career, experiences and opinions of our "senior statesman" Mr. Timo Varhama, President of UPM-Kymmene Japan KK, who will retire in June after a long and distinguished career at Finnpap, Nippon Finnpap and UPM-Kymmene Japan.
Mr. Varhama started his presentations by showing a video of him growing up in Finland, were he got his first interest in Japan by reading the book "Samurai" in 1963, when was 15 years old. From then on his motto has been "Never give up". He then explained how he came to join the forest industry, first by working as a summer intern at a saw mill and after graduating from Helsinki School of Economics in 1972 joined Finnpap, the sales organization for Finnish paper mills. He has spent all of his business career with Finnpap and UPM, taking him all around the world with longer postings in Norway, Australia and 21 years in Japan.
The meeting, held at Grand Hyatt Tokyo, was attended by 30 members and guest.
For a report from the luncheon,
click here 
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The Foreign Chambers in Japan (FCIJ) has been conducting Business Confidence surveys online twice a year since 2002 among foreign-affiliated companies in Japan. This, the 23rd, survey was conducted between 10 and 19 April 2013, and received 293 valid responses from members of 18 foreign chambers of commerce and business organizations.
The survey was run and processed on behalf of all the chambers by the FCCJ.
As expected, the views on the Japanese economy showed a significant improvement from the previous survey (in October 2012). The economy for the next 6 months is expected to grow significantly - the index (on a scale from +2 to -2) was now +1.00 (compared to -0.01 in October), and looking 12 months ahead, the companies see still a slightly higher growth rate, index was +1.06, much higher than the +0.19 in the previous survey. Only once since the survey was started in 2002 the index has been higher, in October 2005 (+1.12).
The positive views on the economy did however not fully reflect in the reported and projected performance of the companies, most likely due to the weakening of the yen.
This time the survey included two alternating questions, the first regarding "Abenomics", the second related to the Free-Trade agreements.
For the full report,
click here!
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Left Stora Enso's Atsushi Yamazaki (right) presents the trophy to Sakari Romu (no.1), Hiroaki Sugawara (individual winner), Sakari Romu (best gross) and Hirokuni Yoshida (FCCJ Vice President).
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The 22th Stora Enso Cup, the golf challenge between the Swedish and Finnish Chambers was played on Friday, 19 April at Golf Club Narita Hitree in Chiba Prefecture. The event was played in quite nice spring weather, mostly cloudy and a bit chilly in the morning, but warm enough for a fine day of golf on a colorful and beautiful course.
41 players participated in the competition (26 from FCCJ, 15 from SCCJ), including three guests. Notable was that 27 (65%) of the players were Japanese.
The Finnish Chamber came on now top for the third time in a row. This FCCJ beat the Swedish Chamber by a fairly large margin, 3.7 strokes on average per player, 79.4 versus 83.1 as average for the best 80% in each team. The FCCJ now has four more wins than the SCCJ, 13 against 9.
The best golfer on the day was Hiroaki Sugawara (FCCJ) who was Best Net (68), Sakari Romu (FCCJ) was Best Gross (84).
For a full report from the event,
click here 
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The fourteenth FCCJ Annual General Assembly was held on Wednesday, 3 April at the Embassy of Finland attended by 42 chamber members and members of its Board of Trustees.
Auditor Kauko Laitinen reads the auditors' statement for the assembly.
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At the end of the assembly, Jukka Pajarinen, First Secretary at the Embassy of Finland gave a short introduction to Team Finland.
After the assembly, Ambassador Jari Gustafsson hosted a buffet dinner were he gave some impressions of his four years in Japan. During the dinner a lot of active discussions took place between the members.
For more about the general assembly and many images,
click here
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On Friday, 22 February we organized a special event that has been in the planning for almost two years,
a Tour of the Japanese Parliament (Diet) and a luncheon with our "own" Finnish-born Member of the House
of Councillors, Mr. Marutei Tsurunen.
The 36 participants could enjoy a nice o'bento lunch accompanied by an interesting presentation by Mr. Tsurunen,
followed by a lively Q&A session.
In his presentation Mr. Tsurunen spoke about the recent elections, the reasons behind the current high support for the LDP,
and the "Third force" in Japanese politics - all the new parties. Mr. Tsurunen also explained about the reasons for and his expectations of
the coming Upper House elections in July, where he will run for a third 6 year term.
After the luncheon the participants enjoyed an interesting one hour guided tour of the diet building.
For a report from the event,
click here
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The first event in the new year was a club evening at a new venue, the Aquavit Tokyo in Kita-Aoyama, a stylish venue on Aoyama dori.
This time the theme was Angry Birds and Antti Sonninen from the creator of the Angry Birds, Rovio Entertainment told about their plans for Japan, where they already have a number of licensing agreements in place.
The 32 members and guests attending enjoyed a relaxed networking evening Nordic style food and drinks. The two hour free drinks was appreciated and gave a good value for the participants fee
For more images from the event,
click here
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