This term I’m taking 2 classes. One of the classes is Marketing Strategy. This class is based around a auto industry simulation. The class is split into 5 teams and we compete against each other for market share and firm value. This class is known to be extremely front loaded and difficult. Which means that our group spent nearly 20+ hrs the first week working on making the decisions for the firm. Our decisions are then submitted on Tuesday night and results come in Wednesday morning, which is today. Yesterday night when we met with the professor he was pretty much saying that we were headed in the wrong direction with the firm. We took 20+ hrs to head the wrong way. We didn’t have the same amount of time to figure which exact way we needed to head a but we know we made the wrong choices. So, in a hail mary move we changed all our decisions last minute in hopes that we will do well. The results showed that we did the best out of all the firms, or should I said the least worst.



Here are the results. My group is firm E.


Anyways, I’m glad the first week was over. Learned a lot on what we did wrong, so now we know what to do to get it right. I hope that we don’t have to meet as often at 20+ hrs every week. School will get very tiring very fast if that doesn’t change.
Tomorrow will be my mom’s birthday. So today we got her a cake from RJ. If I remember correctly it was a raspberry mousse with strawberries on top. Hope she enjoyed it. We sang her happy birthday in chinese and english. We asked Hiroko to sing in Japanese, but its the same as the english one except with an accent. So intead of “happy birthday to you” it’ll be more like “haape baathday tu yu” ..Oh well. Well got to go to bed. My baby is very tired today and she has got to get some sleep.


Hiroko and her scion at the big rock in Landers, CA

There is a reason why I have not posting lately. It is not because I got lazy. I have vowed not be be lazy about blogging. What attributed to this insanely long period of silence is school and work. The combination of the two has kept me from doing things I like. Things such as climbing, recreational reading, and just veggyin’ out watching TV have been on hold for the last two months. My climbing muscles must have atrophied. Since there is so much to cover I’ll hit them in short bullet point style.

- Hiroko got me awesome new watch DEFACTO
- December 25th, left for Japan and spent 2 weeks there
- Had awesome time with family in Japan.
- Didn’t really do to much shopping.. wait we did in fukubukuros (new year shopping)
- Came back to us .. went to work
- School is crazy busy. books to read papers to write. No time no time.
- Drove to SLC for Winter OR show
- Went camping in J-tree with cousin and Ernest and friends to celebrate b-days and anniversary.
- I’m now 25
- Hiroko and I are now married 2 years
- Hiroko is now 28


Grandpa Otsuka, Grandma Otsuka, Hiroko and I having tea down stairs.


In a park in Hiro.














Mai use to live there!