Dinner with Governor Domoto

Governor Domoto on the left and Merle Okawara on the right

Mizuka and I had dinner tonight with Domoto-san at her Chiba Governor's residence. Merle and Shin Okawara, Professor Hayashi and Mr. Satomi and his wife were there as well. Merle, I think, was the first women to take a company public in Japan. Shin brought Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken to Japan. He is actually famous for spinning friend chicken as a holiday treat with commercials of American's eating fried chicken for Christmas. That has turned into quite a tradition and now EVERYONE eats some kind of chicken on Christmas. John Nathan, who wrote the Sony book also did a movie about Shin and the whole Kentucky Fried Chicken thing...

Domoto-san talk about what a great time she was having. Being governor in Japan is much like being the president of a country. Chiba has 6 million people and she basically calls the shots. It's very different than when she was working in the central government. She also won as an independant so she has very little exposure to political pressure. I'm trying to work with her to get some sort of special project for Hydrogen in Chiba as well as trying to figure out how to work with the biomass energy folks.

We talked a alot about renewable energy, bio mass and food. The food was VERY good. It was all from Chiba. We agreed that we would all take a weekend trip into the countryside to see the rural area of Chiba and enjoy the flowers and the food sometime in Feb.

Merle, Domoto-san and Morita-san. Today's been quite a "strong-woman" day. ;-)