Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

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MH: How are you spending your time now that you're semi-retired I think?

GN: Well, after twenty-four years with the Port of Portland, learning a few things about international trade and international investment, in 1995, I decided it's time to slow down or scale down. But really what I wanted to do was always wanted to have my own business, and I think it's maybe some gnawing thread from my father who always wanted to run his own business. And I kind of tried to objectively look at my strengths and what I can contribute, and I noted that there's a number of American companies that are uncomfortable or not too familiar with doing business in the Far East. And I also noted that there are Japanese companies that if you're in Osaka or you're in Kobe or you're in Fukuoka, you're not going to be able to easily analyze things in America. So I put together my own company, tiny little company, one employee, and I incorporate, and I decided to give it a very different creative name called George Nakata International Limited, and I gave my notice, and the port was so nice. At the World Trade Center, they held a party, and they invited kind of the international community there and flowery speeches that I didn't deserve. And the executive director gets up and he says, "We're going to miss you, George, and we're going to be your first client." So on that day, as I left, I had my first client, and some of the other attendees, so lucky I am that the next week, I had three other clients, Japanese customers, that wanted to have me as their adviser if you will. And my business is such that it's not a project by project, but it's being a retainer and being available to them. So I signed three-year, two-year, one-year contract with companies. In a year, I had five customers, and then the second year, I had seven customers which that's all I wanted. I know some consultants that are very proud that they have fifteen or twenty clients. I cannot do justice or serve or do a good job for that many. I only wanted six or seven.

So some of them are located in Japan and some of them here. I was on contract with the Oregon Department of Agriculture for example. I was on contract with Portland Development Commission which is the engine for the City of Portland that needed international advice. Biggs Food Company in Japan that wanted to make new products, but they could not understand trends of America, food. So if the movement is toward convenience food or for healthy food or for organic food or for low carb food or a myriad of new trends, not fads but strong movement in the food industry, they wanted a voice here which they wanted me to serve. And the Japanese culture as mentioned earlier are so competitive with each other that I would attend food conferences for them because they didn't want their name on the registration list. So sometimes I'd go to Chicago to McCormick Pier to the food marketing, the biggest show in America, all the big food companies are there, write a full report back to Tokyo. In reverse, I would go to Japan and go close to Chiba to a place called Makuhari Messe which is like a five Portland Convention Centers put together, huge place. They have the biggest Asian food show in Asia, just the biggest. Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, they are all represented, and I went there four or five times in the last few years to see what's happening in Japan. Oh, carrot juice is really getting popular this year. Konnyaku is sort of the health food of the year, and you know, not to get specific but you learn trends. And would bagels which is really originated in New York, would bagels really sell in Japan? Big question for Japanese companies. Seems kind of just interesting to us perhaps but commercially, some of those are very critical corporate decisions to be made. And so to have additional market intelligence to kind of feed them what's going on, what are trends and what are fade away fads that will be gone tomorrow, what might work, what might not work, all of those kind of things with sending monthly reports to the clients and would make at least one or two trips to Japan and meet with these clients. And so I have to admit, it gave me more freedom with my own time. I could make the trips on my calendar, far much more time to spend with Keiko and the children and now the grandchildren. So to have my own business, to have and be blessed with that many clients right off the bat, doing what I like to do, being involved in an industry that I really have a passion for. Yes, I have scaled it down and I'm kind of slowing down, but even today, I have several clients. One client has me on a fairly accelerated six-month project that's taking quite a bit of my time, so it's been very, very interesting. Yes, I get my senior discount at the restaurants. But at the same time, I can kind of work on my own timeframe. Don't have to have a lot of meetings. I have my meeting in the morning when I wake up and brush my teeth and look in the mirror and I say, "What should I do today?" and so there are certainly advantages to having a small company. Keiko has helped me once in a life when I get tired, and she'll type up my monthly reports or a few other things, but it's been kind of a one man corporation, but it's been an awful lot of fun. So the beauty of doing business in the Far East is with the advent of high tech e-mail. When Japan is either sixteen or seventeen hours ahead of us depending on summertime or not, in the end of the day in Portland, Oregon, I send off an e-mail. And when I get up in the morning, still in my pajamas, I go into my tiny little office, turn on my computer, and there is the e-mail reply, and so quite a bit of my advisory work if you will, is done through the modern computer age of e-mail, so that's working out great.

So having a lot of fun these days, not putting in the forty-hour work, but working a few hours a week, sometimes more than others, enjoying it, enjoying the grandkids, doing things with them. We have a fractional ownership down in Depoe Bay and with Seaside, so we spend a few weeks a year down there, sometime with friends and sometimes with family. Went up recently with Carla's family and last week into Victoria and Vancouver. So yes, again, hoping that the health keeps up for both of us. Very, very, enjoyable days puttering around in our garden in our yard. We don't have a blade of grass. If it's grass, it's kind of weed. We only have stone and shrubs. And my father, of course, had bonsai plants all over. And in our younger days, little Darren, our son, used to run around with Grandpa, Jiichan, in our backyard, and I picked up some of that. And so Keiko and I designed our whole landscape and didn't have a plan, but we thought, well, a dry stream here will look good and a big boulder will look here and a Japanese maple will look good here and looked at a few books and roamed around the Japanese garden and created our own little place. But we like to putter around and landscape and work with the garden once in a while, and it's kind of a good diversion from the day to day consulting work, advisory work of the more heavy international trade work. So we do that. And another thing that I've kind of gone back to my childhood hobby of watercoloring, so I've been painting things recently, painted a few scenes. And Keiko and I recently have been taking up the, another new hobby of making notecards which doesn't seem like the most exciting thing to come down the road, but when we think of combining origami, Asian design, what's called iris folding, intricate cuttings, rubber stamping, we have been improving in our technique in making cards. We don't do it commercially really. Sure, we've entered a craft show or two and sold a few cards, but we've sent some to friends. We've given them to friends and family. It's become kind of a fun thing for us to do. And so in the basement of our home, we have a little studio set up with our scissors, our paper cutters, our tapes, our origami, some of the patterns that we have designed. And so every once in a while, Keiko and I go down to our little studio and we make twenty, thirty cards. And so making of notecards has become also kind of a habit or a hobby, and we've enjoyed it. So as we get to be seniors, we're spending time in more pleasurable activities.