PSU Magazine Summer 1989

A Business Success: Made in Japan A foreign business exchange gave Portland State student Randal Irwin a new kind of cultural education. PSU 10 In America the exchange of business cards is as simple an act as a hand– shake. But as the players change the handshake becomes a calculated bow and the card exchange a ritual. Learning Japanese customs and culture is something American business leaders are doing in growing numbers as the economies of our two cultures become more intertwined. Student and academic exchanges have made inroads into this culture sharing, but an unprecedented program begun last year at Portland State is putting PSU students to work in Japanese companies. Randal Irwin, 27, spent six months in Japan working for Akiyama Aiseikan Co. , a pharmaceutical distributing com– pany, and Hokkaido Institute of Technology, a technology management consulting firm. The exchange was sponsored by rhe Cooperative F.ducation Program (CEP) at PSU and initially organized by Kohji Akiyama , senior managing director for Akiyama Aiseikan Co. and a member of the International Business Exchange Committee in Japan , and Gil Latz, in– terim director of the International Trade Institute in Portland. Irwin, a foreign languages major and fourth-year Japanese student at PSU, found life and business in Japan distinctly different, but he was also a novelty for the companies and co-workers who showed him the ropes. The temple King Kinkakuji in Kyoto, Japan.