After the meeting in Oslo, I flew to Belgium.

We went to Gent, Belgium's third largest city, to visit the team behind ONAK, a cutting-edge Belgian canoe brand. ONAK is a completely new foldable canoe with excellent storage capacity, inspired by the Japanese ``origami'' technique.

When I visited Brussels for the first time, the smell of chocolate and waffles overflowed from all over the city, and it was a torture for me, who doesn't like sweets, but the world heritage site Grand Place was truly majestic.

The Belgian beer also had a taste that made me think, ``Hmm, the real thing is pretty good after all!''

The most famous landmark in Brussels is the Manneken Pis statue. I thought about buying all of them as souvenirs for business partners and friends, but somehow I decided against it. It's heavy.

ONAK develops, assembles, and ships the materials themselves. Play with it, improve it, and sell it yourself. It was a wonderful brand with a lot of passion and a style that I felt somehow close to. We decided that it would be difficult to sell in Japan, but the most important thing is not just to work by email, but to visit each other properly and get to know each other.

When I was asked, ``What is the strength of your company?'' I answered, ``I came all the way to this place to have drinks with you.'' As proof that my intentions were conveyed, the location of the bar for our next meeting was also decided, so I visited the place. Well, it was a success.

hodaka