Sumitomo Heavy Industries and Matsuyama, Japan

May 12, 2008 – Sumitomo Heavy Industries and May 13, 2008 – Matsuyama, Japan

On Monday, we made our visit to Sumitomo Heavy Industries (SHI) in Saijo, Japan. Their fabrication shop was very impressive. The majority of their business is fabrication of Coke Drums for United States Refineries. They had a 31 foot drum in one of the fabrication bays as we toured the factory.

They have a furnace that could stress relieve a city bus!! Our reactor went into this furnace in two halves and was then welded together! Our reactor is now in their dry dock almost ready to be loaded on a barge for shipment to Kobe, Japan.

We went inside our reactor to inspect the tray rings and the nozzles. The reactor is huge by our standards, but not so large by SHI standards. Our reactor has a wall thickness of over 4 inches and it weighs almost 450 tons.

Thomas, JC, and I went through the reactor and everything looked very good. SHI does quality work and it showed. After our inspection, they had some touch up painting to do on the outside of the reactor and then they were going to install the lifting head on to the top head!

Next, we returned to the SHI offices and began going through the inspection documentation. Thomas found a few minor issues, but no deal breakers. S&B owes SHI a couple of documents by the end of this week and then everything will be complete.

We had planned to be at SHI for 2 days, but only Monday was necessary. We will move to Matsuyama on Tuesday and do some site seeing around the city. We will then fly out of Matsuyama to Kansai Airport in Osaka and then back to the United States on Wednesday! This will be on huge day of traveling. I believe that it will be over 6,000 total miles.

We finished with SHI at about 5pm and then they took us to a huge suspension bridge that SHI fabricated some years ago. Obviously, Japan is made up of a bunch of islands. So, this bridge connects several islands together. It can be used by cars, pedestrians, and bikers. This bridge was unbelievable and it provided some really scenic views of Imabari. JC decided to see exactly what this statue was looking at.

For dinner, the SHI Sales Representatives took us to a traditional sashimi restaurant. Simply put, this is raw fish without rice. The fish was so fresh that the whole fish (head and all) was brought in on a platter. It is kind of weird eating something that is looking back at you!

They kept bringing us different kinds of fish until we could not eat any more fish. I don’t think any of us will be going to Red Lobster after our return to Billings, MT. We recommend not eating the octopus. It is tough and chewy, but they put it into every thing.

We got up early Tuesday morning and took a train to Matsuyama. We dropped our bags at the hotel and headed out to explore Matsuyama Castle in a rain storm. We climbed all the way to the top of this castle, and just like the Imabari Castle, it was filled with historic artifacts that were hundreds of years old.

The views of Matsuyama were impressive. We walked through the castle and then we took a cable car down the side of the mountain. It was a bit easier than walking up the mountain!

We finished the day by doing some shopping and walking around Matsuyama. We end our trip tomorrow and fly back to the United States.

May 11, 2008 - Imabari, Japan

We spent today site seeing around the city of Imabari. It was a beautiful day and we again did a lot of walking around. We walked through another open air mall. Everything was extremely expensive.

Our next stop was the Imabari Castle. This was about a 500 year old castle that was built to house an army and the governor of the area. Today it is a museum that has a ton of ancient artifacts.

We spent a couple of hours touring through this castle. The had a bunch of suits of armor that were worn by the ancient warriors that protected the governor.

These were some really small people. Based on the suits it appears that these people were about 5 feet tall. This is probably being generous.

The castle also had a bunch of artifacts from the area that included a fossils, shells, preserved fish, and stuffed animals. JC was quick to point out this giant clam.

In the afternoon, we set out to the ocean. We arrived at the ocean pier and found dozens of people fishing for really tiny bait fish. We are not sure if they were going to use them as bait later or if they were going to eat them later.

The Japanese people will pretty much eat anything that comes out of the ocean! We have found that out at some of the various meals that we have had. Just about everything has some type of seafood in it! Thomas even found a bottled water that tastes like fish!!

Here is an example of what you can purchase a local grocery store. This was a packaged whole ugly fish.

After we watched the locals fish for a while, we headed out to the end of the pier and a small light house. The light house was really small and was probably pretty old, but it did give us some good views of the city!

Here is a shot of JC and I at the light house and another shot of a huge bridge.

I have a lot more pictures of the city of Imabari. I will post these later.

Tomorrow we head to Sumitomo Heavy Industries to start the inspection of our reactor. This will be a great learning experience for all!

May 9 (Nara) and May 10 (Imabari)

We had a long day at WFT inspecting the reactor internals. The SGS engineers completed their inspection at about 6pm and by about 8pm almost all of their issues were fixed. There are still a few minor issues with the internals that need to be fixed, but the inspection went great.

Again, when I get the SGS photos, I will publish them. After the inspection, we gathered at the WFT shop for a final review of the issues and to meet with Mr. Yoshimura (the owner of WFT). He personally ensured that all of the action items were taken care of by the end of the day.

Mr. Yoshimura kept telling us to converse with his employees in English to help them learn! He is having them take English composition classes. It is a pretty helpless feeling trying to communicate with someone who does not know much English, but WFT employees did a great job getting their messages to us!

We all enjoyed our stay at the WFT shop. After the inspection we went to a traditional Japanese Sushi Bar. It did not have any chairs. We sat on pillows on the floor. We all figured out pretty quickly how not flexible we are.

This was my first experience with sushi as it was for JC and Thomas. Carl was an expert and tried everything along with JC. Thomas and I probably ate about half of the sushi. I will just say that I am glad that I tried it, and that it will probably not be my first choice in restaurants in the future. The raw fish finshed our meetings with WFT.

On Saturday morning, we awoke to some pretty good rain showers in Nara. We got up and decided to attempt to do a little shopping close to the hotel before we headed across Japan to the Sumitomo shop.

Everyone walking around the city uses umbrellas and we decided that we should use them to help us blend in with the locals.

Nara has a lot of neat shops in kind of an indoor/outdoor mall. We spent a couple of hours checking out the shops.

We each bought a few things. JC secured a nice gift for Brady. We are still looking for your Panasonic bulb (don't get your hopes up)!

I hope you enjoy these smokes, they have about 3 times the nicotine as normal American ones!

After shopping, we packed up our stuff and headed off to the train station to get a train to our next stop, Imabari. This town is about 4 hours south west of Nara and it is very close to the Sumitomo Heavy Industries fabrication shop.

Even getting tickets for the right trains was a challenge as we don't speak or read Japanese. Carl had some angst about which was the right train for us. The train maps and schedules are all in Japanese.

We eventually boarded the right train and started on our train trip across part of Japan. We had to switch trains twice. The trains here run exactly on time and you do not have any time to waste finding the right train.

We hauled our bags through several train stations and by late afternoon we had arrived in the city of Imabari, Japan. Our hotel is very nice.

After our train travels, we went to the hotel restaurant to have dinner. Here is a shot of what part of the dinner looked like. It is kind of hard to see, but this was prawns, scallops, and a crab leg. The chef cooked everything right in front of us.

The meal was outstanding and we were glad that we decided to eat at the hotel tonight. After dinner we picked up a bunch of information on the sites in and around Imabari.

Sunday we plan to venture out into the city and take in the sites. It poured rain all day today (which is why I don't have any decent pictures from the train trip) and we hope the rain stops tomorrow. Hopefully I will post some good pictures tomorrow.

May 8, 2008 WFT Internals Mock Up

Today we were picked up at the hotel by a couple of Weld Fab Techno employees and we then headed over to their shop. Riding in a car in Japan takes a lot of getting used to. My advice is to just pay no attention at all to what the driver is doing. It will only get you worried. It is best to sit in the back seat and look at the scenery.

We arrived at WFT all in one piece. Before I go much further, I just want to let you know that we were not allowed to take pictures in the WFT shop. The Shell Global Solutions Engineers were allowed to take pictures, but I have not received copies of their pictures yet. When I get the pictures, I will post them.

The first day of the mock up went very well. We all learned a ton about our reactor internals. The Shell Engineers disassembled and measured everything. It was pretty amazing how small their tolerances were!!

We ate a traditional Japanese lunch (all with chop sticks) and a traditional Japanese dinner. We tried beef tongue and liver grilled in front of us at the table. Let me just say that sauce can not cover up texture. Let's just leave it at that.

We then went to a private Karaoke bar with the owner and several employees of WFT. I have a lot more pictures and movies from the singing at the bar. However, I think that I will wait until after the current appraisal cycle to post or release any of the movies.

I really like ConocoPhillips and releasing a video of my boss doing his best Elvis singing Jail House Rock might not help me continue on with ConocoPhillips.

I know that this is a short entry, but it is very late and we have to get up very early for another day in the WFT shop.

Garth, I hope you know how much you have hurt my feelings asking for JC to take over the blog. I agree that it would be more exciting, but again, I really like my job at ConocoPhillips!! And KHo, it is good to see you following along!

More to follow...

May 7, 2008 - Nara, Japan

First thing this morning, we boarded bus at Kansai Airport and headed to Nara. The trip was about an hour and a half long. Everything runs exactly ontime in Japan. If they say that the bus leaves at 8:40am, the bus is pulling away from the curb at 8:40am.

We got to see some impressive driving as the bus went through the toll gate arms. The arms rise about a second before the speeding bus goes through. JC was just kicking back and relaxing with a Japanese Soda.

The trip to Nara allowed us to see some of the country side. There are some impressive cranes on the ocean. The biggest one that we saw was about half way between Kansai Airport and Nara. Here it is!

Driving ranges are very popular. They are all enclosed in huge green nets. Many of them have greens out in the water for you to hit at. I was unable to get a picture of the driving ranges because we were driving by them just too quickly.

By popular request here are a couple of pictures of Thomas. He actually made it to Japan with the rest of us.

Once in Nara, we dropped our bags at the hotel and took off on a walking tour of the city. This city is really amazing! However, I don’t think that some of the pictures will do it justice, but I will insert them anyway (so you can print them in color).

The statues in these temples are just massive. It is tough to get a sense of scale on these statues, but check out JC looking at these statues. They are huge!!

We visited some different temples he in Nara. They were over 1,000 years old and the craftsmanship is just incredible. Carl did his best to act as tour guide as he has been here before. He took us all over the city and we managed to never get lost. This is a lot more impressive that it sounds because we could only read about 50% or less of the signs.

We did see some rickshaws, but we did not get to ride in them yet. Maybe this will happen later in the week. Here is a picture of the rickshaw. These drivers have to be in some serious shape to negotiate the hilly streets of Nara.

Parking is at a premium here in Nara (and all over Japan). You can see this in this photo. The cars and trucks here are just tiny. Even the garbage trucks and concrete trucks are just half the size of trucks in the United States! My car would be huge over here!

Nara has some awesome parks. We walked all though them throughout the day. Here is a picture of the parks.

Nara has thousands of tiny deer that just hang out in the parks and temple areas. Carl and JC got friendly with this “Big” Buck! People buy these small cookies and feed the deer all over the place. The deer just follow you and see if you have anything to give them to eat.

There were groups of school children touring all over Nara. They are very well behaved and many of them are wearing matching uniforms. For those of you that think that the “Fro” is not a Japanese hair style, I have proof that the “Fro” is alive and well here in Nara.

Here is a picture of a Japanese Fire Hydrant. It is very similar to ours, but as with most things over here it is a little bit smaller.

Here are some other pictures from today.


We head to WFT to check out the Reactor internals tomorrow. We will not be allowed to take pictures in their shop, so I will not be able to show you the internals.

Monday May 5 and Tuesday May 6, 2008

Today started at the hotel in San Francisco. As we were leaving our rooms, the hotel fire alarm went off. Both JC and I got pretty excited that we might get to use some of our fire fighting skills. However, I ran into the building engineer and he told me that it was nothing, just a false alarm. So much for a little excitement!

I hope that Brady checked COP stock today as it spiked up to $88 per share!

We rode the hotel shuttle to San Francisco International Airport. The shuttle drivers in California have two speeds…stop and NASCAR. We made it safely to the airport and proceeded to the check in terminals. We were far from world travelers. I could not figure out how to put my passport into the reader. JC had not signed his passport yet. It is a good thing that Thomas and Carl are with us to help guide use through!

After checking in, we proceeded to the United Lounge to wait to board our flight. The lounge was a nice place with a lot of different kinds of people. We relaxed for about an hour and a half until they called our flight for boarding.

As we entered the jet way we all had some angst about the upcoming long flight. We reached a point where the jet way forked. JC said, “Wow this thing has two entrances.” Needless to say, we were all pretty impressed with the Boeing 777. We entered the plane and got to see what First Class looks like!! All I can say is, “Unbelievable”! I can’t imagine what the First Class tickets must have cost for this flight.

We walked through First Class to our Business Class seats. Carl was in row 15 (last row in Business Class). The rest of us were in Row 11. Each seat adjusted about 400 different ways. It is a good thing that I have an engineering degree. Also, each seat is equipped with a personal video monitor. United had a nice selection of movies and we watched several.

JC is quickly rising through the ranks in Medal Of Honor 2 (Sony PSP Game). I tried the game and my head got blown off in about 34 seconds. As I am writing this blog, we are about 7 hours into an 11.5 hour flight. I have been using my iPOD to listen to an audio book and listen to a bunch of 80’s music. Yeah, I know I am old, but there is nothing like listening to Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins while flying over the Pacific Ocean (“Is this your idea of fun Mav?”). If you understand that reference than you are old too.

JC discovered Duty Free shopping and decided that $27 for a carton of Marlboros was too good to pass up! I am sure that we will all be doing some shopping in Osaka, Japan! Here is JC enjoying those half price smokes! I like to shop at the duty free shop!

The meals on the flight have been pretty good. I believe that all of us got the filet mignon for dinner.

Apparently, the Asian people are terrified of germs. Many of them were wearing surgical type masks on the plane and in the Kansai airport.

We arrived at Kansai International Airport after 11 hours and 29 minutes. The last 2 hours of the flight were pure pretty difficult to take!

Carl took us all out for a nice dinner on the 10th floor of our hotel. The restaurant overlooked the airport and required us to wear aprons while we ate. All of use attempted to use the chop sticks. Some were better than others! Again, the meal was fantastic.

Tomorrow we set out for the town of Nara. This is where the Weld Fab Techno shop is located. We will be taking a bus to this town. It should be a blast.

Stay tuned for the next entry in the blog.

Sunday May 4, 2008

Today was the first day of our trip to Japan. We flew from Billings, MT through Salt Lake City, UT and then on to San Francisco, CA. Both of the flights were fairly short and pretty uneventful.

Thomas arrived at the Billings Airport very early at about 9am. He want to ensure that his bags made it on to the plane for our 1pm flight. All of our bags made it all the way through to California.

We arrived at the hotel at about 7pm and then we headed down to Fisherman's Wharf. We ate at a place called Scoma's. It was fantastic. We sampled some of the local fish and had a great time.

After dinner we walked around the different piers in the area. San Francisco is an exciting place and we saw many interesting things.

We leave for Osaka, Japan tomorrow at 11:30am. More to come from Japan.