Seoul Ranks 9th in Centres of Commerce Index

I've just got back from holiday and I've read that MasterCard have rated Seoul 9th in their index of Worldwide Centres of Commerce published earlier this month.

London, New York and Tokyo take the top three slots, Singapore Chicago and Hong Kong follow them and Seoul rates just behind Frankfurt and Paris. The survey, prepared by a panel of experts, rates 75 cities on seven categories: Legal and political framework, Economic stability, Ease of doing business, Financial flow, Business centre, Knowledge creation and information flow, Livability.

Surprisingly Seoul ranks 4th in the Financial flow category, ahead of Tokyo, based on the number of transactions in Banking, Insurance, Financial services, Equity, Derivatives and Commodities. That could be related to the fact that Seoul is the major city in South Korea, while in Japan, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo and Fukuoka have stock exchanges which were counted separately from Tokyo.

One thing they do not seem to have taken into account are the laws relating to the location of computers for processing banking transactions. These must be physically located in South Korea, which for a multinational bank can be a bit of a hindrance. Switzerland used to have similar laws, but these were relaxed about five years ago. It's another reason Seoul will continue to rank behind the main three centres in Asia and struggle to stay ahead of the burgeoning cities of China and India.

Nakashibetsu Airport

Returned the hire car, back to Tokyo,Haneda airport.

Kushiro National Park

Wetland area.

Mount Iouzan

Steaming sulphurous hillside.

Blakiston's Fish Owl

OK. So this is a photo on the wall, but this magnificent bird's favourite fishing perch is right outside the hotel dining room and it is completely unfazed by the excited guests eager to watch it deftly snatch it's prey from the river.

Yuyado Daiichi Spa Resort

Very high standard hotel.

Onsen

Great room.

Diving with Seki Katsunori

We went under the waves with Seki-san. His photographs are in this months National Geographic.

Evening meal

Food was excellent at the Chieftans Cabin.

Kamuiwakka Falls

Seagull

Aurora

Onto the sea of Ohktosk for a trip along the Shiretoko Peninsula.

Shiretoko Boat Trip

Walked yesterday. Boat today.

Utoro Onsen

Chieftans Cabin

Shirotoko Shari

leave train. Get car

Kushiro

Church beside Kushiro station.

Hakodate

First stop. Hotel Smile. Interesting port city. Good photography museum.

Tokyo

Shinkansen

Blog Posts from my Mobile Phone

The post below, with the small map of the island of Hokkaido, was sent direct from my phone. It's an example of the posts coming up in the next two weeks. Here's a better map.

We leave on Saturday, heading for Shiretoko National Park on the North Eastern coast of the large island in the north of Japan. The plan is to take the train there and then fly back to Tokyo. I'll be taking mini photos as we go and emailing them from the phone to the blog so you can see where we go on our trip.

Hokkaido Holiday

We are off