Konichi-wa from Tokyo, Japan!

My name is Michiko Watanabe (渡辺 径子) and I would like to become a Head Ambassador for Polkadot in Japan.

I learned the first time about Bitcoin from Mt. Gox incident in Tokyo, although I was not affected myself luckily. I later traded some ETH and learned about Polkadot in 2021, when Astar did para-chain. This made me very interested, and I listen to a lot of speeches from the creator of Astar, Mr. Sota Watanabe. (We share the same last name but are not a family 😂 Watanabe is a very common name in Japan) I also like Mr. Gavin who I often watch on Youtube to study, and also met in person during his trip to Japan. Polkadot is a third generation blockchain, and has many use cases in the enterprise adoption.

My personal background is in enterprise software implementation for Salesforce in Japan. I worked at the company over 6 years for clients such as Toyota, SoftBank, Mizuho Securities and ANA Airlines. As a lead project manager I helped them implement new products that improve efficiency. However, after 6 years I became a little bit bored to work in traditional software, and would like to move full-time to Web3.

Since Polkadot is my favorite blockchain technology, I have also organized many events in the past such as an Introduction to Polkadot at the Salesforce Office Tokyo during 2021 which was attended by 50 people. I am also an organizer of the Polkadot meetup in Shibuya. We have met many times last year and this year to chat about Polkadot and explain the technology to people new to Web3. I think this meetup is very helpful and many people from Japan corporates attend who want to learn to improve their technology (for example supply chain trading, commerce, transportation).

Astar has made a change to “zkEVM Polygon”, so we’re not sure if this is good idea. I personally believe Polkadot is better 🙂 In Japan there are many corporation that want to build interesting Web3 project, but they are not so familiar with Polkadot. So I think I will do more meetup in Tokyo. Also I have background in enterprise software, so as Ambassador I can help Japan companies adopt Polkadot technology easily.

Thank you for consideration,
Michiko