This is Japan Trade Advisor?
Kim Pedersen
I arrived in Japan as a seven-year-old. My parents moved us there, and Japan became the country I grew up in. From second grade through eighth grade, I attended Japanese school alongside Japanese children. I did not attend an international school. I sat in the same classrooms, followed the same rules, took the same exams, and navigated the same social hierarchies as my Japanese classmates. By the time I was a teenager, Japanese was not a language I had studied. It was a language I thought in.
That experience shaped everything that came after.
A career built inside Japan, not beside it
My professional life in Japan spans more than 30 years and more than a dozen industries. I have worked on both sides of the desk: as a representative of foreign companies trying to enter Japan, and as someone embedded inside Japanese business culture navigating on their behalf.
Some of the positions I have held:
Commercial Attaché, Royal Danish Embassy, Tokyo
Trade promotion and bilateral business development between Denmark and Japan. I worked directly with Japanese companies, government ministries, and trade organisations on behalf of Danish exporters.
Managing Director, Japan, Group Bigard Japan office
Group Bigard is one of the largest meat processors in Europe. I ran their Japanese office, responsible for sales, relationships, regulatory navigation, and market development across the Japanese food sector. This meant working daily with Japanese importers, distributors, supermarket buyers, and food service companies and industrial organisations.
Marketing Coordinator, L&F, Tokyo
Trade marketing and distribution development in the Japanese market for a Scandinavian food company.
Full time consultant, Starzen Europe
Strategic advisory work connecting European food producers with Japanese trade channels.
Independent Japan Trade Advisor (30 years)
Working with companies across food and beverage, seafood, building materials, furniture, interior, and industrial products, helping them enter, re-enter, or expand on the Japanese market.
I hold a diploma as Examined Exporter (Eksamineret Eksportør) from Den Danske Eksportskole, completed in 1998.
What 30 years actually means
I have visited 44 of Japan's 47 prefectures. I have sat in the offices of companies ranging from small regional wholesalers to major national retailers. I have negotiated in Japanese, apologized in Japanese when things went wrong and pushed back in Japanese when pushing back was necessary. I have handled complaints that nearly cost clients their entire Japanese business. I have turned complaints into stronger relationships than existed before.
I have also failed at things, made the wrong call, trusted the wrong partner, misjudged a situation. Those experiences are part of what I bring to clients. Japan does not forgive generic advice.
The network I have built over three decades covers food importers, seafood distributors, retail buyers, food service operators, meat traders, and industry contacts across most sectors I have worked in. When I say I can make an introduction in Japan, I mean a real introduction, to a real person, with context that matters.
The personal side of the credentials
In September 2005, I left Japan with one trolley bag and one briefcase. After a divorce, I rebuilt from nothing, again, as I have done several times in my life. Japan has always been the fixed point I return to, professionally and personally, even after I stopped living there.
I am currently based in Sweden, which is where I work from today. Japan remains the market I know better than any other and the one I am most effective helping clients navigate.
I am now working on a documentary memoir series called A Turbulent Life / I will never give up (still considering which to select), covering the real story of a life built in and around Japan, across five decades and five major rebuilding. It is not a business book. It is the actual story behind the credential on this page. If you want to understand who you would be working with, it is a more honest introduction than any biography.
Partner companies
Japan Trade Advisor works with a number of partner companies, primarily Japanese and Danish companies within the food industry. Our network covers but not limited to, meat, seafood, food processing, confectionery, frozen food, food ingredients, retail, and food service across the Japanese market.
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