Ippoippo

Looks like Tsukiji market has got to popular.

Must admit, we missed the auctions, because the trains from Matsudo (where we lived in Japan) we not running early enough for us to get there for them. We still got to see plenty of the aftermath though.

This week was all change, as I started work at my new job. All learning curve at the moment, getting to grips with the software that is being written (a very, very big system).
The good thing is, is that I get to come home a fair bit earlier in the evenings now (though, I still need to leave quite early in the morning).

So, hopefully that’s going to free up some spare time. Yuko is thinking of doing Yoga, and she’s deciding about whether to dive into classes straight away, or first buy a book, try it out at home, and then see if she wants to take it further.
Meanwhile, with my extra time, I’m looking at starting to do a bit of Kendo (in Cardiff as well).

The other part of me really wants to start doing some distance learning stuff, relating to Renewable Energy or Organic Farming. The former sounds interesting to me should I push to escape the IT industry. The thing is, I probably won’t have time to do both. Hmmm, Kendo vs Study.
Kendo sounds more fun, Study sounds more useful.
Perhaps I’ll start Kendo, see how it goes with the 6 week beginner class (I won’t have to commit to buying the kit until after that, if I decide to keep learning).

Talking of Japanese stuff

While it’s still rather crappy weather here in the UK, seems like it’s warming up in Japan.
In fact, it’ getting so hot, the girls are putting on their summer clothing… though this clothing seems to be rather shocking to young lads.

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Oh, and one last thing

GRAND SLAM!!!!!!!

Nuts…

So, you’ve been on a trip to Europe, and you (say you are British or Japanese), the following week you have a business trip to New York. Don’t bother exchanging those Euros into US Dollars, as you can now buy stuff with Euros there.

Well, not for me, but Yuko.
In South East Wales, there are a fair number of factories for various Japanese (and Korean) companies such as Panasonic.
So, quite often, Japanese families will be based in South Wales while the husband (typically, it’s the husband) works at the factory as a supervisor on some product line.
Yuko will quite often then meet the wives of said Japanese workers, whenever they go to the farmshop cafe where Yuko works.

Yuko got chatting to one these ladies, who didn’t really seem to mix with the rest of the crowd. The other wives tend to stick in a group, forming a somewhat artificial friendship with each other because they all have something in common, they are Japanese wives for workers at the factory.
This other lady doesn’t tend to do that though, and seems to match up more with Yuko’s thinking.
So, since it was Yuko’s day off work, they met up, went for lunch and gossiped.
Yuko seemed to enjoy herself, and found it interesting to learn about the experiences of this other lady. She’s 10 years older for us, and she’d been in the UK for a relatively long stay before (her husbands first stint at the Panasonic factory). They went back to Japan for a while, before coming back to the UK again in 2004. Their daughter is now 15 years old, and she used to go to the primary school near where Yuko and I are living. Of course, the daughter is now at an age where she is doing GCSE exams.
During there short return to Japan, it seems like the daughter struggled a bit with Japanese schooling, and at the moment she thinks of herself as being quite British as well as being Japanese.
What was interesting was that this lady would consider retiring in the UK, if her daughter ended up wanting to stay here (say she married a local). Nothing was said about the husband, so I suspect that he ultimately would want to return to Japan.

Now, the thing that Yuko and I both found very strange were the restrictions that Panasonic place upon the partners of Japanese who work at the factory. This lady is allowed to drive a car (if they were in China, none of them would be allowed to drive a car), but she’s ‘not allowed’ to work (even though, from a British Immigration Visa point of view she’s allowed). Something about causing potential conflict and embarrassment to Panasonic should she do something wrong here in the UK! That just seems crazy to me, and Yuko found it most strange. Anyway, since her daughter is at school, and she’s not working, it means she gets a lot of spare time. It’s a good job she does some study in that free time (arts and stuff like that apparently).

What was good though is that this lady is from Kansai (like a couple of our other Japanese friends). Her English isn’t that great apparently, but she just chats away, mangling English massively, but confidence gets her through. Apparently, when she goes out with some other friends, she’s the ‘designated’ speaker even though some of the others theoretically speak better English.

I sometimes wonder about Yuko. She was born in Kanto region, but I think she’s got the heart of a Kansai person and seems to get on a lot better with Kansai-jin.