The Dregs of FY2009

Today is the last year of the fiscal year here in Japan, and what an interesting week I've had. For starters, my previous entry "Eating Flipper" was published online at: and subsequently linked to by a bunch of Japan-related blogoshperes which I never even knew existed. the result is over 900 people have looked at my article in the 3 short days it has been online, and while plenty have people have offered their often ridiculous two cents, no one has said anything insulting to me (with the exception of one self-righteous troll) and many people commented just to say I'd written well! :D

I'm all over the internet apparently. the manager who organized our Mazda Ekiden team (see previous posts) also just sent me this link from the Mazda's homepage ! My picture is toward the bottom; I'm the white guy with the Abe-Lincoln-chinstrap. :p

Also, last week, I got to translate letters from the governor to none other than Barack Obama and Gordon Brown! I won't get into what they said, but it wasn't anything top-secret. Still cool though, yeah? My boss was really worried because of the high-level addressees, but after I finished my translation, we went over it together (he speaks some English) and he agreed it was solid, not that I had any doubts. ;]

There have been a few farewell parties for people in our division getting transferred, and a party for Mr. Kadoya who got married, and the best thing to happen ever was, for the after-party, we went to Round1 (a 9-storied amusement center) and played ping-pong, billiards, darts, and BATTING CAGES! Sadly I don't have any photos from the batting cages, but it was awesome and I had been in forever! Good, clean fun.

Yesterday and the day before we rearranged everything in my Ken-cho office, but to be honest, the hardest bit was done on Monday, on my day off, but last night was the construction of a new wall in our office , seriously, so this was some of the madness involved in preparing:



They're showing you where the new wall now stands.

Mr. Teraguchi (My supervisor for the last year) hurrying to finish his work.