Thursday, January 30, 2025

We didn't all come out alive

Some days go better than others. As we all know. No sleep last night and as I was dozing off at dawn I'd promised to wake my wife at 7.00 so had to stay awake. Wife up and out of the house but by now I'm wide awake and no chance of sleep again. And walking to the local store (they're everywhere in Tokyo, we have four within five minutes walk), wasn't watching what I was doing and tripped. Flat on the face. Not great.

Problem being I now have a video conference at 11.00am, running a mild fever, bumped up and banged around I managed to get through that and then I really, really wanted some sleep. But managed to do some UK admin specialised for residents of Japan. Except for time zone... And as I put my head down my FB Messenger started to ping. Of course it did. But getting up to check I received a sad message. A guy I recruited nearly thirty years ago had passed away.

He was a good man, willing to tell me when I was wrong, something rare here. He had a view and could communicate it without leaving people upset but very clear of the message. In Japan you rarely tell your boss he's wrong, but this guys had the bravery and honesty to do so. And so I respected him and we grew to be friends. And now I'm going to miss him.  

Monday, January 6, 2025

Tokyo - 25 Years Later

There's something of a golden rule in Tokyo "only ever do three things in one day". I may have mentioned this before but it runs pretty true and is a good guide to not breaking down along with the world around you. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of one that refines to how many activities are a good idea in a week, or even four. And excluding a number of other mornings, the last few weeks would really benefit from something of a guiding light. It's been an interesting interlude.

Kick off related to an old friend arriving with four others I last saw at his wedding some twenty five plus years ago. It was a genuine pleasure to see them after a beach in Hawaii in the heady days of 1996. For a couple of them it was their first trip to Tokyo, so naturally, when then end of the evening arrived, we hit the karaoke. I sing like a donkey but turns out two of the ladies had beautiful voices. We also managed to (legally!) source something for one of the guys collection (he didn't have a Japanese one). And they had a wonderful time. Especially when I told them my "looking after Tom Brady in Tokyo" story...

And the following day it was the turn of another family of friends that I probably hadn't see for another twenty years visiting from overseas. The two boys, now teenagers, who I was meeting for the first time, were great, one a dog whisperer and the other an academic. The interesting issue was with both sets of friends, we didn't reminisce on old times, we chatted, laughed and talked about the future. The only history recounted was swimming with turtles off the shores of Maui and trying to call a friend after I'd dropped his phone into a pint of beer. Seemed like a good idea at the time but apparently HR weren't too pleased...