Photos from Shizuoka

Buzzing

Another 12 hour day slogging away at work today, and I can't sleep because of the adrenaline. Jay's remaining teeth are coming through, so he keeps waking during the night, obviously in some pain, so I've been carrying him around until he nods off to sleep again, completely knackered.
My parents arrived last week, and its been really great having them here, and for Jay to get to know them. Weather permitting, they usually go out for a long walk in the local park, and I think having them around has really accelerated his speech, as he's now chatting away in baby speak, and can now say "papa" and "bye" very clearly. He's been saying "mama" for a while now, and it makes me happy that I've now joined his lexical repertoire : )
I'm bearing witness to the rounds of redundancies that are sweeping through the foreign affiliated companies that I visit. The impact has been quite severe, leaving those that have avoided the cut feeling angry, confused and fearful. One person said she cried for two days, as many of her long-term colleagues were axed. Another described it as the saddest moment in his life. I think people here have taken it so hard because they've never experienced such swinging changes in their work lives before, and such cuts are pretty rare over here. What I'm hearing is that it's going to get worse, which is pretty devastating.
Well, I've got 4 more days to go before I finish for the year, when I can take a break for two whole weeks! It'll be my longest holiday this year, and it's going to be filled with getting my eyes done, trying to do lots of training, and visiting the various Kobayashi and Watanabe clans for New Year. All very exciting.

Photos

Crisp

It's a crisp morning here in Tokyo, and I'm feelin rather chipper, albeit suffering from a cold which I think I must have picked up from Jay.
Last Sunday we did our first 15km run around the palace, and in pretty good time too - 1 hr 16 minutes. That's about an average of 5 mins per km, which we need to get down to around 4 mins. A big task, yes, but we have about 4 months to do it, so I'm pretty confident.
The Yen continues to strengthen against the Pound. Last night it was 137 Yen to the Pound, which is a 13 year high. Feel sorry for my parents to be coming over in this situation, and if only we could have reversed our visit to the UK to this year, and they to last year, it would have been much better. Oh well...
There seems to be doubts over the government's economic stimulus package. The plan had been to give everybody 11,000 Yen to spend as they wished, but the Finance Minister is now saying it's unlikely to work, so it may be shelved. Personally I thought it was a bad idea, as even though it'd be nice to have the extra cash, I think most people would have just saved it, which defeats its point.
I was speaking to a Private Equity bod the other day, and he said even though the current climate is tough, it's also a great opportunity to buy distressed companies at low prices, and build them up over a period of up to 10 years. Luckily, his company has a huge amount of cash available for such action, so that they are not solely reliant on financing from banks. This makes me think it's a good time to do some canny investing of my own, but its difficult to judge when to get in, as the markets are so volatile. One option is to buy sterling now, as I imagine it will strengthen in the future, but with its continued decline, again its when to take the plunge.