Notes from the Office 1

Well, after 13 years, four kids and the deterioration of many brain cells, my Japanese language skills aren't quite what they used to be. Very frustrating. Each week starts off Monday morning with four hours of almost exclusively Japanese meetings, during which I gamely try to piece together what the heck is going on through a combination of searching for English words in presentation materials, translating Japanese three sentences behind the pace of conversation, and leaning towards my neighbor and saying, "Excuse me Suzuki-san, but what the heck is going on?" I haven't been so lost since attending synagogue services conducted only in Hebrew. Usually I have Mika Tanaka sitting next to me. After some lengthy back-and-forth she'll whisper to me the gist of the discussion, which goes something like, "Because of a close business relationship that our founding president's great great maternal grandfather had with our customer's great great paternal uncle we have been funding $37 trillion yen of research and development costs performed by the customer for the past 8 years. The team would like to know if the culturally insensitive foreign barbarian will support continued funding for this important program." Of course, nobody can explain what it is we actually get out of this investment, but hey, what's a few trillion yen amongst friends?