Japan
This being a business trip I’m afraid I don’t have tales of daring-do to report, most of my time is spent in the office or visiting clients. That said, I have been taking snaps of the weird and wonderful world of Japan to share with everyone.

So having made it safely to Japan and more specifically to Shin-Yokohama (where my company’s office is) I checked into the Associa hotel. The hotel sits right on top of the Shin-Yokohama train station with a 5 storey electronics store and a bunch of restaurants sandwiched in between.

Shin-Yokohama in all its glory


Being a complete geek I was most excited by the huge electronics shop, called Bic Camera and the treasures therein. That said it wasn’t solely electronics with some completely random sections, one selling Japanese whiskey, another clothing and suit cases. It was as if they had more space than they knew what to do with so filled it with left over stock from other stores.

My favorite part of the store, however, was the toilet lid section, a whole wall dedicated to singing, flashing, flushing, spraying, warming loo lids. Dostoyevsky said you judge a civilisation by its prisons; I think toilets are a better indication and in this regard Japan is clearly way ahead of the rest. The fact that the loos in this country come with instructions and a range of buttons tells you all you need to know. To be honest, my behind has been so pampered on this trip that I’m not sure how it is going to cope returning to normality!

Such wonders to behold…



And of course every toilet needs instructions


In general I have fallen in love with Japan, the people are really friendly while being unfailingly polite. All the rituals involved in business meetings are amazing, lots of bowing, a highly ritualized swapping of business cards, giving of gifts. It’s something that you don’t really see in other countries and I was pleased to try and conform as much as I could to show respect to these. Everybody seems to want to do their job well, whether they are business people or manual laborers, the guards on the trains dress immaculately in their uniforms and seem to be unfailingly polite, something as a Brit I can appreciate even if it is becoming increasingly rare in my own country.

The country itself is like everything I have seen on TV and in movies, cartoons everywhere depicting everything from nurses to cats. There seems to be a love of the English language without actually being able to use it with signs in the language making something between some and no sense at all, but then I don’t think that’s the point.

I have not one clue why this cat is so angry at the cake.


I have to say I admire tourists who come here without a guide. I had the luxury of having Japanese colleagues with me at most times and so navigating my way around was easy. Most signs are in English around Tokyo but on one trip where we headed up the coast there wasn’t any to be seen. The Japanese alphabet is simply amazing and the complexity of some of the letters is astounding, to learn to write must be quite a challenge given how intricate the letters are, the smallest mistake could end in something meaning completely different.

I’m sure you can figure this out for yourselves.


While Japan seems to be very male dominated, there is an interesting dichotomy between the way male and female dress. While walking to work in the mornings, most men wear an almost standard uniform of white shirt, dark trousers. The women however seem to dress with much more imagination and flamboyance and indeed many of them seem to be having a competition of who can wear the shortest skirt/hot pants before it is considered a belt (not that I’m complaining of course). Japanese schoolgirls dress as everyone has seen and indeed they seem to be in evidence everywhere I went, in fact I don’t actually remember seeing a Japanese school boy, or maybe I wasn’t paying attention!

The Japanese male working uniform