Olympics Silver Medal

I swear I would have hated myself for life if I took today off from work. Today after lunch, the silver medalist for archery - Hiroshi Yamamoto came to the Saitama Prefectural Board of Education (my office) with his prize medal! He is an athlete/high school teacher at Omiya Kaisei Senior High School in Saitama so he came to greet us at the board!! Such a nice guy, he let everyone touch the medal and take pictures with it! Never in my life that I thought I could get to touch a real medal!!! So happy!!!!!


Article in Japanese but with picture

Japanese Workplace

My desk in my office is closest to the door, visitors would always come to me first. That's because they don't know I am not Japanese.

Hey, I'm no receptionist and sometimes it gets tiring getting out of my desk and do the namecard exchange thing.

However, there are a few things that I'm thinking of doing to reduce the chances of them coming to my desk:
- English documents with huge fonts always on computer desktop
- Canadian Flag in my penholder
- Grab my cellphone and start talking in English

Or just simply:

"Hi! What can I do for you?"

I want to share with you guys one of my favourite poems by Mitsuo Aida, a famous Japanese poet and calligrapher:

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やれなかった、
やらなかった、
どっちかな？

I couldn't do it,
or I didn't do it,
I wonder which one?

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Very simple but really makes you think, doesn't it? =)