4 minute read
AN EXPAT IN JAPAN
warded with a regional vicepresidency for Juan Garcia Gallardo.
To the discomfort of regional president Alfonso Fernandez Mañueca, not to mention the PP’s national leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, Garcia Gallardo recently decided that it would be a good idea if doctors made women intending to terminate a pregnancy between six and nine weeks to first hear the foetal heartbeat.
The PP groans were almost audible. The party was mindful of the influence that abortion exerted on the US midterm elections and the trouble that plans to scuttle the existing abortion law caused Mariano Rajoy’s government, prompting the exit of its architect, Justice minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardon in 2014.
Feijoo kept his mouth diplomatically shut, although his silence spoke volumes, while Mañueco hastily assured Castilla y Leon¡s doctors and women that nobody would force anybody to do anything.
With elections in May and December all parties have a great deal to say. But the PP will presumably tread with extreme care to avoid losing votes once abortion enters the conversation.
WHAT is it like to be an expat living in the largest city in the world? Marc Anderson talks about his experience of living in Tokyo and other parts of Japan for the last 17 years.
After Marc graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in Archaeology and found out that this was neither an easy world to get into and even less so a potentially lucrative profession, he moved to Japan to teach in English in Japanese State schools via the JET programme.
His first encounter with Japanese society was not among the 37 million strong capital city but in a relatively rural area in the south of the main Island where no one spoke English. He decided that if he wanted to survive, he had to learn Japanese. This was to be a key factor which has supported him over the years in finding work in Japanese companies.
After tsunamis and earthquakes , he finally settled in Tokyo with his Japanese wife and son.
Marc talks us through the culture shock of living in such a different setting, why he doesn’t have a car, the complexities of social graces and keeping your thoughts to yourself, making friends and the excesses of politeness.
Marc also shares his experience of training as a
Linda Hall
€30 million could help 1,000 families or lonely individuals who are finding it impossible to heat their homes and to eat properly.
ONCE again I didn’t come close. But people do win the lottery, and since July there have been four winners of €150 million or more. So, how do they spend these unimaginable sums of money?
Winning €150 million would open up a few possibilities. The first could be to identify 800 cases requiring urgent, lifesaving medical treatment. Including transport costs each could cost about €50,000. The sum of €40 million would cover this and we are still left with €110 million.
It would be nice to identify 100 deserving homeless people, €200,000 each would buy all of them a decent house or flat with furniture. There goes another €20 million.
Donations could be made to groups in combating the poaching of rhinos and elephants and the mistreating of beasts of burden. €10 million could make a small but worthwhile difference.
Whoops! We’re down to €80 million.
We only have €50 million left now, so let’s not forget our friends and familyand ourselves!
€6 million would buy six excellent properties, including furniture and fittings. We can’t forget Uncle Ben and the friend who helped our daughter so much. Another €2 million for various homes and holidays and several BMWs etc for those closest to us. And the purchase of eight small flats? This could produce an annual rental income of €10,000 each, but could require yet a further €2 million.
So, for a further €10 million for friends and family and we still have €40 million to allocate. This is roughly the net worth of Harry Kane.
There is one small problem, however. The chance of winning is about one in 140 million about as likely as ‘Lord’ Alan Sugar being crowned Miss Mexico.
A RECENT New York Times article revealed that 56 per cent US residents wouldn’t use the word gypsy owing to its oftennegative associations. There are fewer reservations about the word in Spain although strangely you now see fewer immediately identifiable gypsies around.
This certainly wasn’t the case in the late 80s when I worked as secretary to a Benidorm businessman. The word businessman is an overstatement as he had lost his moneymaking knack to the extent that I had to send marble samples by express courier to the United States, which played hell with the petty cash. He lived in fear of his mistress, his estranged wife and three grownup daughters, two of whom should have been called Goneril and Regan not that the third was any Cordelia.
A very beautiful young gypsy started to visit the office, which opened on to the street, asking for money. We always gave her something and she dropped in regularly until she was heavily pregnant, later returning, sometimes toting the child. She was always taciturn and it required persistence to learn her name, which she claimed was Maria, but possibly chose at random owing to its anonymity.
Eventually my boss did a runner and I saw no more of Maria until I was walking along Benidorm’s Avenida del Mediterráneo a year or so later. Somebody bumped into me and something brushed my shoulderbag, the sort chef in Tokyo, shaving the Japanese radish into a two metre long , paper thin, strip, and the demands of working in the restaurant business. He also tell us about coming second in a Japanese Master Chef type competition and his lack of success in introducing haggis as part of the Japanese staple diet.
He also talks about setting up a business in Japan, the bureaucracy and the complications.
The full interview can be heard on https://youtu. be/LUj3LUpXZ6E.
