Paintball

Friday and Saturday were out of the office for me (Andrew) on a team-building and strategy workshop. For anyone who has been on one of these workshops before, you'll recognise that this is actually a thinly-disguised execuse to have some fun outside of the office. In our case this took the form of paintball on Friday afternoon and a visit to a kids amusement park on Saturday morning.

I sit writing this with a series of bruises ranging in size from a 5c piece (do they still have those in NZ these days?) up to a largish bruise about 5cm in diameter. And because it was outdoors in a valley (the walls of which provide a tactical advantage to anyone who climbs them), I am also suffering from very sore thighs. Although I have been at the gym on a regular basis (lost 5kg since coming to Japan), it appears that the climbing has identified a number of muscles that have not been addressed by the exercise bike or treadmill. Oh well, maybe try some different stuff in the gym this week.

Sonia arrived back in HK on Saturday afternoon after a couple of weeks back in Bangkok. I'm planning to be back with her around the end of the month for a few days - time to get the Japan work visa sorted out.

Third Japanese lesson last Wednesday - learning numbers and telling the time. The numbering system is a little challenging - although it's decimal, the major unit for large numbers is actually 10,000. So if you want to say 1,000,000, you end up saying something like 100 10,000's. Speaking to one of the translators on staff, they also find it a challenge to translate large numbers in a hurry during discussions. Glad I'm not alone. Turns out the gym is a great place to work on revision for the next lesson - no interruptions or distractions...

Oh - another thing about the numbers. There is more than one work for each number. There are two main systems - one for abstract numbers (e.g. telephone numbers) and another for counting things. Then there are variations depending on what you're counting - thin flat things, people, etc. And even within the abstract system, there are two words for 4 - "shi", or "yon". Groan! It's true what they say - learn languages while you are young because it gets harder.