So I'm swamped with work, and doing all sorts of interesting things that I don't have time to blog about. I'm also working on Part Seven - the Tokyo chapter. There are so many little anecdotes in my diaries that I'm pretty sure I'll only have space for a few highlights. Here's one that might - or might not - make it.

About a week after I arrived in Tokyo, there was an earthquake. I was at work at the time, and my office was on the twenty-fourth floor. The floor trembled, and the building literally swayed from side to side; heads popped up from behind cubicle dividers, and there was a murmur of disquiet. I had one of those moments of pure fatalism: if this was the big one, there was clearly nothing I could do to save myself from a high floor of an office tower.

But then the swaying stopped, and everyone went back to work.

Later that day, one of my new Japanese colleagues asked me where I was from.

"Isra-er?" he asked incredulously. "Ha! Vedy danjeru, no?"