here comes the train ...

It's been a while since our last post. The main reason: our computer's hard-drive completely melted down, leaving us in limbo for weeks. We'd actually bought an external hard-drive for backups the very same day. Alas, we hadn't yet transferred our files when the crash took place. Aarg! Well, we're back up and running, and, as of this past Monday, spending all of June in Yasugi, where the Hitachi's flagship steel factory is located. It's a stone's throw from where I lived and taught 12 years ago, so I feel right at home. Lori's catching up quickly.

As for this particular post, I spent most of May at the company's management training center in Yasugi north of Tokyo. One of the upsides was riding there and back on the shinkansen (a.k.a. the bullet train). If you have no sense for how fast the thing can go, here's a video of one screaming through Jomokogen station. I don't even think it's going as fast as it's capable of going, but you'll get the idea.