Glossary

• Chame-Chan - The mother-in-law's cat. An American short-hair Tabby, he had flown from Japan to Britain and back again. He died in 2008.
  
• Dad and Margaret - Live in Leicester and between them translate novels from Spanish and Portuguese, learn French, do the Guardian crossword and cook vegetarian meals all day long.
  
• Emma-chan - My precocious younger daughter.
  
• Geoff - My older brother who jacked in a career in newspaper circulation to become a long-distance truck driver in the USA.
  
• giri-no-shacho - A term I coined combining giri-no-haha (mother in law) with shacho (boss) to mean literally "boss-in-law". Also known as Baa-chan - grandma- by my kids. But her name is Michiko.
  
• Jane - My little sister who lives in Leicester. After a couple of years as a social worker in Portsmouth, she is finding work as a primary school teacher more her cup of tea.
  
• K-chan - My sensitive elder daughter.
  
• kappa - Mythical green water sprites who seem to be all over the place in Abiko
• kawaii - Cute. This is something seen as a goal in itself in Japan.
• LDP - The Liberal Democratic Party. This party is neither liberal (it is pretty darned conservative) nor very democratic - it has been perennially in power since 1945, bar a couple of years at the end of the 1990s.
• shacho - Company president or boss. In my house that means my wife, Yoshie.