Flushed with success?

Today was a good one for confirming that the wife and I were right to up sticks and start afresh in Japan running our own business:

1. I got an e-mail from England from a former colleague who quit newspapers for the bright lights of PR. He said he was loving his work now. In his old job at a UK local newspaper his writing would have been read by a handful of folk in the immediate circulation area, whereas now, in the age of cut-and-paste journalism, he gets a kick out of seeing his phrases reproduced around the globe - thanks to the wonders of technology and diminishing budgets for journalists to actually do their own writing and research.
2. One of my students has just started a new job in Tokyo at a fashion company, and while she is hopeful that it will turn out fine, she was a little put out to discover that far from the thrusting big-city operation she was expecting where she could use her (rather good) English-speaking ability, she has found herself, after an hour wedged in a packed morning commuter train, typing up bills of lading all day long. There are no restaurants or cafes in the area so she has no choice but to eat a packed lunch around a table with her immediate colleagues. All well and good, but the only toilet is on the same open-plan floor as her office, and has paper-thin walls. The result is everyone in the department can't help but monitor the eating, working and toilet habits of their colleagues.
   

The moral of the story? My commute is 30 seconds (from futon to classroom), I can write what I want, eat with whom I choose and have an upstairs and downstairs loo. What luxury!