I had quite an interesting conversation tonight with Usami-san, the guy who works at the bicycle parking place that I use every day. His english is about as good as my Japanese, so we spoke a bit about things. It turns out, he worked at NTT for 40 years! We were talking about the crossbar switches that he used to manage – similar to the ones my Dad installed a long time ago. He also spoke about the switches before the crossbar switches, which I can’t remember the name of any more. It was really interesting speaking to someone in Japanese, even if my Japanese is still really poor. We managed to understand each other. We spoke about my background, my parents background, languages etc. Usami-san speaks Chinese as well, and we spoke about my brother who also speaks Chinese. Interesting and very invigorating for my mind!