Month: May 2023

Thanks to my colleague, I had a great opportunity to work with a broadcast station for the G7 Hiroshima summit, which was held for 3 days between 19.05 – 21.05. It was not a full-time translation/interpreting but an interesting job yet: logging real-time feeds; translating an open welcome address by PM Kishida; transcribing an interview.

Whereas only a part of recordings would be broadcast to the public after edited, I had a chance to observe the entire proceedings where media agencies were allowed despite only my shifts, and watched from the Media Center this meaningful event held in Hiroshima where I grew up. PM Kishida has his roots in Hiroshima (while he grew up in Tokyo), and his wife, the First Lady Ms Kishida, grew up in Hiroshima, so both of them are attached to the prefecture. I could see how proud they were of the opportunity to hold the summit in Hiroshima, City of Peace, and to welcome the leaders 💐

In Hiroshima city and its vicinity, however, there were largely and flexibly changed traffic controls for the leaders’ schedules and programs (ca. 30,000 police officers assembled from all over Japan👮‍♂️🚘), which received harsh protests and complaints from understandable anxieties (e.g. if those traffic controls would become obstacles for emergent ambulance transport). That we did not hear nor see actual incidents through news programs after all doesn’t mean we didn’t have inconveniences. On the other hand, that many media crews visited Hiroshima from relevant countries and helped air our beautiful Hiroshima city, which was reconstructed after the atomic bombing, should be beneficial.

I love Hiroshima, as a resident who grew up in Hiroshima (while I was born in Yamaguchi pref.). I was honored therefore that I was able to join and help a part of the event. I was glad to hear that media crews, whom I worked with, enjoyed their stays in Hiroshima. Their broadcasts would be a great help to get more people interested in and visit Hiroshima from all over the world (๑>᎑<๑)و ﾖｼｯ!

Photo: a variety of souvenir I received at the Media Center 👜✒️🗒

JR Hiroshima station 🚊 is undergoing renovation and it aims to be complete in early 2025.

The platform looks modern, including its gates. You can find many nice souvenir shops and restaurants in the north side.

The south side awaits renovation completion. We can see the frames of buildings under construction🏗️. It is said that a streetcar platform 🚃 will be connected to JR station directly. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks like 🙂

In a few years after the completion, I’d like to plan and organize a large-scale translation-interpreting industry event in Hiroshima to show peers over the city and its vicinity. 🌸🏙️

My business trips have returned since the second half of the year 2022 🚄🛫. I had become full-time translator in 2019 and had also planned to undertake onsite/escort interpreting requests, but then the pandemic began. Thankfully, I was quite busy with translation jobs but obviously only a few occasions to do onsite interpreting during the time. I realized that unfortunately I was not capable of remote interpreting, trying it several times. Since the end of summer in 2022, however, I had some chances to take on requests for escort interpreting again, and visited Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo for those requests, or provided the service in Hiroshima. I hope I can continue to receive onsite interpreting requests from time to time in 2023. So far so good.

Picture: Mt. Fuji 🗻 taken on my way to Tokyo for business trip ✈️.

Since this year, I’ve resumed the frequent use of a shared office and have got businesses, for which I need a mail receiving service for convenience. Voila! Now I have a mail box in the shared office too!
📪(´,,•ω•,,｀)◝ ﾅﾆｶ ｷﾃﾙｶﾅ

I’m always excited about every tiny change I make — even such a small thing, as it seems I’m getting things moving forward. This would inspire me to find and increase opportunities to use it often for sure.