Message from the Editor

We are deeply sorry for these 2 months of silence. There was no substantial update and we got disappointed feedback from some of you. If we had at least updated the events section, it would have been alright, but we did not. Maybe you were counting on us to discover a part of Ibaraki for the return of spring days and Golden Week and we failed to meet your expectations.

Here is an opportunity to briefly explain some of the reasons that delayed these updates. Carly and I are the co-editors of this website and both work at the Prefecture of Ibaraki, International Affairs Division, in Mito. As you may know, in Japan, civil servants work on a rotation basis. Every year in April, staff in all the various departments and sections change. This is a very feared period for them since they can be transferred anywhere inside the Prefectural building in Mito, or even anywhere inside Ibaraki. The announcement of the new assignment causes great anxiety among a large number of civil workers, especially for those who already spent 3 years in the same department and got used to their environment.

All of this is called Jinji-Idō (人事異動), literally meaning "personnel change" and can bring about a slowing-down of internal activities when it happens. People packing their stuff, moving from one desk to another, introduction of the new staff in which predecessors have to explain how things work in a week or so, and for us, a new management replacing 75% of the previous one.

Carly and I had never had the Jinji-Idō experience in the past since we started work in Mito at the Prefectural Building at the end of July 2005. As a consequence, we were not fully prepared for it, though we were told the first weeks of April would be too crazy to do as we used to. I do hope you will understand the extraordinary conditions we had to deal with.

Nevertheless, here are some updates and we assure you that we are already working on the next ones. And remember: this site is also yours, you can write and submit anything related to our Ibaraki Prefecture.

From this month on we will be streamlining the information from Ibaraki Prefecture's English portal(external link) and the International Affairs Division homepage(external link) with the information in the E-Ibaraki Report. At the moment there is a slight overlap between the functions of each of these sites. However, from now on, all information relevant to living in Ibaraki will be found here in the E-Ibaraki Report, while the English portal(external link) will be restructured to focus on general information about Ibaraki for people outside of the prefecture. The International Affairs Division homepage(external link) will focus on English information about the international activities being undertaken in Ibaraki.

New articles for April 2006