Happy New Year and thank you for joining our first tour of the year! It has been a relatively warm winter in Tokyo so far, so much that plum trees at the East Gardens of the Imperial Palace are beginning to bloom - which we usually expect some time around early February. I went with a group of six with guests from Germany, Hong Kong and Vietnam. As my partner guide and I explained about historical sites of interest, our conversation wandered off to various topics from seniority systems in differ...