I hope everyone is adjusting back to office life smoothly after the New Year’s Holiday. Those of you viewing our website from laptop or computer devices may notice that we’ve changed the background of our homepage to feature “ume” (JApanese plum ). Ume is an early-blooming tree identified with the Japanese New Year.

Cheers to another wonderful and productive year for all!

We are now entering one of the busy seasons of the Kansai Consular Corps Calendar. Upcoming events include multiple new year parties, prefectural and municipal summits with governors and mayors, an opinion exchange with the Kansai Economic Federation, our very own KCC Annual General Meeting, and our first-ever Kansai Consular Corps sponsored event.

All of this to happen before the end of March 2016!

(And I haven’t even mentioned the G7 Summit.)

Government organizations currently planning their annual event for Consuls-General may wish to contact the KCC Executive Secretariat as quickly as possible to coordinate dates.

KCC members can expect a schedule update coming soon.

Best wishes to everyone during this busy and exciting time!