A regular Japanese lunch meeting

I thought I would snap a couple of pictures at a typical Japanese agency lunch meet, in this case a gathering of the operating team on our largest client, Philip Morris and because we're discussing 'sensitive' stuff, we can't go to a restaurant.

The key thing here is to get lots of coffee, because if it's a lunch meeting, it means one thing... it's gonna be long. Inevitably the most boring and monotonous person will be doing the bulk of the presentation. The highlight of the meeting is a toilet break.


The most important person here in the picture is the translator, without her, I fall asleep within seconds.

Another staple at lunch meetings is the bento box lunch. My question is, what is wrong with a sandwich or hamburgers or char siew fan (yeah right!)? These darn bento boxes look attractive but the food is always cold and I can't tell what half the stuff is... I have a simple rule here, if I don't know what it is, I'm not eating it. The problem for me with Japanese food is, even if I knew, I'd wish I didn't...


Anyway this particular meeting took 2 and a half hours. I think I went to the toilet 5 times...