This weeks photo is of our friends John and Midori, who we met for lunch when they were passing through London last week. They are on one of their rare visits to this country to see John’s family. John, originally from Norwich, has been teaching English at universities in Japan for around 30 years; he was one of the founder members of the Anthony Powell Society. John is also a world expert on the traditional music of Okinawa — he blogs at The Power of Okinawa — so when he semi-retired a few years ago it was natural that they moved to Okinawa, the semi-tropical Ryukyu Islands at the very southern extremity of Japan. They were living in Kobe at the time of the Great Hanshin earthquake of 1995.