The Japanese Experience

We were delighted to have a Japanese Guest – Yudai Nakamura (above) – on the last edition for 2013 of our weekly Sunday night radio show, The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild Kaufela. The show airs at 20.30 hrs CAT for an hour on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station and is a smooth mixture of latest Zambian and international music as well as chat with our guest of the week. A lucky listener also has the chance to win dinner for two at the lodge – if they can text us quickly telling us the name of the artist on our oldie of the week. The prize on this week’s show was quickly snapped up, the oldie being 1D’s ‘That’s What Makes You Beautiful’!

Yudai told listeners that he hails from Nagoya in Japan, a city of some four million inhabitants. He had arrived in Livingstone three days prior to the show after a thirty six hour journey from Japan via Hong Kong. He works for a company making electronic components for vehicle manufacturers particularly Toyota and he works, he said, in the quality control section. An electronics engineer by profession, in true Japanese style Yudai came to the studio weighed down with tablet, smart phone, camera with lenses and we’re not sure what other electronic else besides in his back pack! When queried he told us that such items are cheap in Japan but that food and drinks are not!

We had no Japanese music to feature on the show but instead we picked the ‘best of 2013’. My three tracks were ‘La La La’ – Naughty Boy featuring Sam Smith, Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ and PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’. Yudai knew that one but said the relationship between South Korea and Japan was not good so it wouldn’t do for the Japanese to say they liked the track! George dropped O.C featuring Salma’s ‘Folo Folo’ and ‘Bufi’ by Petersen and Pilato as Zambia’s best of the year. Milli Jam chose Miguel’s ‘Adorn’ and John Legend’s soulful ‘Best You Ever Had’. My pick of the week was Tiesto’s ‘Red Lights’.

Yudai told us that he was single but that he had a steady girlfriend. “Why isn’t she with you?” Milli Jam asked and Yudai said that she had a ‘poor image of Africa’ but he hoped one day to persuade her to accompany him on one of his trips. This was his third or fourth visit to the continent. Since he’d been in Livingstone he’d been on a one day safari to Chobe NP and hoped to return the following day for another visit, mostly to capture more photographs of elephants in the river. Yudai is a great photographer and showed us many of the brilliant photos he’d taken during this and previous visits. He also belongs to a Kendo club in Japan and gave us a brief explanation of the dangerous sounding sport, telling us that face, hands and abdomen were the attack points!

Sports wise our Guest said he likes swimming, cycling and baseball. Music wise he likes Japanese pop. Asked where he would like to be and what he would like to be doing ten years’ from now, Yudai said he hoped to be married and to have enjoyed a honeymoon with his darling in South Africa and Namibia. He hoped to still be working for the same company in Nagoya.

We closed by wishing all our listeners health, happiness and prosperity for 2014!

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Bridge At Kazungula

Seeing is believing after all these years but this is potentially good news for Livingstone – interesting that Japan is helping with the money. We hope that if they are also doing the bridge building it’s done better than the main road from the water tower on the outskirts of Livingstone to the Falls which is hopeless and gets worse day by hot day even though the work was only completed by the Japanese two years ago! Picture is the existing form of river crossing!!!

Zambia Daily Mail

Zambia and Botswana have finally signed a loan agreement with the Japanese government to finance the construction project of Kazungula Bridge at a cost of US$124.22 million. The bridge project will be jointly financed by the Japanese government through the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). The signing ceremony which took place at the JICA headquarters in Tokyo on Friday was witnessed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Given Lubinda and Bank of Zambia Governor Michael Gondwe.

Under the agreement, JICA will provide US$41.77 million, AfDB US$78.41 million while Zambia will contribute US$1.57 million. The project comprises the construction of a new toll road, railway bridge with one stop-border post facilities and access roads at Kazungula border. Zambia’s Ambassador to Japan Mwelwa Chibesakunda signed on behalf of Zambia while Botswana’s Minister of Finance and Development Planning Ontefetse Matambo signed for the neighbouring country.

Mr Chibesakunda said the signing of the loan agreement marks another milestone in the history of the warm bilateral relations that exist between Zambia and Japan, describing the development as a significant step in regional integration.He said the bridge project which seeks to replace the current Zambezi river pontoon, will improve the efficiency of transit traffic through the Kazungula border thereby leading to increased trade activities and improvement of regional connectivity of the north-south corridor.

Mr Domichi said JICA is considering going beyond construction of the bridge to streamlining administrative processes at border posts for trade facilitation. And Mr Matambo, the Botswana Minister of Finance and Development planning, said the construction of the bridge at Kazungula will improve people’s movement between Botswana and Zambia.

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Mr N Kobashi

Alice, Aggy, Mx, Mushiba, Junior and Melinda are shown saying bye! Why?

Well Mr N Kobashi has been staying at Chanters Lodge for the past 15 months whilst supervising the resurfacing of the road between the water tower as you enter Livingstone on the Lusaka Road, to the Victoria Falls Border. He left today. Sob sob!

He was a great Guest and I’m sure he’s very happy to be going home to his family in Tokyo. We say:

‘THANKS A LOT’!

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