Where am I?

I seem to have gone missing on the way back from the far east. I haven't, as many feared, finally disappeared up my own arse, have I?

Going ooop North

It turns out I can get into North Korea after all. Some bloke I meet in a bar promises he can smuggle me through the de-militarised zone (DMZ) in the boot of his car. He says he can't guarantee an audience with the Dear Leader but it's a start. But when we get there it's all a bit grim. The landscape is factories and pies. The people speak in strange accents, wear cloth caps and have whippets. Still they have a passion for umbrellas and when we set up KUBBIES I will consider having a Northern office, as I love a bit of regional tokenism me. But for now its back over the border and a flight back home to Blighty. Apart from anything else, Barkles will need feeding. That bone I left won't last forever.

No one told me there were two Koreas

Damn. I didn't realise that there was a North AND South Korea. And I am not in the one I am meant to be in. Apparently the two countries don't get on and it will be difficult to cross the border and see the Dear Leader about his brolly love. What you might call a bad Korea move.

On the plus side, I have seen a few temples and that and everyone seems to think I am a senior citizen. So plenty of concessions on ticket prices and guaranteed seats on public transport. Result!

Reading outside the box

Whilst waiting at Tokyo airport I am amazed at just how many management textbooks there are available. Things with titles such as "If you're buying this you are beyond help and couldn't manage a sneeze in a pepper factory let alone a business" and "Thanks for the cash sucker - why don't you try managing your book budget a bit better and don't waste money on this". They are all crap of course and I buy every single one, just in case, cos you never now.

Indeed I may just be inspired to write my own book based on my unique style of management, updated from American bullshit-speak into Bogglish.

However, there is one of these authors who I truly admire. Not because I have read his work but because he's the only one that everyone seems to find acceptable as a guru and I am too much of my own man not to follow the herd if I feel like it. I am talking about Murdo Joyfull, whose Tripping Point is the classic polemic about the point where you have so many of these management tomes lying around the office that they become a health hazard.

Joyfull also relates a timely tale about Korean airlines, which does little for my confidence as I wait to board one. Basically, he concludes that they have more crashes because their planes are badly made. And he smashes the myth of innate talent over sheer hard work, luck and being in the right place at the right time (that place and time being Oxford, naturally, during your undergraduate years).

He also makes a point about deferential societies where people find it hard to criticise their seniors or point out problems. Quite right too. At BUBB, what I say goes, no matter what Hector, Fab and Geof may say and do behind the scenes.

Does anyone want to see a picture of me eating breakfast in a kimono?

Another plate of raw marine-kill for breakfast is not a great way to start Saturday and I crave a nice bowl of Golden Grahams. And a croissant. You'd think a culture that has spawned some of the great technological developments would have found a way of cooking fish but no. However, my hotel has a lovely hot spring though there is nearly an incident when I expose myself to a bathful of females after wondering into the wrong room by mistake.

Then it is on to our 48th launch event in Sendai. More dreary questions on "issues" and I waffle on about the need for big ideas and innovative thinking unlike that displayed by some of my colleagues in the UK who manage to be both subversive and reactionary at the same time. I am still seething about an article in Canopy Finance where people seem to think my plans for the Umbrella Bank set up with unclaimed brollies is dangerous. Jesus, one person even mentioned it might be illegal. So what? We'll soon be running all the prisons and then we can get cracking on taking over the entire judicial system and then we'll decide what's legal and what isn't. Mentioning no names but Heston Mayday at Canopy Bank is going to get a right hander if he carries on whinging.

One of the young activists, who is also obviously a piss artist, draws my name in traditional Japanese characters and the translation means "broken record", which isn't entirely inappropriate.

Sendai is a lively town and Pepe Ohdearie takes me out on the lash. I somehow end up competing in an unlicensed sumo event and then it's onto a karaoke bar where my version of Umbrella-ella-ella is met with stunned appreciation.

Sunday is a quiet day and I have a long chat with Professor Nopun Intendedishiro (Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies at Oxford, naturally), the chair of JUBBLIES who has managed to wangle himself a nice little earner by appointing himself as its first paid chief executive, about future ways of working together.

I am frankly completely bored by all of this now and the healthy food is doing my noggin (and digestive system) in. So I decide to duck out of the rest of the launches and head back to Tokyo.

Today I am off to North Korea to try and have a word with the Dear Leader about his recent umbrella obsession. And I'll be over a Maccy D's Big Mac Meal (large) like a bad suit when I get to the airport.

In the land of the rising gamp

I am currently lording it in Japan and am here for the launch of a new Japanese umbrella body, JUBBLIES (Japanese Umbrella Backing Body - Lunching In Endless Sushi). The flight was a shocker. When I was younger I was excited by long trips and travel but now the whole thing is a pain the arse. I had my umbrella confiscated at security (for being a possible weapon) and wasn't allowed to take my dandelion and burdock bottle through as it breached their so called 100 ml rule. You'd think they'd put some signs up to warn people about these ludicrous rules wouldn't you? As a result I arrived knackered and crabby.

For company I have BUBB's international director Pepe Ohdearie but to be honest I haven't seen much of him since we have been here as he has been off larging it in some of Tokyo's more leftfield gentlemen's clubs.

Being asked here is a great honour and the fact that JUBBLIES has adapted our own name speaks volumes for their lack of imagination in anything accept electronics, gadgets and crazy gameshows. I can envisage other far East countries adapting this model so we may well see CHUBBIES or KUBBIES in the future - and you can see here that the North Koreans are already replicating my combination of dictatorial leadership and brolly love.

Another thing the Japanese have take on on board is my love of as many launches as possible and JUBBLIES is getting 404 in different cities over the next 18 weeks of my (essential) visit.

I am asked to give a speech at the first event. There is a slight cock up and a mistranslation means that I do 80 minutes rather than the 80 words they had requested. I drone on about all the great things BUBB does that JUBBLIES could learn from though my remark about the Japanese record on running prisons falls a little flat. I also drop in one of my finely honed anecdotes with a tenuous Japanese connection. Usually the tale of the day my Sony television caught fire is a guaranteed trouser splitter but this lot sit there stony faced.

The Japanese have a touching respect for brollies and a great flair for umbrella design though the traditional bamboo and paper ones (click here) that were popular in days gone by would be bugger all use in a right proper British downpour. However, some of the modern gadgetry jiggery pokery is way out there (see here, here, here and here). While I am not one to make sweeping generalisations on a whole nation's characteristics, let's face it, the Japs are flipping bonkers.

I have been taught a lot about the great Japanese traditions around umbrella martial arts (or gampkido as it is known) by my good friend, headhunter extraordinaire Donald Holding. He is still the only westerner to come to Japan and beat the shit out of some locals with a golf umbrella. And he got an MBE for it, while other more deserving recipients of Royal recognition remain ignored.

All in all the trip has been a real Japs-eye opener. However, I am finding the endless round of raw fish luncheons a bore, and the saki is filthy. My back is killing me from sitting on the floor all the time. And I am going to have to buy some socks without holes in as I am always being asked to remove my shoes.

Good to get away, good to get home

Gorgeous, magnificent, stunning, majestic. All of these adjectives and more can be used to describe my break in Scotland. Not the scenery, that was pretty average. Once you have seen one loch with a mist flecked Munro skulking in the distance you have seen them all as far as I am concerned but the weather was superb. Rain. All manner of rain. The full gamut of precipitation from light drizzle to torrential downpour. A real test for my brollies but they coped admirably.

I was going to post some photos but my camera was acting up. Plus, as we all know there is nothing more boring than other people's holiday snaps.

It was a bit of a gathering of the Bogg family and we had a whale of a time. Highlight must have been when we all got wankered on supermarket blended whisky and did some involuntary dancing on the cliffs. I swung my niece around with gay abandon and there was nearly a major incident when she went spinning off the edge but she survived the drop with minor bruising.

It just goes to show that we British lead the world when it comes to inclemency of weather. And on my homeward journey, gazing out of grimy, rain streaked windows as my train jolted through the earthier Glaswegian suburbs while swigging a Tennants Super was most agreeable. I got into conversation with a local film maker and asked him for his views on how the public perceives umbrellas. The conversation that followed only reinforced my view that we need a national campaign to decipher exactly what the feck these Scots are on about sometimes, such was the thickness of his accent.

Barkles has hated the whole thing - he is no lover of driving wind and rain but I feel fully recharged. Which is just as well as I am off to Japan tomorrow for the launch of the Japanese BUBB, JUBBLIES.