Hello all, my name is Joel and I’m an in-house translator here at Brainwoods.

Today I’d like to talk about my cute dog.

Around five months ago I adopted a rescue dog together with my fiancée. We named her Kongari because she is light-brown all over with a dark nose — she looks like she’s been well-cooked, which is what “kongari” means in Japanese.

Looking after a dog is a lot of work. Of course you have to feed and walk it every day, but you are also responsible for its entertainment and well-being.

We walk Kongari twice a day, for 30 minutes to 1 hour each time. Now that it’s summer here in Tokyo, this is quite a chore! And on rainy days Kongari refuses to go out, so we have to carry her a little way from our apartment to… encourage her.

However, despite all the effort required, I think that having a dog is definitely worth it. Just looking at her snoozing on the floor relaxes me, stroking her soft fur gives me relief, and watching her play with her toys is a pleasure. We’ve taught her a few tricks, such as “sit”, “down”, “paw”, “ago” (she rests her chin on our hand), and “wait”, and it’s very rewarding to see her quickly learn to associate our verbal commands with different actions. She loves snacks so she always tries her hardest to get a reward.

You might be thinking that talking about my dog is not really related to translation, and you’d be mostly correct. However, I think it’s quite relevant to maintaining a healthy work-life balance in general. When I’m stressed out from a tight deadline, or struggling with some difficult text, taking a few minutes to sit or play with my cute dog puts me right back in a good frame of mind so I can do my best work. One day I even took Kongari into our Omotesando office and everyone was so happy to see her.

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