Please tell us about your job, its challenges and fun aspects.
My home town is called Beppu, a popular city known for great hot springs, which is located in Oita Prefecture in Kyushu. In October last year, I was dispatched to Fukuoka where it was near the place I was born. Since then, I have been in charge of relevant preparations before receiving LNG ships, which include un/loading operations and customs clearing. On the other hand, it is not uncommon for me to travel to other LNG receiving terminals across Japan and overseas, because of the experience I cultivated at different locations such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Indonesia.
What happens if all the electricity and gas suddenly disappear from the planet? It is very clear that our current life won’t be carried out like this anymore. One of the most important resources of these two vital things is LNG, Liquefied Natural Gas. Sustainable provision of LNG means our stable life. I’m proud to say that my work is placed in the middle of an important energy supply chain for my country.
It is interesting how international the content of my work is. Let alone the fact that more than half of LNG sellers are foreign companies, ship operating companies and ship crews are all international. As I mentioned before, quite often I get to travel overseas and feel connected to other countries.
What are your current goals, the job you hope to do in the future?
Each LNG terminal has given me so much experience. I’ve had some opportunities to organize meetings held amongst the parties involved with the terminal side. Thanks to the good relationships I have made, I am still asked to work at their terminals although I am now based in Kyushu. I hope that my flexibility will keep allowing me to support operations at each business base across Japan of this company.
Schedule of the Day
| 9:30 | JESCO Kyushu is placed next to our parent company, LNG Japan Kyushu. As a family, there are a lot of opportunities in which we cooperate and carry out work together. So we always make sure to go through each other’s schedule for the day. |
|---|---|
| 10:00 | Start preparing for the witness operations which is scheduled in 2 days. In order to get confirmations on the list of things that is going to be submitted later to a terminal, I make phone calls to several related companies and go through past reports on relevant operations. |
| 12:00 | I go have lunch with the LNG Japan staffs at a restaurant in a newly built mall nearby our office. We enjoy eating our local food “Motsu Nabe” while impressed by all the recent city development that Fukushima has gone through. Fukushima is a top ranked city for its population growth rate among other cities in Japan. |
| 13:30 | I attend a meeting held amongst the concerned parties including the people from a receiving terminal and a ship operating company. This meeting is to confirm the compatibility of a ship which will make its first arrival to the terminal. One person from the ship company is Indian therefore I make sure to avoid any confusion during the conversations at the meeting by translating it properly with the use of appropriate terminology. |
| 16:00 | I go back to the office and recap each discussed item with the staff from LNG Japan who also attended the meeting. This is to make sure that there was no mishearing or misunderstanding. Because this time we need to make the confirmations of 2 separate terminals, we try to pay more attentions to the differences in details. |
| 17:00 | A phone call from the Tokyo operation center while making the report. They tell me that the loading operation in Papua New Guinea is delayed by one day. I immediately talk to my travel agency about the change I need to make for the flight and the accommodation. |
| 18:30 | Now the report is done; I leave the office to have dinner at an Oita-specialized restaurant nearby. Having the local food they serve, I speak to the master in our local language. |
| 23:00 | Go home and take a bath. I go to bed after checking the results of today’s baseball games. |
What are your best memories since joining JESCO?
One beautiful morning, I was waiting for a LNG ship to be berthing at a terminal. There it begins a long unloading operation! LNG ships can neither berth nor unberth unless the wind and the waves are relatively calm. That morning fortunately, the weather was very stable and calm with only a small amount of wind. The LNG ship came in without any trouble and made its approach to the jetty on time. However, the almost 280m wide ship’s body seemed to me, somehow, slowly but visibly rolling side to side. I kept wondering why. At that time, there was a big typhoon further down south of the main island. This typhoon created “long period waves”, which were shaking the ship’s body. Later I found out that this phenomenon was called “Long-Period Oscillations”. In the end, the ship could not berth on that day and for another 4 extra days, until the typhoon was gone. This really taught me the depth of the shipping industry and the power of nature.
Please tell us anything that you have learned or experienced in school that is useful in your job in JESCO.
As I entered into an economics degree, I had an entrance exam. I could choose either Math or English for its subject. I chose English without a second thought. This still helps me with the current job I’m doing. At university, my study was on the topic of the EU monetary union. The professor had a big heart which made the atmosphere in the classroom always feel very liberal. I enjoyed learning the dynamism of the EU in that environment.
How do you spend your days off?
I love watching sports. I often go to the local fields where they are playing.
Baseball, soccer, and golf are the main sports I usually go and watch. Not just in Kyushu, where I live, but I go everywhere. It is also my joy to get on airplanes and bullet trains while travelling as I have loved transports in general ever since my childhood. Hanging out with the people I watch these sports with is another fun aspect. We share some food and drinks, talking about the game of the day we watched together.
I thought to myself that I probably should excercise my body a bit more so I planned to do some jogging in the future.
But it’s just a plan.
…The plan is not yet decided to be carried out.
