The New Zealand national rugby team announced that they will cover up their tattoos at the Rugby World Cup in 2019.
This mark of respect is for the Japanese population who to a large extent and particularly in older generations view tattoos as a symbol of gangland crime.
But is New Zealand's action right? After all, televised world sporting events such as this year's football World Cup showed many players sporting body art.
Who should be more accommodating; the hosts or the visitors?
Tattoos are in New Zealand's indigenous heritage from one view and for many people around the world they are simply a form of body art much the same as wearing jewellery, perhaps.
Do you think players at sports tournaments should cover their tattoos in Japan or other countries?

Shocking clips of a man being attacked by a wild boar at a suburban railway station just outside the city of Fukuoka were played over and over on the TV last week.
Though the attack was short, lasting about 10-15 seconds, no-one came to assist.
It is increasingly reported in the media that bystanders are happier to record incidents on their phones than help.

That may be useful after an event if a crime is involved but it doesn't help the victim of an incident at the time.

What would you do if you saw a person or animal even being attacked?

A weekday morning student came back from Morocco this week to tell us about her experience there.
Morocco's agriculture accounts for about 14% of the economy but employs over 40% of the population. Evidence of smallholdings and low-tech farming systems are often to be seen apparently.
The food on offer, not surprisingly perhaps, was mainly vegetable based but plain and lacking flavour.
For an early riser, there was the opportunity of an exotic pleasure, a camel ride into the desert to see the starry sky before dawn, which in November is after 7.30 am. The days are short and the sun sets at 6 pm.
Day time temperatures usually hover around the 20 degrees Celsius mark.
The obvious souvenir to bring back was a carpet and that's exactly she bought, albeit a small one....
What exotic destination have you been to or would you most like to go to?
Have you ever ridden a camel, often known as a 'ship of the desert'?

Discussion centered on a film one student had watched recently titled Snowden. It is the story of Edward Snowden, who at the time was a computer engineer working for the US Intelligence Agency, the CIA.
He fled from Hawaii to Hong Kong in 2013 taking all the secrets he had copied, known as classified information, and leaked them to waiting journalists.
Other famous whistleblowers in this century are Julian Assange, the Australian founder of Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning, the transgender former US soldier, who served a 7-year sentence from 2010-2017 for revealing state secrets.
Both Assange and Snowden are living in asylum outside the USA.
A website that has recently started to make an impact in the same sphere of interest is bellingcat.com. Authored by a British man with no previous experience in journalism or intelligence services, it has revealed secrets about the recent poisoning of two Russian citizens. Neither died of the attack, which hospitalized them both, but in a separate incident connected to the same substance a British woman died.

​The question posed was 'if your spouse was a spy, would you want to know about their activities?'

Kenichi told us about getting stuck in an elevator in Tokyo on one occasion during his working years. Such was the frequency of the breakdowns of this particular lift that the owners actually installed a toilet inside.
This may sound a crazy idea, but after a strong quake in Tokyo a few years ago, the government explored the possibility of making toilets a design feature in lifts used in very tall buildings. It's difficult to imagine how this could be done....
In total, Japan has over 600,000 lifts nationwide, 150,000 of which are in Tokyo. Earthquakes can trigger safety systems which stop lifts operating, resulting in people being trapped for long periods.
Have you ever been in a lift that stopped working?
​Do you have a phobia?

Things which we had each done for the first time recently came up in conversation this morning.
My trip to Sun Palace for the first time two weeks ago to see Deep Purple in concert, also f a first time experience, was ironically their last tour performance in Japan....perhaps.
Akiko topped that story, though, with her anecdote of sitting next to the current yokozuna, who for those of you unfamiliar with Japanese sumo wrestling is the highest ranked wrestler. Visiting a local chiropractor for treatment while taking part in the Autumn sumo tournament this month, this was surely a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Unfortunately, she didn't have the courage to talk to or ask to take a photo with him. Oh, well...
Tell us about a first-time experience you had recently. Or even, a once in a lifetime opportunity that you either took or didn't take. Perhaps, it is something you regret...