After working in the secretarial division of the Ministry of Finance, I studied in the U.K. for two years, starting in June 1969, as an overseas researcher for the National Personnel Authority (NPA).
I landed at Heathrow Airport as part of a group of six students traveling to the U.K. that included Satsuki Eda, an assistant judge at the Tokyo District Court who went on to become the speaker of the House of Councillors, and Yasuo Hayashi, an official with Ministry of International Trade and Industry who later headed the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency.
