For two days on November 1 and 2, three students from Tagoura Junior High School in Shizuoka Prefecture came to Polyplastics to visit worksites. On November 1, they took a tour of the Fuji Plant and afterward visited the Quality Control Department where they watched a tensile test and a MI test that measures the viscosity of melted resin. On November 2, the students toured the TSC building and were surprised to discover that many of the products around them contain many resins manufactured by Polyplastics. At the end of their visit, the students were delighted to receive a photo of their face printed on a POM plate with the laser marking device. We hope this experience will be an ingredient that is helpful to the students in making career choices in the future.

Mr. Shinji Sugawa, an assistant examiner at the Japan Patent Office, underwent internship in the Research and Development Division in Fuji from October 22 to November 16. The internship, which was part of Mr. Sugawa's in-service training, was held at the request of the Japan Patent Office.
During the internship period, Mr. Sugawa received training at the RDC and the TSC.
The content of the internship was as follows.

Mr. Sugawa talked for us about this training.

During the short one-month internship period, I had many valuable experiences at Polyplastics that made the training very beneficial.
I experienced the series of processes from extrusion to evaluation that gave me not only technical knowledge but also firsthand experience of the processes that lead to invention. In particular, I found it very valuable to get a view of an invention—information on things such as technical expertise and trial and error results—that is very different from the view obtained from a patent description.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my two trainers who thoroughly answered all of my questions—both basic and in-depth and everyone else who helped me. Thank you all very much.

Ai Suda

Hi, everyone. My name is Ai Suda.
I joined Polyplastics in August 2012 and was assigned to the General Administration Department where I work on CSR and Corporate Communications.
I've become a member of the P-Mates editorial staff starting with this volume.
Since I am interested in the different cultures of various countries, I am very glad to be worked on P-Mates. Through P-Mates, I'm looking forward to meeting all of you in the Polyplastics Group and sharing information about the many countries where Polyplastics is located. I hope that working on P-Mates will also help to improve my English.

Miki Mochizuki

I'm Miki Mochizuki and I've just joined the P-Mates editorial team. I joined the company in 2008 and was transferred from the Research Planning Group to the Human Resources Department this September. Although I'll still be doing office work, I haven't gotten used to my work duties here yet and everything is new to me, so right now I'm just busy learning everything I need to know. This is a fresh start for me and I'm sure I'll encounter many new and interesting things—I just want to absorb it all. In the process of putting together each issue of P-Mates, I'm looking forward to being involved with lots of other people and will do my best to become a useful member of the P-Mates team.