Since 2001, Yoshimi Hayakawa, 48, from Toyota in Aichi Prefecture, has been living in Galway, a small and vibrant city on Ireland's Atlantic coast. After studying Chinese in Kunming, China, for five years, then traveling around Southeast Asia and spending three years in Hong Kong working for Yamato Transport Co., Ltd., a Japanese logistics company, Hayakawa made the move to Ireland to study English.

Her plan was to spend a couple of months at a language school in Galway, and then set off on a grand European tour just as the continent was getting used to a grand monetary experiment: the euro.

Hayakawa got to grips with the new euro, but she never left Galway. Seventeen years on and she's still there. And now she's about to embark on her next project: "Galwaymae-zushi," as she calls it, or bite size sushi made from the bountiful supply of fish from the harbor, a stone's throw from her cafe.