For many people in the IT sector, life is a flurry of activity from morning to evening. There is an acknowledged shortage of IT engineers in Japan, and an even bigger shortage of bilingual ones. So it’s not that unusual for bilingual IT people in Japan to have to work long hours and get few holidays. Today’s reader letter is from just such an engineer.

This week's Gadget Watch mirrors the past few days of the Japanese gadget scene: no big announcements calling for long write-ups, but plenty of interesting short items - a super-thin TV phone, a super-high-res pocket camera, yet another strange mouse, and more.

Apart from money, the main reason people join a company is because of an emotional resonance they feel after reading or hearing about some particular aspect of that company which indicates that it would be a good place to work. This aspect of recruiting is very important, because it causes good candidates to choose companies that otherwise aren’t sufficiently mainstream or famous enough to normally attract them.

This week's Gadget Watch introduces AV fans to the palm-sized Pro920 projector and the unusual NS-600 speaker system, followed by more news on the device that's taken over the Japanese gadget press this past week: the (you guessed it) iPhone 3G.