Little by Big

So Xiaofang is up in Tokyo and has been living here for one week exactly.  I started to write a blog entry about that last week, but got distracted half way through, saved it as a draft, and the UI on MSN spaces is so unusable that I can find where my saved drafts are.  I think I will change that in the near future.  Xiaofang wants to start a joint website where we can blog, upload photos, etc.  Though with the net the way it is nowadays, we could probably just go sign up at blogger or something right?  I'll keep ya posted.

Last week was the craziest week thus far.  Xiaofang moved up Sunday, we had two people from the HQ in America come in all week (both of whom I needed to meet with regularly), and I went to my first library fair/conference on Friday.  I ended up working 53 hours not including lunch breaks and still managed to show my coworker around Shibuya and Akihabara on two separate little trips.  It was insanely bad timing though so Xiaofang's first week in Tokyo was kind of lonely I'm afraid.  We made up for it by meeting having lunch with my old Japanese friend Mr. Yoshii (he treated us to traditional Japanese food which was really good and even gave me two tickets to an art show!) and then went in search of large kimonos for me in Shibuya which proved both successful and cheap.  So now it looks like I'll be getting married in Japan wearing a kimono, pretty cool.  Though with my insane schedule (I was getting home at midnight a couple of nights in a row) I wasn't able to study Japanese and my test is next Sunday!  Which reminds me of when I took the Japanese Proficiency Test 2 years ago, it just happened to be the day after Mom returned to the States after a week long visit.  I swear, Autumn is a horrible time to hold these exams.  Anyway, after spending a good 3 weeks studying pretty intensely and trying my best to not break the chain, I was kind of perturbed to have my discipline broken by something out of my control.  I guess I could have studied at lunch though; it just goes to show you, you have all the time you're ever going to have.

But enough old man ramblings; Super Mario Galaxy is awesome.  I was showing my coworker around Akihabara and saw Half Life 2: the Orange Box for 7000 yen.  I really, really wanted that game ( not as much as skate which still eludes me) but honestly I'm kind of sick of FPS games for the time being.  I know I'll get the Orange Box eventually and maybe even spring for Call of Duty 4, but when thinking about money invested versus fun acquired and the length of the games, FPS's don't hold up very well.  For one thing, they are short.  CoD4 single player is like 4-6 hours long or something ridiculous.  And while the single player experience is fun, the co-op experience is a blast, the multiplayer isn't really fun unless you have a few friends to play with because we already know that 90% of the people on XBL are idiots and 99% are better than you.  And losing isn't very fun :P 

But back to Mario.  It's nice to play a game by people that obviously know how to make games.  And what I mean by that is "user experience".  These people either know how to play-test their game to ultimate refinement, or can put themselves in the place of the user such that they feel you on a some primordial level.  The game isn't frustrating, it's challenging.  It isn't violent, it's just got action.  It's creative, playing with your expectations of a platformer while delivering a nostalgic experience that makes you want to go back and play more Mario games.  I guess I've been on a Wii kick lately; after getting, honestly, sick of playing shooting games after Bioshock, Stranglehold, and Halo 3 back to back, I decided to switch it up and play some Wii.  Wii Sports is still fun, Zelda remains one of the most compelling games to date, and Super Paper Mario is a nice, solid little game (which I borrowed for free from my friend, I'd never pay money for it!).  But Mario Galaxy is just plain fun.  Usually after playing a game for about 45 minutes I'm done, but so far I've played about 3 hours and I don't notice time go by. 

But back to work.  So work is keeping me busy, but that's a good thing.  It's nice to have Xiaofang here, coming home to someone makes all the difference in the world.  Life is good.  And very different than the previous two years, and yet somehow I feel more settled down in Tokyo than Shikoku.  I guess that's an obvious statement since I'm working a job in the corporate world, living with my fiance, and not in the country any more.  And yet, it is a big change.  The small difference between my current job and JET has a surprisingly huge impact on me.  I guess knowing that my job has a future, in the since that I can continue this job indefinitely and get a raise, means all the difference in the world.  However, I'm still ridiculously frustrated by my level of Japanese on a near-daily basis.  I'm trying to study to get better,  and I have noticed some progress in only the month that I've been trying, but it's still extremely disconcerting when I think about how far I have to go.  Moreover, I feel that I'm destined to learn Chinese, so it's like if I get really good at Japanese I'm not even done there.  But I guess it's something to look forward to as well!

But back to life.  We spent the weekend leisurely after kimono shopping (renting) by doing an hour of karaoke (I mainly listened to Xiaofang sing :P) and then saw the Bourne Ultimatum which just came out this weekend.  Xiaofang loved it!  Of course I knew she would, it's her type of movie to the T, but I'm glad she enjoyed it.  I've always been a huge fan of the series (in print as well) and was happy to see that the 3rd movie was a good ride despite a different director.  The one large car chase seen was just insane!  She wants to go back and watch the first two movies now, which I conveniently have on DVD, so I suppose we'll get around to that this week.  Sunday was spent (and is being spent this minute) in the laziest of fashions sleeping in until midday, cooking omelettes for lunch, sleeping some more, cooking curry for dinner, and getting in some Mario Galaxy time.  I guess I'll start another movie soon to round off the weekend and then hit the sheets for another day in the rat race.  I'm beginning to sound like my dad! :p

Well, my month or so of hip hop addiction (Kanye - Graduation, Swollen Members - Black Magic mainly) was abruptly ended by the new Jimmy Eat World album, Chase This Light.  I must say, it's great.  Standout tracks are the single and album-opener Big Casino, Electable, and Firefight; but they're all pretty good.

In other news, the Red Sox have won the American League Championship, heading to the World Series with the Rockies.  With a couple of Japanese pitchers on the team, the famous one being Daisuke Matsuzaka, it's all over the news in Japan.  It's funny how popular these guys over here, I think it's the dream of probably 90% of all boys in high school to go play baseball in the MLB.  It's like their version of being a rock star.  It's also funny how if there's not a Japanese player then they really could care less about American baseball.  Though I doubt we could care less about Japanese baseball.

In yet other news, the Chinese communist party had it's big meeting recently and decided the fate of the country for the next 5 years.  Really it means nothing to me (not yet anyway) but I will be in the country (with my parents!) in about 6 months.  Speaking of which,  I should really book those plane tickets...  The thing that really surprised me was the good ol' hammer and sickle on the nametags of the people attending the meeting and on other banners.  I wasn't aware that that symbol was still in use, and it's honestly kind of unsettling!  I guess China still hasn't moved past it's old ways (also, not yet).

Wednesday is my next little business excursion, this time to Nagoya for two days; making it the first time I will have spent the night on a business trip.  I'm looking forward to it and may take the opportunity to meet up with my friend from college and Hokkaido buddy Jennifer, who is currently studying Japanese in the area.  This will be my first time to Nagoya, which also happens to be the birthplace of my good buddy Aaron, so I'm interested to check it out.  From what I hear from Japanese people though, it's not very interesting ^-^  Apparently a lot of people see it as a bland city that's neither the big city like Tokyo (though Nagoya is the 3rd largest) or the crazy homeland of comedians that is western Japan.  It is, however, the hometown of Toyota, but the company is located apparently pretty far outside of the city.  Anyway, I'm excited to go see it and visit some more universities.

I'm still holding off on skate and Half Life 2: the Orange Box ... but barely.  Dave invites me pretty regularly to take a nice, friendly, wallet destroying stroll down to Akihabara and buy both of them.  So far I've resisted, but he's slowly chipping away at me.  However, I'm trying to find an alternative in looking in forums to trade games with people.  So far, no luck.  Halo 3 multiplayer still continues to be quite enjoyable, though I must admit that it dregs up the absolute worst of the internet.  I did write a write up of what happened and even included a clever little punchline, but unfortunately I don't think I can reproduce what was said with my mom (sup mom!) reading this and potentially my boss googling my name.  I swear, the internet is just no fun anymore :P

I will leave you with this: my favorite TV show in Japan, Hey, Hey, Hey just started with Cindy Lauper delivering the opening ... yeah! Also, BoA looks kinda old (how disappointing) and Koreans speak the best Japanese on the planet ... much better than actual Japanese people :P

Update: BoA just put on glasses; I take back every bad thing I ever said about you.  I still love you baby.

Update 2: I just saw a commecial for chocolate that made me loose it, and sure enough, it's on youtube!  Ok, maybe the internet is still kinda fun :P  European pear FTW!

I made it down to Kagawa last week for a 3-day weekend.  The nice thing about working in Japan is that they have more national holidays than pretty much everywhere I believe.  Pretty much every weekend in September is a 3-day weekend, so when October hits you really aren't used to being at work on a Monday :P  The weekend was really refreshing; I didn't quite realize just how much Kagawa has been my home and really a large part of my life until leaving and going back periodically.  Of course, not only did I change locales and move to Tokyo, I started living by myself, away from my friends, and doing a completely different job.  Anyway, Tokyo life is pretty good, however by the time you subtract your unemployment insurance, health insurance, income tax, social security (I'm now on the "salaryman" social security instead of the national security which is great "you get so much money back!" .... but you pay so much more into it!), that in reality I think Xiaofang makes more money than I do.  Nice! How much of that is going out into the "real world" versus living in Tokyo sucks?  I guess I'll never know until I move back to the States, but hopefully I'll be making a larger salary then.  I did look around on some job websites, and there are quite a few jobs I'm qualified for in Tokyo, and it seems like quite a few more I'll be qualified for in a couple of years if I keep working the job I'm at and improving my Japanese.  That's the thing eh?  You gotta get the Japanese better, and I've been feeling really frustrated with my level as of late.  Sure it's great when you first meet someone,
      "Your Japanese is so good!"
      "Thank you, but no I'm still studying..."
      "But you can carry on normal conversation!"
      "Yes, but I'm not here carry on normal conversation, I'm here to do business...."
      "And you use chopsticks so well!"
      "Thanks......"
Honestly though, sometimes I can understand the news and I'm so happy and then the next day (it always happens the next day, hour, minute....) someone will say something that I don't understand that's always insanely simple.  It's so frustrating.  Perhaps I'd feel better if I was studying and trying my best, but I'm not.  That makes it that much worse.  So, I registered for the Japanese Business Test in November.  Stupid, I know.  But I figured it would be good to have a target and, with a hefty price of 7000 yen registration fee, I'll kick myself if I don't study.  Another added benefit is that the JBT, unlike the more widely taken Japanese Language Proficiency Test, is just one test despite having multiple rankings.  Basically you take the same test as everyone else, and how you do determines what level you are.  The Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) however, has a seperate test for each level, so if you fail that test you get nothing.  I know this because I took the 2nd level test (1 is highest, 4th is lowest) when I first arrived in Japan almost 2 years ago.  Apparently 4 years of university Japanese couldn't adequately prepare me because I failed quite horribly (50%).  Honestly though, anything less than 2nd level is pretty much meaningless in terms of finding a job.  While 3rd level is pretty much all you need to know for everyday communication, the gap between 3rd and 2nd is quite large; say the difference been middle school and high school level English with 1st level being roughly equivalent to low-level university.  However, I know plenty of people that have 2nd level that can't speak Japanese all that well!

Not to get off a tangent or anything, but this blog entry is pretty much stream of consciousness. I'm currently waiting on my rice to finish cooking in my rice cooker while my curry simmers on the stove.  Since coming to Tokyo I have actually started cooking more and am finding it surprisingly enjoyable.  I'll admit, it was very, very tiring at first.  I didn't know the recipes, I didn't know where the cheap grocery stores where, etc.  But now I can cook my favorite curry from memory and whip up some pork with cabbage and chicken with turnips pretty quickly as well.  The most surprisng thing though, is that its a serious stress reliever.  For one thing, it forces me to unplug from the computer for a while, and also it requires just enough concentration for me to be able to clear my head, but also provides a little downtime here and there to let me kind of work things out.  The sheer moment of joy however was when I was exiting the station and got a craving for curry, some curry I had eaten somewhere was good, where was it....oh yeah! I cooked it!  It was the first time I actually wanted to eat my own cooking versus just doing it to save money or because I was too lazy to go outside.  I could see, however, becoming less tolerant of low-level restaurants (sup Dad) and thinking to myself," This is horrible, I can cook better than this!".  Regardless, I'm quite fatuated with this curry, as you can see, it's just onions, spinach, grounded beef, curry powder, and garbanzo beans (which are awesome, who knew?) mixed with some water, salt, pepper, curry powder, and ketchup.  It's quick to cook and insanely filling.  As for the rice, the rice-cooker does all the work while the curry simmers and there ya go!  Cheap too!

Enough gushing over my own cooking and on to more manly and geekier things: Halo.  3 to be exact.  It's good, in the sense that Halo games are good.  I mean, it's the same thing, and that's a good thing, right?  Honestly, I don't know why anyone that plays FPS games on a PC would ever play this.  I know that's an elitist thing to say, but it's ok, I'm elite.  Anyway, back in the day people may have heard of this thing called a computer that played games on the internet for free.  It's amazing, and still exists today.  You too can own one, in fact, you probably have one already, just waiting to deilver "HD" graphics that we've had for 10 years (sup 1024x768).   I know PC gamers are snobs, and they have a right to be.  But the thing about Halo 3 is, it's the only console game that makes me relive the glory days on the PC, that brings it back.  Of course, Half Life 2: Orange Box has just been released so as soon as that is procured I'll probably not have a clue as to what Halo is except the girliest name for a man's game ever created.  By the way, did I mention how awesome Team Fortress 2 looks?  I'd go buy a new PC to play the thing if I thought I could get a decent ping over here...

hmm nothing much else going on....except I'm in engaged! whoop!  So it's official now, Xiaofang and I are getting married, and insanely fast too.  But, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Of course in true Dustin fashion, things are complicated.  We aren't content to have one wedding like most chumps, no sir, instead we're having 3.  One for each title in the Halo series....:P  The first one is in Japan, featuring a smaller number of guests, intense single-player action (that came out wrong!) and white kimono (yeah, no analogy there) in November.  The second is the more multiplayer of the deal with a guest list of over 150 strong and all the alcohol and cigarettes you can shake a stick at (take that Halo!), the third is to be released in the US sometime next year, but hasn't gone gold yet.  Hopefully details about the beta will be leaked soon.  People that live in Japan: expect your invitations or just sign up on facebook for the love of God.  If you don't get one, come anyway.  It's the big party with all the foreigners in Kagawa.  People outside of Japan: hold your horses (that came out wrong!) or come on over to Japan or China, now you have an excuse to do some traveling!

Now back to my curry cooking and business news, isn't being an adult grand?

figured out how to blog from my phone. in kagawa now, there should be some photos being uploaded too!

Well I guess there's so much stuff going on I haven't had the will power to do much except play games and cook when I come home, but I have been doing a ton of that; especially of the former :P  Bioshock was great, I really dug it but I did think the ending could have been better.  Stranglehold was a ton of fun and really satisfied my id, but it was of course over pretty quickly.  I've also discovered that my lag on xbox live is just unacceptable.  I don't really want to buy Halo 3 all that badly (surprisingly) but am tempted to just to test my connection playing against locals (that's pretty much the only popular online xbox game in Japan).  However, I've still got my eye on skate and Half Life 2: Orange Box comes out next week.  I think playing Team Fortress 2 with lag would just break my heart though.  So much for fiber :( I was hoping these issues would go away since moving to Tokyo, but I still haven't gotten bit torrent working either.  I want to switch service providers (you can use multiple providers with the fiber service) because I know plenty of people that use different providers and bit torrent like mad.  However the one I found requires a credit card ... a japanese credit card.  I signed up for a Japanese credit card when I got my bank account but for some reason didn't get the card.  I would go talk to the bank but of course they're open 9-3 on weekdays only.  Welcome to Japan, you're always one crucial, asinine step away from what you want to do.  But they'll always screw you in the end, count on it.

Anyway, I'm getting more involved at work more and more, and it's fun.  I still haven't gone out of the office since the last time I posted, but at least I was able to get some training with the Korea boss when he was in town.  Soon I'll go through some online training and get to do even more; I'm looking forward to it.

Still though, it feels like a cycle.  Go to work, wish I was home sitting around.  Go home, wish I was at work and not just sitting around.  I think part of it is that I feel like I'm just waiting until Xiaofang moves to Tokyo.  Like that feeling you have when you have something planned and you have about an hour until it starts; you can't start anything new but it's too long to just sit there and you are kind of at a loss as to what to do.  It's like that, only 2 or 3 months long.

Today I left the office to go to visit some potential clients.  I usually don't start work until 9 (ish) but in order to make the bullet train I left early at 7 to be safe and arrived at 7:50 at Tokyo Station.  My coworker and I caught the bullet train 8:24 heading north towards Niigata Prefecture where our two university visits for the day are located.  The metropolis of Tokyo endured surprisingly long; the 20 story baby skyscrapers of downtown gave way to packed houses and shops of the shita-machi quickly enough near Ueno before succumbing to the park-infused landscape of the suburbs with the occasional rectangular 4 story monstrosity of a shopping mall.  After Omiya we were on our way towards the country-side through a series of tunnels that despite the speed of our transport, refused to give way to sunlight.  I couldn't imagine how many thousands of hours of thousands of hands of both machine and man the tunnels must have taken to build, but it was impressive and made me want to learn more about the CCC-esque structure of Japanese construction. 

We changed to a small bus at 10:00 filled with English-speaking students 5 minutes after our arrival bound for the International University of Japan.  The meeting went quickly and the staff we met were, according to my co-worker, "like familiy".  We demonstrated some of our products and answered questions and were soon back at the station and on the bullet train for another 15 minutes before arriving at Nagaoka.  At Nagaoka station we rented a car; a Honda Fit which is a little four dour sedan much like a Toyota Prius but I'm not sure if it's a hybrid.  We then stopped for lunch at a soba restaurant and ate some noodles and tempura shrimp as quickly as we could before another meeting at 2.  The thing that struck me the most about Nagaoka is that it feels like America.  It's one of the few areas of Japan that isn't heaviliy populated like Tokyo, but still has a lot of land.  So, things are more spread out with large shopping centers and they're accompanying parking lots, a Ford dealership, McDonald's and other big Home Depot-esque "home centers".  On the way back we even saw a gun and ammunition store.  Even though guns are normally illegal in Japan, apparently if you're a hunter you can still get one with a license.  Sorry dad, I don't know what they are hunting!  But in a high snowy mountain range, I can only imagine. 

With another demonstration, this time in a large conference room reminiscent of the UN or something, we got into a discussion with some of the staff of the library for almost an hour; but that at least meant they were interested :)  By now it was almost 5 which meant....German food!  We had only an hour before our train ride home so we returned our car and destroyed some German sausages, salad, and a pizza at the local Baren Baren (I think that's what its called).  After an 8:00 arrival at Tokyo Station I was back at home by 9 after a full 14 hour day.  The great thing about traveling so far is that the company pays for you, but you still get to take all of the memories and pictures you want just the same...in between some business meetings.  It still was a long day.

This weekend turned out to be quite awesome.  Friday night I went and picked up a couple of DVDs after work, The Usual Suspects and The Inside Man, which one might say are very similar movies on some level despite being made some 10 years apart (though of course Hollywood is 90% remakes/rip offs/homages anyway).  I actually didn't get to watching them Friday night, instead opting for some Xbox 360 loving of Blue Dragon and Gears of War.  As of this writing I still haven't watched The Inside Man, but The Usual Suspects was as good as I remember and proved a good end to yesterday.  Speaking of which, I started off the Saturday kind of slow, but by 1:30 or so was on my way to Shibuya after stopping by Musashi-sakai (the station just east of me) and discovering I can send my poor Wii in to Nintendo to be fixed at no charge, including shipping.  In Shibuya I wandered around before reaching my true destination: the Apple Store.  Or as I like to call it (and the way I described it to Xiaofang), the Dustin Store.  I must say that I dig(g) the whole Apple product and marketing scheme despite knowing that it is just that, a scheme, with guiltless abandon.  However, my wallet isn't such as big a fan as I.

I showed up at 3:00 or so and got two appointments on the "concierge" service provided on two iMacs.  My appointment: 6:00 for my iPod (the sound went out in the right ear after 1.25 years of service) and my precious PowerBook G4 (it won't boot and is pretty much dead after 2.5 years of faithful and excellent service).  So with both of my beloved Apple products in need of service, I had no choice but to kill 3 hours in waiting.  Luckily with Xiaofang still living in Kagawa and me knowing exactly 3 people outside of work in Tokyo, I have nothing but free time.  So, I started wandering north, towards some park I had heard of called Yoyogi Park.  The way to the park was filled with pretty much uneventful but interesting things and pictures taken such as searching for good coffee shops, noticing the presence of a Haagen Dazs and a Tower Records, and other miscellaneous stores and restaurants in an easily livable area despite it being one of the most famous areas of downtown Tokyo. 

In about 5 or 10 minutes of walking I happened upon a wide pathway lined with trees with musicians playing guitars, bongos and singing about every 20 feet in a long row trying to get break, including a girl band on the way back.  Much to my surprise, I discovered that not only is Yoyogi Park quite nice, but it was playing host this particular weekend to a celebration of all things Brazilian.  So after indulging on a beer and nice stick of peppered meat, I was quite happy to spend the next two hours watching capoeira and a crowd go absolutely ballistic for a large Brazilian band playing what apparently were crowd favorites.  It was really a great time that I happened upon by complete circumstance.

Upon returning to the Apple Store I was told within about 5 minutes that you can either fix your iPod for 18000 yen (150 bucks, price of an iPod Nano new) or buy a 6000 yen (50 dollar) adaptor that lets you play the music out of the port that is on the bottom of the iPod used to plug it into your computer.  I opted to do nothing out of protest.

Next, I was helped by a surprisingly proficient and cool guy whose name tag read "G-man" and had most of his head buzzed except for a small swirl of hair on the top of his head.  G-man proceeded to tell me that my hard drive is pretty much fried, probably because back during the time when I was interviewing for jobs and spending more time sleeping on the train and bus than in a bed I dropped my laptop :(.  The thing was pretty much un-bootable and try as we could (for about 2 hours) we couldn't get the hard drive to move enough to back up my photos; which had we been sucessful it would have cost ... 18000 yen for a back up fee which G-man was cool enough to inform me that it was basically store/business overhead costs.  The actual service charge for fixing the computer would be 37000 yen (325 bucks) and that wasn't gauranteed to fix the problem.  I told him I would think about it and decided to grab some dinner at Wendy's around 8:00.  After a quick Bacon Burger Classic Combo (.... yeah) I went back fully with the intention to just pay the fee, forget about the photos, and be done with it.  But upon talking to G-man, my man, about the potential of there being additional problems even if I fixed the hard drive he pulled me aside and informed me that there is a place to get these things taken care of for much less in the place all things electronic in Tokyo: Akihabara.   For 5000 yen plus the cost of the hard drive, they'll take care of it and it's completely safe and legit.  I can dig it.  With my hard-won information in hand (and still all of my money) I finally went home, took a shower, and watched The Usual Suspects.

Today proved to be just as fun.  In the morning I had to go to the city office to take care of some paper work but it turned out to only take less than an hour and I was out the door.  At 1:30 I met up with a guy I met at a Starbucks randomly a couple of weeks ago and went to a rock climbing gym a couple of stops from where I work.  Even though I wasn't the best at it (i.e. worst) for my first time I had a blast and I have a nice post-gym workout feeling going on.  Basically like lifting weights only much more fun.  My friend that took me, Kousuke, is a guy that actually lives near me at the same station and is a PhD student in Biochemistry.  I'll always say, if you want to meet cool people go to a coffee shop ... in Japan anyway.

Wow that was long, time to play some Blue Dragon and maybe some of that scrumptious Call of Duty 4 beta!