SOFTWARE, JAPAN, SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND

Okay, late again… grrr. Must, no - Will stop this bad cycle of being later than normal with the post. I tried to take some pictures with my new phone today when I went to lunch. Unfortunately my plans were thwarted since my camera failed to obey my commands. Somehow I changed a setting in my phone and I don’t know how to undo it.

Phone camera = useless now.

With that in mind, going to give you a time travel experience to see some photos over the course of the last 3 months.

Colorful seasoning for the food I ate one night. Japanese dishware and meals tend to consist of a lot of small colorful dishes.

A belltower at the top of the mountain I climbed during golden week holidays. Hard to see the bell, but it is there, along with a big log to strike it.

Artwork at one of the stations in Tokyo… I think this was at Yurakucho… your guess about what it is - is as good as mine.

Friends that were recently married. Such a beautiful couple. This is after the bride had already changed into her 2nd dress (so it is not the dress she was wearing during the wedding). Looks weird with my one arm behind my back… I think i had something in my hand, like a plate of food lol.

Last night after work I went to Shinagawa which is close to Tokyo station. There I met Ayako and we then met 3 of her coworkers. Her boss Tomiyama-san was present and wanted to meet me.

So we all went out to eat dinner and drink. We drank a lot and ate some very tasty Japanese food. In Japan you cannot do one without the other.

I tried a certain paste that was green color like wasabi, and it packed a punch like wasabi, but it wasn’t. I dont recall what it was, but will research and get back to you. It had an interesting sour taste at first, and was quite good on some of the dumplings we ate.

There was a lot of talk in both Japanese and English. Quite enjoyable.

Working backwards:

Sunday was a day of rest, after I played 4 hours of basketball nearly non-stop full court games. 8:30am - 12:30pm, I felt really good after all that exercise, and tired. Rest was required and I ended up snoozing part of the day away.

Saturday we went to finally purchase a phone for my use here. Up until this time I’ve used Ayako’s phone when I needed to have one on my person on my solitaire adventures. Surprise was had this time as the phone was a bit more expensive than I counted on. Since my spouse visa is not greater than 2 years in length I had to pay full price for the phone in one lump sum. No special bargains for the foreigner here. Needless to say (for those that know me) I picked the cheapest phone I could find. Some might claim a phone is a necessity in a land where you can only understand a few people, however I still think it is a luxury item and didn’t want to spend much on it. Say goodbye to 200$ + a contract for about 20$ monthly

Also on Saturday Ayako and I looked at dresses. Wedding dresses to be exact (and not for me, to be precise). We went to a bridal shop and Ayako tried 4 different dresses, with an array of different accessories. I took pictures and gave feedback, not something I’m particularly good at. In fact, I think I was a pretty bad date - as Ayako invited her cousin to go with her this coming Saturday to do more shopping. haha.

Oh, here is a photo I took from my new phone when I took the trash out tonight. It is the trash pickup schedule!!

Here it is… 4 nice photos for you to enjoy. The first three come from a small corner museum inside a busy subway station. When they were building this station in Tokyo they found a lot of artifacts from old “Edo” which is old Tokyo. So they made a map of the old city on the tiles, and put up some interesting pictures.

Additionally you can see part of an old fortress wall’s base there too.

And last I have this really great flyer from Burger King…. Ok, I know, enough with the BK stuff. I’ll try to stop with this one. However, just notice what you can get with your meal here at this BK…

Yep, thats right. A beer with your burger and onion rings, for not much more than the price of a regular drink.

Enjoy the weekend!

There is one asset that all of us share, it is finite, unequally distributed, and although it is the most valuable resource we have - it is often nonchalantly discarded as expendable. Businesses often try to maximize its input at the ultimate expense of its employees, but do they ever think about whether this maximization is really optimal? People tend to ignore its presence, and they do a fine job doing so, but then again they never really gave it much attention until just a few hundred years ago.

Considering that it is the most valuable resource we have, I’m curious - what do you trade it for?

On another topic, on my journey home today I decided to take a few photos. Here is the most exciting one I had, well not really, but the others are for Friday. In every station and on almost every sidewalk are these specially ridged tile insets that help visually impaired people find their way around. There are different textured insets to indicate different things, such as the end of a sidewalk, a junction, the opening for a train door, the beginning of some stairs.

I have to give Japan credit for trying to be very fair to those that have vision impairments.

Today on the train ride I learned about kakushi aji and the tasty dish of curry and rice. Kakushi aji means secret ingredient, and there are some interesting secrent ingredients for Japanese curry.

Some secret flavors are made by adding different kakushi aji such as:

1) apple
2) honey
3) chocolate
4) and even a pinch of coffee!

Interesting flavors indeed - perhaps I will try one someday soon.

While a large group of my friends had a meetup in Atlanta, GA - I spent my Sunday playing basketball again. 830 AM at a park in Tokyo with a coworker. It was pouring down rain for the entire 3 hours that we played, after the first few minutes of getting soaked it really didnt matter anymore. The temperature of the rain water was just right that it was not at all uncomfortable, in fact it was quite nice.

So far we have played basketball 4 times, and 2 of those 4 times were during rain showers. Wonder what this next Sunday will bring

So here I am with another picture post friday. What happened on Friday?

What is becoming a routine (this being the 3rd time) I walked 15 minutes to a local Burger King for lunch and to spend some time in study. Additionally I use this opportunity to test my Japanese when ordering food. Today I was able to confirm that my lunch was eat-in, and that on my Whopper I wanted them to remove the mayo, add mustard, and extra pickles. My lines were something like this [with close to literal translation]:

“Hai, tennai de meshiagari desu. [yes, store at eat is]
Whoppa, mayo nuki. [Whopper, mayo remove]
Mustado ha arimasuka? [Mustard do you have?]
Mustado ha kuwaeru onegaishimasu. [Mustard add please]
To motto pikurusu. [And more pickles]
M saizu onion ringusu, [M size onion rings]
to M saizu jinja elu [and M size ginger ale]”

That is it in rough form… and it was a success. Next time I’m going to ask about free refills

On the way back I passed 3 restaurants that sell fugu. Fugu is blowfish and is an interesting meal choice. If prepared incorrectly fugu can kill you because of the poison that is stored in the fish’s body. I’ve eaten fugu 1 time, and drank fugu sake once as well. Here is a photo of some fugu at one of the shops:

I was so proud of my accomplishment in surviving that dangerous dish that I registered the domain fugusoft.com, and have big plans for its existence.

Ok, not sure if I’ve written about this before, or if I just have thought about it before. There is a store nearby called Seiyu. It is a pretty big grocery store / department store, bigger than most stores I’ve been to in Japan. But the most surprising thing I saw while there was this:

In fact I saw a lot of Great Value brand products throughout the store. So someone quickly do some research and let me know if Wal-Mart owns Seiyu, or has some form of partnership here

I am actually quite curious as to their relationship. Although the prices are decent here, we actually found another food store that is cheaper and closer. In these down economic times one must stretch every Yen as far as it will go!

One of my friends asked me to post more often, and to add an image to every post. I think there isn’t much chance of both of those occurring - I just don’t have the time. But at least I posted a photo today, so hope you enjoy Jim

Rain fell, and keys were pressed; everything in the universe kept spinning. Another day slipped into the pages of history; my life the unwritten story.

I met a co-worker from Korea for the second time today. Last we met was in 2007, and it was quite nice to chat at lunch. I learned a lot more about life in Korea, and am persuaded to travel there one day.

After work I took the train home and arriving at the final station discovered the heavens had opened. The rain fell in such torrents that my umbrella was unable to provide much protection. In that silent storm of pit-a-pats and splashing puddles my mind wandered far and away. Somehow recalling a poem from a book I read while still in junior high school, how strange to experience the human mind at work.

How the fires grow, peace passes; All memory lost.
Somehow we always miss that single door, dooming ourselves to circle.

Ashes to stars; Lies to souls
Lets spin round the sinks and holes

Kill the good, eat the young
Forever and more
You and I are never done.

Greg Bear - Hardfought

After the reception we stood outside in the nice weather speaking with Shindo-sensei, one of Ayako’s elementary school teachers that happened to attend. Not only did I get to practice my nihongo with him (he was a willing candidate), but he also got to practice his english on me (in fact it was quite good, at one point he told me he traveled to the US with the YMCA in his younger years).

When his wife arrived we said our goodbyes and then Ayako, a few of her friends, and I all car pooled to a local hang out / bar / cafe to attend the after-reception party. In Japanese weddings the reception is not the end of the day (in fact it generally happens early enough in the day so the real parties with friends can happen later). At the reception we ate some finger foods, listened to music, watched a video, played some group type games, and drank a lot (well, I drank a lot).

At one point the groom and some of his friends were doing some funny contest that I was asked to join. I failed miserably (really helped that I failed to understand the rules), and was out of the game in about 5 seconds, but I was not finished!

After their game I approached the groom and reminded him of a certain magic trick that I once showed him (he loves magic tricks, and had played several on me). The trick requires 2 people, the magician and assistant (i guess that is quite often the case). This time I told him he would be the magician, and I the assistant - to which he agreed. So, being full of liquid courage, I addressed the entire gathering in Nihongo and grabbed their attention. Then proceeded I to tell them about the grooms magical senses and that everyone must watch closely. With a full room of attentive people we performed the trick 2 times to the amazement of many (although I’m sure a few knew the magic behind the magician). In the end I dubbed the groom David Copperfield and solicited an applause and much laughter. Our 2 minutes of fame were up, and somehow I felt like my work there was done