SOFTWARE, JAPAN, SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND

I’m quite fond of this salad:
http://cookpad.com/recipe/942434

On another note, I enjoyed a “welcome party” Wednesday night. About 50 of my coworkers had dinner and drinks at a place not far from the office. A fun night celebrating days past with plenty of toasts to the best days yet to come.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play basketball much over the last few weeks, and won’t be able to play at my favorite gym anytime in the near future. The gym is near Tokyo Disneyland, which suffered quite a bit of damage from soil liquefication.

A video showing the ground moving not too far from Disney. […]

Here is a really interesting map showing all the earthquakes that have occurred since Friday, March 11 2011 (3-11-2011):
http://www.japanquakemap.com/
Japan Earthquake Map
It starts off slow, but it quickly speeds up once the main quake hits (the 9.0). Google maps is quite amazing in this day and age, but I have no doubt that 10 […]

I’ll be at the office on Tuesday. It’s time for things to return as close to normal as they can here. Help is arriving in the hardest hit areas, and they are starting down the (very) long road to reconstruction.
This weekend, I watched two interesting based-on-a-true-story movies: Invictus, and Shattered Glass. The latter was […]

For the last few days, we’ve had blackouts for at least 3.5 hours each day. They were planned blackouts, so we knew when they were coming. The blackouts were scheduled in order to conserve enough energy to reroute electric North to the hardest hit areas. I don’t mind the slight inconvenience considering we’re the very […]

Transportation around Tokyo is a bit crazy still. Planned electric outages started last night, and will continue for several days. The outages are 3 hour blackouts, and we’re about to enjoy one in about 30 minutes from now.
First there was the quake, then the fires, quickly followed by the devastating tsunami, and now the nuclear […]

[8.8 Magnitude earthquake hits Japan, followed by a 7.8 aftershock 30 minutes later. March 11, 2011 @ 2:46PM]
That was the largest earthquake I’ve ever experienced. I’m still quite shaken up, and am still being literally shaken by aftershocks… 2 HOURS AFTER THE QUAKE.
I was walking back to the office from an abnormally late lunch by […]

Wednesday’s basketball practice was great fun. We’re planning to enter a tournament in April, May, and maybe even June. My team’s come a long way, I hope we can snatch a 1st place victory in the coming months
In other news, I’ve practically put my vacation plans in stone. Looks like an 8 day […]

ぞうさん
mr. elephant
ぞうさん
mr. elephant
おはなが　ながいのね
your nose is long, right?
そうよ
that’s right
かあさんも　ながいのよ
my mother’s is long too
ぞうさん
mr. elephant
ぞうさん
mr. elephant
だあれが　すきなの
who do you love?
あのね
well,
かあさんが　すきなのよ
I love my mother

I’m making plans to go to Italy this year. Any suggestions?
So far it looks like I’ll visit: Milan, Venice, Florence, & Rome