Tokyo NOW

This site has been moved!

2010-07-07T23:24:00.002+09:00

Hi,

Thank you for reading my blog.

For some odd reason that Google people would never know, I moved my blog to WordPress.

Running far, far away :-)

I am waiting for you to come to my new place. Hopefully, I can tell you colorful stories.

Have a nice day.

To No One Particular

2010-02-21T09:35:00.001+09:00

With the abalanche of tasks every day,
with number of backlogs tied to our ankles with chains,
we tend to forget the salient details of our lives.

Laughing together. Talking to each other. Doing stupid things
together.

The uncertainties and anxieties will chew you up.
Taking things personally will chew you up.

I have been in this mess twice in the last three years, but the
reality is -- it still haunts me. I try to put things aside, not put things away, but try to believe in my better futue.

I just wanted to say this to you all -- you are not the only one.

Taking Risks

2010-01-17T19:22:00.001+09:00

It is not so much about financial risk but it is a conical question that I used to have as a "non-jogger."

"What is the rational reason jogging in the crowded city like Tokyo while inhaling exhaust gas on the street?"

It may sound both valid argument and lame excuse not to excercise at the same time, but something changed in me.

A financial geek would describe as "your risk of not excersicing is now greater the risk than inhaling exhaust gas on steers."

Thanks, such a New Yorker's way of calling me an old guy while avoiding all PC crap.

Well the moon was beautiful, I am more than to hapy to join the club.

New Year Wishes

2010-01-07T00:23:00.004+09:00

It is a Japanese custom to make a wish of the new year or rather goal of that year.

Mine was something unusual for myself.

Because of the long commuting hour, I rarely have time to exercise during sun shine.

Bought some "Nike+" jogging wear, with an undershirts that they claim it rapid vaporize your sweat out so that it will keep you dry during your runs. Loaded up a free tracking software onto my iPhone (well, more precisely, the company gave me one, but why not to use it?) and I was ready to go.

My first night was with a full moon -- crisp blue air with white breath.

It was a bit funny feeling that I was feeling "focused" on running while listening to the music.

Like Nike's ad copy, you actually feel "You can do it" to push yourself a bit harder to run longer.

I don't know how long this will last, but I would like to make this happen for this year.

Describing Food

2009-12-04T09:03:00.004+09:00

It is always true that you need to get to know the locals to get good food.
Singapore, for me, is a particularly hard for me to find good place. I can read signs and guess what they are, but because there are so many selection, you just need to ask locals where to go.

Hotel concierge does good job most of the time, but sometimes they can be out of your budget -- not only food itself can be expensive, but I am talking more about how much portion of food you get against how much you pay as well -- or can be off your taste. Unless you are a professional writing guidebooks, you would be surprised of yourself how poor vocabulary you have to describe your favorite taste. It is a disaster when you are trying to explain it in a foreign language.

I tried to explain a few Japanese food to my colleague the other day, but I dramatically failed.
I cannot help, but wonder, if you can't explain your own food from your home country, how can you explain one in abroad?

Seeing is believing, one says, but eating is knowing, I would say.

Feeling Like Central Park West

2009-11-07T15:38:00.001+09:00

Narita is not exactly the center of city in Tokyo speak. It is 2 hour train ride every mornnig, probably seeing the same faminiar faces every day, without even noticing so.

Being away from the center has merits. On one autumn Saturday afternoon, you can read books of your choice, looking after your kid, on the golden leaf carpet.

It is not in the center of Manhattan, but it certainly feels like Central Park west.

- Posted from my iPhone

One With "Katakori"

2009-06-16T21:25:00.001+09:00

One with Katakori

Sometimes you don't notice something because they are too natral in your culture or too natural in your life.

"Kata-kori" is such expression in Japanese that I can't find the equivalent expression English.
Dictionaries say that it means "stiff neck," but it does not seem to translate quite right.

To begin with, "kata" is the Japanese word describing both of shoulders. It has interesting expressions like "kata no ni ga oriru" that literally translates "your burden is now off your shoulder," meaning "one is relieved because your pressure is off."

"Kori" literally translates "stiffness" but it more means the point where something unknown gathered and became one stiff. This is why the verb form "koru" is used to describe a person who is really into some hobby.

"Kata-kori" seems to be quite unique concept in Japanese.
We go to massage take "kori" off. Kids massage their parents when parents ask them to.
The ultimate goodies for having "kata-kori" is you can use it for a good excuse to trip to the hot spa.

"Kori" itself is medically solved problem, thus it is common for any human being. However, because English language lacks such concept, most people do not realize they have one. Maybe only Nintendo geeks and people working in IT industry notice it.

"Kori" is actually the part of your muscle with accumulation of lactic acid.
This acid is side-product of adenosine 5'-triphosphate [ATP]-oxgen reaction within your muscle after your glucose is used up. (Yes, I looked up the dictionary.)

Some theory says that this accumulation is faster in monsoon climate like Tokyo, but I am not sure if it is true.

I did not try to give you the sports chemistry lesson. Only I am saying is you can use this for purchasing ergonomic chair in the office or visiting hot spa on your next get-away. :-)

Therein endth the lesson.

One With Books

2009-06-16T20:59:00.000+09:00

Life is about ups and downs.
Hopes and dismays, joys and sorrows.

Some says life is like a jar of candies.
Sweet one after the sour. Sour one after the sweet.
Treasure your happiness followed by bitterness.
Challenge your bitterness, believing in the happy-end.

No matter how many candies you have, life is full of constraints.
You can be at only one place at a time. You can only be one person.

Books are something that widens your view.
Something that gives you joys and sorrows.
Laughs and warmth. Tears and bitterness.
You can be the guy, who dodges the bullet.
You can be a woman, traveling in time at the speed of light.
You can experience someone's life that you have never dreamed of.
Or something you have dreamed of.

Around the age of 40, I started reading more English books ever.
Screenplays, novels, bios and such.
With some strange sense of urgency, I am reading English books than ever.
With knowing probably the half of my life is gone,
I noticed I have not read any English classics ever.

So I picked up any books that caught my eyes --
screenplays, bios, novels, Sci-Fi, work and magazines.
The list is still growing, even though, I am an adagio reader.

Around the age of 30, I cared less of what to read.
Pick up the books that interest me.
Don't pick up the books that do not interest me. Ever.
With knowing I would have enough time to read,
I noticed I was enjoying books I liked.

Widening views has been and will probably be my theme of life
for next several years regardless of bitterness or sweetness that I come across.

Reading books is one of such experience I would treasure.

One with Goldfish

2009-03-30T22:19:00.001+09:00

In my favorite American TV show, the West Wing, there is an episode that Dannie (a White House press corp) buys C.J. (a White House Press Secretary) real goldfish rather than the cracker to buy her interest. C.J. bursts laughing when she finds out very savvy and talented news reporter in Washington's inner circle was confused between goldfish crackers and actual goldfish.

In a similarly strange way, a goldfish became a member of our family. It was one of those occasions that I took my daughter to the movie to watch her favorite cartoon and spending some time with meaningless crane games that you can never pick up anything out of the box because the hand of crane is designed to be just only a tiny bit weaker than it supposed to be for picking up dolls and ice cream.

My daughter was a next-driver-to-be in fron of those "Mario" race games so that she would have some driving experience with at least 25 crashes before the goal line. Some lady talking to her about usual social things like how old she is and trying to find out if she is a boy or girl considering rather short hair for a girl.

I did not care much because that's what people do when trying to kill their time and they get her smile if they are lucky. She greets any stranger, talks to anyone, and tries to enjoy her time together with anyone. The only thing her father is worried is she is probably too easy for kidnapping.

I am not sure exactly how the conversation went with this lady and a soon-to-be-fluent native speaker of Japanese (yes she talks a lot, sometimes, sentences don't make sense) but this lady offered my daughter a goldfish. A goldfish in a plastic bag. Just like the one you get at the festivals and never lasts longer than 3 days.

Frankly speaking, I did not want to take the fish with us because I had no fish tank or anything was at home, and thought I probably have to buy so-called "goldfish growing set" that would cost me two good lunches. However, the part I hated more was probably seeing my daughter crying out loud on the death of "yeah, you lived a day or two longer than expected" goldfish after a week or so.

So I decided to buy a large glass for a fish to swim for a day or two. I decided not to buy fish meal since I thought I could give bread crumbs.

Right after I released the fish into the fresh glass of water, my daughter was super happy to see the fish swimming. Yet, after 30 minutes, I found some probably.
The fish was trying to come up to the surface and breath.
Obviously, for the size of the fish, a glass was too small expecially we don't have any weeds or air-pump.

This is way I end up buying some 20 dollar "My First Goldfish" set at the neighbor pet shot, whose shelves are covered with dog food and cat's toys rather than ones for fish.

Now our fish is in a small tank with air bubbling into the water with two times a day meal. All of us smiles at the fish when it comes to the side of tank keep opening and closing the mouth for the food. I myself saw the fish sleep for the first time in my life.

It was a strange way of meeting the fish, but it certainly brings another color to our lives.

Cherry Blossom Rhapsody

2009-03-27T22:32:00.002+09:00

Regardless of what is said to be "Global Standards," it is Japanese virtue to either hide their emotions or express it indirectly. As Lafcadio Hearn described as "puzzling smiles," Japanese try to avoid crashes of emotions and conflict by answering many of the questions with smiles and rather prefer harmony.

For most parts of the year, typical Westerners may have trouble reaching to the core of Japanese feelings. With well-hidden behind the masquerades of implication and uncovered context between their lines. However, once every year, you see the burst of Japanese emotions everywhere. It is called "Ohanami" or "cherry blossom viewing."

Amongst a lot of other things, cherry blossom is something that tells Japanese the arrival of spring. In the similar manner, the residents of Washington D.C. would enjoy viewing beautiful pink veil over the banks of Potomack River. However, there is something different about Japanese way of viewing cherry flowers.

For instance, it is the tradition of a lot of Japanese companies to spend an evening together under the tree, drinking chatting, and even singing. Your bosses and colleagues would drink beer together under the tree they share, that would be spotlighted at night.

The new hires are asked to go out of the office during their working hour for the sake of finding the best spot and keep the spot until their collegues come on to the plastic sheets, while looking after the cans of beer and things to be eaten on the side so that no other drunk would steal yours.

You would be a hero on the following day if you get the best spot for your colleague. It is one way of contributing to the team as a new hire, fresh out of colleague.

Your senior would call for toast after a long hour of work (not so much on this party day, but they would probably start from 7 or so) start getting to know about the new hires and finding something new about your team mate.

The way they try to get the best spot is sometimes featured on the news wire and quite a rhapsody.

What I should point out further more about the cherry blossom is the special feeling that Japanese have. Not because cherry is national flower, but because we find the beauty in the short life of the cherry blossom. Imagine the trees were preparing for this 10 days throughout the year to have one of the most fragile and its beauty brought by its easiness to break.

Finding the beauty into the life of short living but living up to its full capacity shares the similar value with "samurai"ship. Not every Japanese is crazy about or being samurais, but they are more of instinct, etched into our DNA.

As festivals are to Westerners, cherry blossom is something that naturally excites Japanese.
One thing I regret is I did not bring camera to take photos of singing bosses in the park filled with full-bloom cherry trees.

One with Starbucks

2009-03-13T08:47:00.001+09:00

In the city like Tokyo, where everything seems to be so hectic and in rush, it is sometimes hard to find time to stop. The time you need to think what is important for your life.

The major habitat of coffee lovers, known as Starbucks, is filled with ones at pause, every single of them alonged with their favorite lattes, maybe with soy milk.
Some flip pages. Some just wonder on the street with their eyes, casually observing passer-bys. Some are time for dessert. Another seems to be enjoying their converstaion with their friends, yet not as so much as of induldgence of "Friends." They seem to have work to do. Sometimes you see the ones craming for exam, however, they are not exatly the same speices with others.

I cannot help but wonder, if Starbucks are to be oasis in the cities like Tokyo, will they become instinct if Starbucks is out of their business? They are here for taking their breaks, steaming off their pressure, with cups of their cappuciono.

Living in a large city if full of opportunity, but full of anxietry. Living in the city known with its insomnia is not only fun but with full of anxiety. Taking a sip of coffee in the long routine day is like taking a puff of cigaretee after long hours of gambling in Las Vegas. Appealing, but tiring. You have to stop and pause. Forget to priotirizing thing for a moment and get the feel of what's important in your life.

Over the steam of coffee in the shivering winter air, sitting under the steet side tent of Starbucks on the major steet in Tokyo, would you see something new? Maybe you don't, but yet it is the time you deserve as a Tokyo habitat.

One with Manging My Time

2009-03-09T20:20:00.000+09:00

When it comes to the point of considering effective use of one's own time, taking public transportation is not such a bad idea. You can read books, try to learn about different things on iPod -- even take classes from Stanford -- trying to solve the unsolved problem at work inside your brain, and even write a little column.

The problem is, commuting in the gigantic cities like Tokyo always demands you to stand-up in the train for a considerble amount of time. Yes it is fun to watch people along the way, but if you spend enough rounds, you get sick of it.

In order to add another color to my life, I decided to do something new. Like anything else in your life, everything seems just georgeous at the beginning and you have some restropects after a while.

Joining to the translation team to the one of the most widely-read maliling list and web magazine in the world amongst Mac users seemed a part-time, time-killing task. In reality, it takes a few hours each day, translating, editing and rephrasing, possibly looking for an equipvalent web-link for local langugage translation. The most enthusiastic volunteer translator renders hundreds of lines of English version into Japanese spending considerable amount of time.

Sure, you have enough time if you were a student at unviersity and yet do not have any familiy obligations that fathers have to fulfill. Yet, after considering this theme, I could not help but wonder, how the students manage their time if they are (or were?) serious about studying at universities? Also, you cannot judge if he happens to be a student or a college professor by looking at the domain name in his e-mail address. Ok, I take it back. He was spending measurable amount of time out of the good will.

Now, taking my eyes on to may daily live, how do I manage to write the translations while I even don't manage to write my blog daily or even weekly basis? There must be somnething wrong.

"There must be some tool that I can use in this digital age," I thought. This was the introduction of so-called "ultra mobile" PC along with some tips to save my time for e-mail at work.

Come to think of it, a lot of people are spending their time just sorting out their e-mail every morning. Some do with their cellar phones or iPhones while they commute, walk, eat lunch or ellse. I guess as far as I am concerned, their way is not my style to free up my time for other things important like spending more time with my family.

Changing the way to manage my e-mails saved a lot of time today -- I cannot believe I am leaving the office around 7 pm in the evening. Well, maybe it was just a slow day. What do I know after expereimenting it only for a day. :-)

Museum of Origami

2009-02-16T01:01:00.008+09:00

When something is there for a long time, long enough to notice it has been there god knows how long, you fail to appreciate the value of it.

“Origami” is such thing in Japanese culture for most Japanese people. It is just there, so that you don’t really notice the value and its fascination.

“Origami” literally translates “folded paper” in English. This is a custom that was inherited for generations from Japanese ancestors. You are supposed to create different things by folding a piece of paper -- mostly square ones, but it is possible to fold the rectangular ones into shapes, I am probably still able to fold it into a paper plane -- without cutting or pasting the paper.

Most Japanese are able to fold a crane. The cranes are believe to be good-luck birds and represents a long life. There is a saying in Japanese “1,000 years for turtles, 10,000 years for cranes.” It is a myth expression to describe how long our ancestors believed turtles and cranes last. In this sprit, when someone is hospitalized, friends folds 1,000 paper cranes, that you can hang from the ceiling. It probably looks like a happy bouchée of cranes for one in sick.

The attached photo is from the world’s largest “Origami Museum.” (Don’t argue, there is limited population of Origami Museum to begin with. I know :-) )

Everything in this picture above is made from folded paper -- from paper lantern to girls wearing “kimono” or to the hanging just underneath of Japanese café’s roof. (except maybe a little wire to hang that hanging from the café ceiling.)

Origami Contest: <http://www.kagahan.co.jp/culture/origami.html>
Origami Museum: <http://www.origami-hakubutsukan.ne.jp/>
Some sample foldings:
<http://www.origami-hakubutsukan.ne.jp/kan_top.html>
<http://www.origami-hakubutsukan.ne.jp/kan_top.html>
<http://www.origami-hakubutsukan.ne.jp/kan_top.html>

The crane made of “real gold.”
<http://www.origami-hakubutsukan.ne.jp/kan_top.html>

The smallest Origami they have in the museum requires a microscope to find. It is smaller than a piece of rice.

Good Direction

2009-02-03T18:13:00.003+09:00

While the majority of native speaker of Enlish are familar with the origin of word "news," the majority of Japanese aren't. It came after going to north, east, west and south to collect information. If you take the initial of each direction, it forms "news."

A news today is about the direction. A little more precisely a good direction and strange custom that I never had experience of until the age of 34.

February 3rd is so-called "Setsu-bun" (sounds more like "sets, boon" -- the day of chasing away the evel and welcoming the happiness. One of the customs is widely seen any where in Japan that we chase after the "imaginary evil" or what we call "oni" by throwing roasted soy-beans.

After mission accomplishment, each family members are supposed to eat number of bean that are as same as to their age. As any where in the world, how many your wife eats or your girlfriends eat are behind the heavy veil.

The strange custom that I was introduced some years back is called "Eho-maki." You have to see actual Chinese characters (or Kanji) to see how it looks like in writing.

"Eho" represents the good direction of the year and "maki" means a role.
This strange custom requires me to eat a roll of Sushi without talking to anyone else until I finish eating that roll, while looking at the good direction. How surreal it is all the family members are eating roll of sushi (not a slice of a roll, but whole thing!), gazing the same direction, without talking for 5 or more minutes!

This year's good direction is East-North-East according to the sources.

Coffee

2009-01-16T00:52:00.003+09:00

Like anyone working in the demanding, high-paced environment, my morning ritual starts with a cup of coffee. "When did I start being a coffee drinker?" I wondered.

Once upon a time, when I had seemingly infinitive time to spend, I used to cook for myself, indulge myself with good tea. I tried several kinds of tea from Orange Peckoe to Earl Grey. For some reason, expensive black tea was not my favorite.

After a couple of decades, I cannot help but wonder, if I could survive a day without a cup of coffee. A paper-cup after a paper-cup. Tossing them into the recycle bin only writes off the part of my guilty being harsh on the environment.

Coffee is like starter oil for my work. Making myself a bit clear headed in the morning, pushing myself a bit harder during the day so that I can probably meet the deadlines without being 100% exhausted at the end of the day instead of 90%.

Like any other rituals, when it goes wrong, you feel like things are falling apart.
When you get bad coffee, you would pretty much feel blue. So make sure you get a good cup!

Smile Conquer the World

2009-01-03T12:12:00.001+09:00

It is one of the weekends that I was taking my daughter to the in-laws.
We took a short ride of the bus then the train. There was something different about that train.

At 5 pm on Saturday, it was packed with large suitcases and the number of young Americans (so I guessed) so that my little daughter could not sleep. With a bit of disappointment, I decided to stand in front of 4 young female Americans, holding my girl’s hand tight. It is a bit for her to keep standing because trains rock a bit.

"Oh, my, they have 7 people's seats with their luggage," I thought. "Well, they are just visitors and too tired of caring about others" I talked to myself so that I don't have to be the first mean Japanese to these new visitors.

After a few minutes on the train, a woman in front of me suddenly started smiling. I was not sure what is was. Maybe my zipper was wide open.

She started waving her hand a little, half-folded, her elbow right next to her waist. I found out what it was. My daughter kept smiling.

I still don't know who started first, but my daughter smiled, the lady smiled. My daughter smiled back. Then whole group started smiling.

Her name was Heather. She started talking to my daughter in English. Unfortunately, even my daughter understands someone is speaking English, she does not understand the language. So I started being a translator.

She asked questions like how old my daughter was, what she likes, all the questions that women would ask when meeting happy kids.

She kept smiling while I was talking to them, until she was unsure of what I was saying. I went back in Japanese and explained where they were from and speaks English.

It was nothing but happy 10 minutes with casual conversation.
The best ambassador of Japan was a my smiling daughter who does not speak English.

Smile conquers the world.

Gaza

2009-01-01T09:27:00.010+09:00

As a person who knows about Gaza nothing more than the article on the Wikipedia, I am probably not qualified to comment on anything happening in that region.

A lot of Japanese are too naive in a sense of world politics that our peace cannot be maintained without power. Japanese leaders gave up arming ourselves after the large defeat of World War II, according to article 9 of our constitution. I would like to believe our spirit and desire to world's piece still lives in its preamble.

REFERENCE: Japanese Prime Minister's Office Website, The Constitution of Japan
Link

From the people outside of Japan, we are under the umbrella of US nuclear power.
This has been open secret for decades however not officially mentioned by any Japanese officials to best of knowledge.

On this over-populated planet, there sure is and will be conflicts of nations in future ahead of us. On this precious planet of ours with good minded people, there sure is and will be less fights but more friends.

Regardless of the color of skin, gender or religious briefs, we shall embrace our diversity and but not to underestimate the differences among us. Regardless of the location of the geopolitic implications, we shall pay respects to each other, but not to underestimate our stereotypes and unfortunate hatred we still posses.

Someone claims it is a naive idealism of Japanese, unacquainted with world's reality. By knowing our painful history going through two nuclear holocausts over 6 decades ago, with still thousands sacrificed from the post radiation syndromes, I believe it is our right to wish for the peaceful New Year for every single person on this small planet and people in the hard times.

I cannot wish more for the people of Gaza, for the people of Palestine, or for the people of other regions with the conflicts to stand still at the moment and think about other people's parents, children and friends. Think about their sorrow and pain of losing their love-ones.

Gaza is unimaginable become reality for most Japanese. Japan is unimaginable for most people from the region. For everyone's future and prosperity, we need to imagine imaginable.

Look up the stars. Think about others for a moment. There shall be hope.

"Look it up. The stars in the night.
Small lights on this small plant are
singing small happinesses.

Please look it up. The stars in the night.
Nameless stars like us
Wishing for small happiness

Hand-in-hand with me
Chase the dream
Nothing is difficult for both of us

Look it up. The stars in the night.
Small lights on this small plant are
singing small happinesses.

Please look it up. The stars in the night.
Nameless stars like us
Wishing for small happiness."

Are we too naive to wish peace?

8 Million Gods

2008-12-24T17:11:00.003+09:00

In the ancient Japanese language, the number "8 million" was often used to express "many."

In Shintoism, there is an expression "8 million Gods." This means that we have many Gods in Shintoism like Greek myth. In some books it talks about Japanese brief on believing in many Gods and Godess was derived from our primitive belief and fear of the nature such as water, thunders, typhoons and such, as well as fire, stone, or European equivalent of nymphs in the woods.

One of my friend once joked about our brief which can be taken as insult to those who believe in "one and only God" firmly.

"What's the heck, we got 8 million Gods -- I don't care how many Gods they got or new religion get imported. It is just another God."

The way he phrased can be the target of terrorism, but it points out a certain truth about Japanese attitude towards the religions.

We are open for any other briefs so that we "most of the time" do not have any conflict with other religion. We have Shintoism, Christianity, Buddhism, or Islamic.
It is another idea of God that we can simply accept.

Some people take Japanese attitude of celebrating different holidays as insults to their religions, but we are just too open to any options when religion is concerned.

As the saying goes,
"Japanese celebrate Xmas, hear the year-end bells of Buddhist's temples, and go to Shinto shrines for New Year's prayer. Most of them rarely go to church but when they go shrines and buy some charms for their better scores on college finals. If anything in common exist among them, Japanese are just trying to enjoy events no matter what."

A very different perspective, but bare in mind that there are some Japanese who are serious about their religious briefs too.

Language Divide

2008-12-16T23:49:00.000+09:00

There was times when “digital divide” was found on every issue of the major magazines such as Time or Newsweek.

After some years of radical movement of so-called “open-source” I started noticing the different division actually exist in today’s life. The separation of people who have knowledge and who don’t. The differences in people who use certain language and who don’t.

I happen to be able to communicate in two languages -- both in English and Japanese. My command of English is not at the level of “intellectual elites” who probably graduated from one of the Ivy League schools, Cambridge or Oxford. Simply put I may have a little problem communicating with people whose third sentence is already the quote from Cicero.

I lack vocabulary in chemistry, biology or mechanical engineering, however, I probably would do OK for 3 minutes talking to quantum physicists because I frequently read science magazines with full of physics jargons.

The revelation of “open source biology” on one of the Stanford’s Podcasts was certainly shocking because I have never dreamed of open-source academia.

As many of you know, the movement of open-source started in the US. It is likely that US is going to take initiative in this arena while Europeans like Linus and other people are doing darn good job.

Now guess what? They are all available in English.

One of the good reasons to stay at Sun is if you have time and ambition to grow yourself, there are plenty of materials that you can learn from. The closest metaphor would be you are just put into a huge library without librarians. Only your own interest will take to the course.

One of such is Sun’s contract with Safari online. They hold thousands of online books that Sun employees can view for free and even download PDFs if they need to as long as we don’t go over our monthly credit. You can view books on proximity communication. You can download the books on Web 2.0 (whatever that means.) You can look for the old old book such as SCSI-2. Hello, this is in English only.

We can blog within Sun, experiment something, you can try mash-ups. We have ones for other languages, but early ones are released in English.

Some may argue that there are number of people out there who are translating, writing articles about or/and contributing from none-English speaking countries. Yes, I agree. However, for those people, let me point the top page of Wikipedia. See the number of articles contributed to each languages. “That” is the power of being a major language.

Language to ourselves is somewhat as operating systems are to the computers. When something become popular, they are widely used. The broader usage accelerates the speed of becoming even more popular. When something is unpopular, it will decline by itself.

If the number of computers running the operating system is equivalent to the number of people speaking the languages, English is definitely one of the major operating systems with tons of software along with large contribution of people supplying free software.

I am not sure how many people see this way, but certainly not the people who only speak in Japanese.

Am I too paranoid or what?

Obama

2008-11-17T15:02:00.000+09:00

If you are in Japan, you may have noticed during the recent presidential campaign of the president of the United States, some people from there is a place that shares the same name with President Elect Barrack S. Obama were on the news.

The place is actually called Obama.
I am not sure if they understood the significance of this election in American hisotry, the people of Obama voluntarily made the support group.
<http://i-love-obama.com/>

The city is a few hour train ride from my home town, and a little more than 2 hour drive from Kyoto, an ancient capital of Japan.

<http://www1.city.obama.fukui.jp/english/>

The place is famous for carps which were valued very much amongst the aristocrats from Heian era as well as the ones fished near Kobe.
They are famous for their Japanese paper, lacquer (not as famous as Wajima-nuri so it is “relatively cheaper,”) and agate.

If you are fish eater and interested would like to have a glance at old Japanese, the place is something you can consider to visit.

Mary Oliver

2008-11-16T14:23:00.000+09:00

After overcoming the deepest sorrow of my last few years, a poem caught me.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
　　　　with your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver

I heard this poem at an orientation of Harvard Business School application in Tokyo.
Regarding to the applying to the school, I don’t have luxury of applying now because of family circumstances along with economic conditions, but this sure was some eye-opener.

There are things in your life, you think they are so basic that you don’t realize, but it will be a part of you if things like her poem clicks something in you.

This certainly made me think of priorities in my life.

What is your plan?

Taking Things for Granted

2008-10-19T20:15:00.004+09:00

We take certain things for granted and we sometimes do not notice it until we lose one.

It was some kind of hunch that I started looking at some news video clips on the net.
Not that I am a supporter of either one of the presidential candidates, but I was curious how the debate went in the official language.

Thew good news was I found a classmate from my exchange student year to be one of the recognized person in journalism in the United States. It is somewhat fulfilling to see a familiar face on the other side of lens.

It was the same hunch that I decided to see my class of '87 reunion page to see if I could find out how other people are doing.

The bad news came.

One my best friends who lost contact with me long time ago because our lives changed so much in last 20 years died from cancer 2 years ago. None of us knew about it like a year ago and I found out about it today.

We always take certain things for granted in our lives -- it is certainly a shock to me to find out about someone who took good care of me with good mind with full of hospitality. We did not go out for date or anything, but she certain was one of my best class mates.

After feeling a big loss, I am glad that I still keep my year book from 1987 with her signature.

Sorry, I wanted be a bit more cheerful, but I just can't.

A French Chef or A Diner Cook

2008-10-04T23:29:00.008+09:00

I had a colleague who have pursued his new career in the world's largest PC manufacturer. While he was with us, he was a customer facing engineer, providing his best to troubleshoot and prevent the problems to his limit and beyond. Because of his dedication to his customers, he files hundreds of hours of overtime, as if he were a Harvard law school graduate new to the firm.

He detested the fact that he did not have time with his family, because filing over hundred hours per months means overtime early in the morning, late in the evening, staying overnights and working on the weekends. It seemed to me it was a "sure" decision he made.

After a month or so since his departure, he casually sent me an e-mail, saying that something feels awkward about his new job. It was a month after the departure, so I kind of expected that he would feel that way -- like home sick.

You know I am not sure if this is my job. I had more connection with the customers when I was working with you. I knew the different people from the different departments at the customer site, sometimes event went out for a casual drink. I don't have that luxury any more.

I knew it.

My employer and his company have totally different background. He would be shocked, I knew, but what I could say right before his departure? It probably did not stop him any way.

Dear (actual name),

Have you thought about the difference between a French chef and a diner cook?

French restaurants try to serve the best cuisine possible along with good glasses of wine, desert and possibly even music. French chefs orchestrate everything to "tailor-made" the service. If I compare to manufacturing cars, they are like in Formula-1. The best of the bests.

Diner cooks serves reasonable, tasty dishes even though the service could not be so tailor-made. They try to serve as many people as possible at reasonable price, so he believes that more people will be happy. They are like Toyota's. They don't manufacture F-1 cars but provide cars that 80% of people are satisfied with.

N.B. Actually Toyota now joins F-1, so this metaphor was not completely correct, but you get an idea.

It is not about who is superior than others, but French chefs and diner cooks are just different.

A Cook of quality cuisine,
- Hisao

Make-up In Train

2008-09-24T20:01:00.002+09:00

It was one of those usual autumn days. Clear blue sky. No clouds. Nice morning breathe on your cheeks. Familiar train, familiar faces and familiar music on my iPod.

However, there was something unusual on that morning. A girl across me in the train was in the middle of wearing her make-up.
Maybe it was not so much about being unusual, rather, I had been indifferent. But you know what happens after spending a few boring commutes in a long ride in the train. You start looking at your cross-neighbor behind your book cover.

You don't get to see women wearing her make up nnd see its process unless you have a wife or in the morning after the thing. In my father's age, only women who wore their make-up in front of men were prostitutes. Make-up was considered something to be private and no women used to wear them in the train. Train was considered to be a public place.

Setting public courtesy aside, it was both scary and suprising to see a woman drawing lines near her eyes with a pen in the rocky train!

"How does she manage that?" I wondered.

It was like she had an embeded shock-absorber in her arms. If she had the same thing in her legs, she would have been one of the best skiers in the world.

Lipstick stayed just within her lips. A huge shake. Well, she does not care. She was very focused.

After 10 minutes or so, she became from plan face to fully made-up with eye-shadow, lipstick and else.

She sure was NOT a "lipstick on a pig."

Kyoto

2008-09-22T21:53:00.002+09:00

(Left: Nanzen-ji, Kyoto)

Tokyo is famous for its insomnia. Kyoto has quietness that Tokyo often miss.
Tokyo is a cosmopolitan city and boasts its size while being a world’s largest financial center.
Kyoto wears its sophistication underwritten by its history.

Kyoto became a capital of Japan back in 794, while we had number of aristocrats walking in the palace wearing the layered kimono or “Juni-Hiroe.”

Juni-Hitoe (Courtesy of Costume Museum, Kyoto)

Kyoto is about two and half hours away from the center of Tokyo by super-express.
Kyoto is, however, not filled with the old buildings like you would imagine. Streets are just like any other streets in Japan, except you sometimes find a shop which was established a few hundreds years old.
(By the way, Kyoto is designed in the shape of chess board, so if you learn the street name and avenue names, you know exactly where you are in Kyoto.)

I still remember one tim back in university, I stopped by a Japanese style café without looking at the name of the café on Shijo street. A tiny 12 feet by 15 feet café was founded back in 1743. Kyoto is the city here the current and history live together.

Temples are same way. The famous Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion Temple) was founded in 1397. It is there, but the temple is almost always crowded by tourists.

Kinkakuji

N.B. Kinkaku-ji has three stories and every single story is covered with gold internally and externally.
The current repair was done in 1987, except the roof in 2003. However, the temple found an old document stating that the lowest story was not covered with gold with its original construction after the repair was completed.

If you would like to find a temple with silence, ask the cab driver the one. One of my friends from Kyoto told me that most of them have “my temple.”
My favorites are zen temples with beautiful garden like Nanzen-ji, however, this one is almost always packed with tourists.

Nanzen-ji

Like finding a favorite restaurant, it is one way of walking in Kyoto -- finding your own temple.

It you happen to be a woman, it is also interesting to be a Geisha for a day walk in Gion. Maybe other tourist think you are a real Geisha. (*1)

(*1) A little more precisely, unmarried geisha are called Mai-ko. This means the person who dance. They show you traditional Japanese dance. Married geisha are Gei-ko meaning they are people of talent. They play music and song while Mai-ko dances.

Some links:
Kyoto City Tourism and Culture Information System - by Kyoto City Government / It also has Chinese and Korean guide.
The Costume Museum - This museum includes costume of Japanese back from 16,500 years ago.
Travel Guide - Gion - The famous geisha district.
Maiko Costume Studio - If you want to be Mai-ko, try this.

Top 10 Signs You "Thought" You Started A Good Day

2008-09-11T07:00:00.000+09:00

10. While commuting on the train, a cute girl in front of you was smiling at you, but you had your zipper left-open.
9. You just burned your breakfast.
8. You are still in bed at 10 and work began at 8.
7. Your are on time and taking a good hot shower but find out you don't have soap.
6. While reading a newspaper, you "thought" you won the lottery but the 8 was actually a 3 with stain.
5. As a 7th floor residence, you find out that elevator is in maintenance just before heading to work.
4. You realize you forgot to lock the front door after coming to the office.
3. Your teams throws a surprise birthday party for you, but it is a wrong month of year.
2. When you arrive on time, a stranger is sitting in your cube.
1. At lunch time, you realize you have a train pass but no cash.

Top 10 Signs You Started A Good Day

2008-09-10T23:25:00.001+09:00

10. While commuting on the train, a cute girl in front of you was smiling at you.
9. You did not burn your breakfast.
8. Your boss found his/her favorite baseball team won.
7. Gas price is lower than last week.
6. You woke up before the alarm clock.
5. You shaved your jaw without a cut and left-over.
4. Your friend calls, and you now have a date.
3. You find extra dollars in your wallet.
2. Your hair look right.
1. The systems you use actually at work!

Different Perspectives

2008-08-28T23:42:00.000+09:00

When you are used to something, you sometimes do not notice you are.

I now own the second iPod in my life. The first was 2nd generation iPod or white one with a wheel, without any click buttons.
The first one lasted about 3 years. It was my birthday present from my family.

As the person who knows about the hard drives as his profession, this iPod was extraordinary tough. It traveled around the earth at least 4 times, bouncing in my brief case about 200 days of the year, whose battery was always out by the end of the day, and after all, it was a 1” hard drive with lower quality that what we have nowadays. It was actual hard drive, not a flash disk or SSD -- nothing sophisticated for longer battery life.

When this first iPod broke, I told to my wife without thinking much, “This is broken. Can I get a new one?”

“How long do you think my MD player lasts? It has been 10 years and still working just fine!” she said.

I tried to convince her the rough life of my poor iPod, but she didn’t buy it. What a different perception! But this is something ordinary people have in their minds about consumer products.

Well, how did I convince her to buy my second iPod? -- I don’t remember.

I have a second iPod, which is an iPod classic. It has 80GB of disk, holds all the episodes of The West Wing Season 3 - 7, along with a New Year Concert in Vienna, two weeks of podcasts from CNN, that still has more than 10GB left.

Yes, dramas are dramas. It’s just good for me to pick up words that I would probably never use otherwise like “filibuster.” :-)

I have thought this will last for next five years but I am not sure.
iPhone is tempting because I e-mail more than talking to people. Imagine you are stuck in the train 2 hours one way every morning and every evening, that blocks good 4 hours to call others for good amount of time -- e-mailing others seems to be a natural choice.

It will reduce the number of gadgets I have in my brief case -- two cellar phones -- because we still have SIM locks -- one PDA, a pair of glasses, keys, iPod, and books to read. In addition, there was a PC before I came to find a way to carry it around all the time. It probably weighed good 5 to 6 kilos (11 to 14 lbs.)

Well even I can reduce the items in the bag, there is the big problem -- how do I convince my ministry of finance to budge on iPhone? I got think about it a bit ;-)

Month of Oyster

2008-07-17T23:31:00.000+09:00

While Tokyo seems to enjoy its position to be a symbol of capitalism in the age of so-called “global economy,” there are places just a couple hours away from the center of Tokyo where they still enjoy nature. “Izu” is one that attracts hot spa fan as well as gourmets who enjoy fresh out of the “sea” seafood.

“Choshi” is another, which is located at very east of Boso Peninsula, where American Express means nothing to the local residents, like any other fisherman’s towns. If you are total stranger to the place and happen to have no local friends, you should probably find a decent inn or hotel that take your credit cards.

The economy there is a bit different, one of my friends say.
If you got something, you exchange.

Farmers give out what they grow at their harvest, to their family, to their friends and to yourself. Fishermen give out what they caught in the morning. In return, they farmers get fish, fishermen get fruits and vegetables. Likewise, you get corn for wheat, you get wheat for cabbage... When the whole year ends, they call it even.

Welcome to the world before cash.

My wife is originally from the place near Choshi. Last months, my in-laws had so many melons that they can’t even finish up -- gift from the farmer friend -- and each of them probably cost about a 1,000 yen or 10 US dollars for each. They had a few boxes of melon, so probably like a dozen in total. “You know we made a little too much this year,” my wife’s friend said humbly. Because you don’t want to waste them you go to your friends house. Well, guess what? Your very sweet farmer friend has already passed around the melons to all of your friends. We called it “Month of Melon.”

Months of melon is followed by month of water-melon and sweet-corn. Then followed by the months of “expensive” grapes and peach with sweet aroma, along with countless juicy pears.

When you move the eyes to the seafood, month of oyster is coming up. In western countries, I believe you never eat Oysters without an “R” in the name of months.
However, these oysters are so fresh and only consumed during summer time. They are giant and creamy so that only 3 of them make you full. When you eat them raw, you find out why Japanese calls oysters “milk of the sea.”

You may experience this unbelievable oyster if you pick the right restaurant. Go near the port of “Iioka.” Find the oyster shells just near by the restaurant. Talk to the local residents to find out. I will give you only a hint because it is always fun to explore. Even you can’t find the restaurant, you see the pacific ocean over the 99 mile beach. (Kuju-kuri hama.) If you happen to be a fisherman yourself, you can reserve a boat and enjoy sea-fishing as well.

Chiba <http://wikitravel.org/en/Chiba_(prefecture)>
Choshi <http://www.city.choshi.chiba.jp/english/guide.html>

It was raining in my house.

2008-07-12T09:00:00.000+09:00

It was raining in my house last Friday night.
This is not any metaphor.
It WAS actually raining in my house a bit.

It was very humid night.
A few minutes after I turned on the air-conditionor, I started feeling something was dropping onto my left arm.
I could not figure out what it was for a moment.

Yes, all of us once learned in the science class that there is limited humidity that air can contain at the certain temperature.
So when the air get colder, the moisture becomes cloud and start raining. However, you would never imagine you actually experience that in the house.

It was a bit of surprise.

Two Sides of Coin

2008-06-30T09:00:00.000+09:00

Things always have two sides of coin. When I have half a glass of water, some feel they are half full and some feel they are half empty.

Diversity and variety of ethnic group, region, gender and values is one of the strength that we enjoy today working in the global team.

Diversity and variety is leveraged even more when we share the common language and respect to others. Otherwise, you negatively leverage the diversity.

Some days ago, one of those days with quiet moment slipped into high-paced overworked days, an old friend mine phoned me up to my cellar. He was calling me from UK. He is a German friend from my exchange student year who speaks fluent English with mixture of slight American and strong German accent. After spending a few years in UK, he caught up British accent damn good.

He is employed by one of our customers, in UK branch. I almost did not notice until he told me about recent busy days traveling all over Europe like the circus go around.

I had a very strong decision a few weeks before he arrived not to buy their product because I had (and still have) nightmares. Reading crash dumps in my dreams and some con-calls that everyone from the account team was finger-pointing at me, trying to hold me responsible for the failed implementation of system. This was when I decided to keep their logos away from my eyes.

"Yeah, he was working with them...", I thought.

--- Yes, this was very much a "two sides of coin" for me.

When we met, he asked me what I do at work. I explained my role as regional techical support staff and using English sometimes over 60% of the day. I talked about I have collegues from different counties shared some sort on diversity.

He went "You know what? When we are using English as common tool, espedcially using English and cellar phone as communication tool, don't you have a moment when you tend to forget where he is from?"

"Yeah," I replied, "it happens. We are either too busy or too troubled to think about the differences. We tend to forget that there are people out there who have difficulties communicating in English, though they have to because it's their job."

Some people tell me that I don't have to learn English any more because I seem to understand every single word that native speakers say. Yes, I don't have problem most of the time unless they refer to the Bible or Latin phrases like Jed Bartlet. Well, you know what? It's only 90% of the time that I don't need to look at the dictionary. As a Japanese, I need to work on the fish name much more so that I don't get into the trouble when explaining things in Sushi bar.

English is the common communication tool. It is a natural result of the companies and the industry whose center of business in based in the US. Using English seems so "usual" and completely part of the daily landscape once you are in the global team. Now, is that so?

We tend to forget the other side of coin in our daily lives. So are we at work. Do I or do you realize the person you are trying to communicate may not be a native speaker of English, whose educational background happen to be in totally different language with different cultural background?

Being a member in a global team is the stage one and understanding the diversity seems to be the stage two. Appreciating the diversity and variation would be another round.

It is probably just a few moments I should take before actually communicating with others from the different countries. It is challenging but interesting gap to fulfill.

"H" for Hospitality

2008-06-28T02:10:00.000+09:00

The Thursday two weeks ago was a day -- I went through with less hospitality than usual. Yes, I was busy, but probably not so much of the "professional" attitude.

I gave "What the heck do you think I am doing?" look to two different people simply because they asked me an awfully simply questions that seem to be quite self-explanatory at very bad moment.

I was verbally finger-pointing at two of the tasks I was assigned without any description of what they want me to do.

On the top of that I was shouting to the guy over the phone simply because he wanted to hurry to solve his own tasks while I was dealing with other high priority issues and wanted me to solve it "ASAP," because it has been out there for 2 days because no one else wanted to deal with it.

Why do people want others to do things ASAP. If you are a decent person, you are always trying to come back with your answers "ASAP." What do they want more from me?

Yes, I owe him an apology for not being professional and I am not fair for confessing this apology on my blog. However, I brought this up because his "ASAP" reminded me of something.

Japanese used to be good at reading other people's mind.
Not in some "esper" way, but trying to read what people actually need.
O-motenashi is the word they sill use in hotel business nowadays, describing be conscious about the guest needs and trying to fulfill them before even they speak out of their needs but not so much for showing off your ability to mind-read your guests, but "half step ahead" service is the "sophisticated" service of all.

In traditional Japanese inns or "Ryokan" Nakai-san or the person assigned to your room who does things like bed-making to butler. She would prepare some cups of tea when you have your guests even you don't ask for them. We used to appreciate such sophistication and rather close relationship with hotel clerks. We don't openly tip them give them our token of gratitude to Nakai-san maybe a small gift from the local souvenir store. Maybe some confectionery.

Guests seemed enjoying showing their appreciation to the service.

Now we move our eyes to the industry -- in the very high paced, stressful industry, where many people believe e-mail and databases are like vending machines of their answers, we tend to forget to thank other people and more importantly, show such feelings.

The person on the other end maybe spending tens of hours to come back with the answer for you. He/she maybe overwhelmed by other requests.
We lack of imagination.

Customers are same way. There are many out their whose attitude is "I can order you whatever I want because I paid for the product and service."

Well are customers entitled to do so?
I disagree.

In reality, because service people are human being after all, you get more hospitality when you give one. Telling them thanks rather than yelling at them is better strategy to gain resource you need.

Me? I guess I need to refresh myself so that I can stop yelling at him.

Earth Quake Hits Japan

2008-06-14T21:33:00.004+09:00

An earth quake hit Japan today.
A large earth quake with magnitude of 7.2 hit northern part of Japan. The place is quite far from Tokyo, so we felt a small earthquake. Probably no one got hurt -- only I got sick like I was on the ship.

Powerful earthquake strikes Japan (c) CNN

*An onsen ryokanswept away by muddy water
Coutesy NHK

It was not so long ago, a gigantic earthquake hit southern China.
This earthquake seems to be as large as, if not larger than, one with the one which hit China. The number of fatalities is as high as 10 and causalities seem much smaller due to the fact that this earthquake took place in the mountain.

We are much used to saving victims from earthquakes after going through Kobe and Nigata earthquakes, it seems like, but we will not as days go by.

There is a Japanese saying "Typhoon Ginza" which translates "Typhoon Broadway" because we come across with a lot of typhoons. Maybe it is time to call ourselves in earthquake "ginza."

It is a bit personal for me, because the place is one of my friends home town. Probably her parents house is whacked into the ground.

G for Gravitas

2008-06-11T23:49:00.002+09:00

There are number of people around me, regardless of legal compliance, working tens of hours of over time per months, some even exceed 100 hours a month. The most extreme one is almost to reach 150 hours a month.

What is the life like if you devote your life to the company spending 100s of hours of over time through out the year?

• You spend days and nights either in the office or customer sites
• Lots of night shifts
• No need to mention about your missing day-offs.

Some people work 48 straight hours while they have to drive to the customer sites on day 2 with suicide traffic of Tokyo expressways.

I admire these people's desire to serve the customers. I admire people providing quality service with their gravitas at their best.

Some people believe that I lack gravitas because I don't work on the weekends and don't work 24x7.
I believe I take things seriously as much as anyone else. I may have different balance than people who devote their lives to work around the clock, but I DO take things seriously.
(By the way, I am assigned to be stand-by on weekends, so the above no longer is a relevant criticism.)

Life would be a bit more easier sometimes if I don't take things seriously.
Countless nights of trouble-sleeping, solving customer problems in the dreams and wake up soaking sweat in the mornings is not how I want the majority of my life to be.

However, gravitas counts to make customers feel the want to buy products from us.
Answering decent questions in the decent way is the first step, and if you can be fee consultant of the customer, that's next.
That's how you gain their trust. However, trust if fragile and instable like tower of champaign glasses. One little thing can ruin the hole thing. That's why you need people with gravitas -- honest, hard-working and have guts to say "no" when needed.

Are you lucky to have your colleagues with gravitas at their best?
I believe I am.

Error: Password Overflow

2008-06-05T23:48:00.000+09:00

“Ok...So how many?” I thought.

I wondered how many password and PINs I have to use to live in this high-paced digital life.

2 blogs.

Plaxo.

Another SNS.

1 Virtual World (inactivated ID on Second Life)

2 corporate passwords linked to company’s single-sign on.

2 cellar phone PINs.

1 PDA password for AvantGo to subscribe to New York Times.

Countless SSIDs for public Wi-Fi.
-- this is exactly why I am considering to join FON network.

10 servers at customer sites with 3 different IDs, which all have different passwords.

Apple Store, Google, Amazon...

PINs on bank cards and credit cards plus their on-line services.

“Oh, my... I don’t know how many unless I write them down.”

Open ID seems promising in the age of countless web sites with countless passwords. I want to know how effective it is.

I don’t mind managing the passwords. But, it should be a little bit --- a little more easier.

I though about using password management software, but I am too scared of crashing the hard drive ;-)

Pretty soon my brain will return message.

“Error: Password overflow.”

Time To Kill

2008-04-03T23:25:00.000+09:00

“Time To Kill” is one of the John Grisham book. Some time to kill is what I experience almost every day as I commute almost 2 hours one way. A lot of time to kill is what children have.

It was rather a casual discussion. We were talking about how fast time flies recently. We thought of the new year at one point, and then before we realize, it is April already. The years feel much shorter recently one said. Is it because I belong to the famous “dog-year” industry?

One of my friends almost murmured to himself, but everyone could hear because it was one of those moments everyone keep mouth shut for moment looking for someone to continue to the next dialog. He said:

“You know, the year seems getting shorter every year. There are so much things to do this year, and it seems more waiting for next year. In the retrospect, this quarter seems to have more things I need to get done than the quarter I had a year ago.”

Hmm... is it so? If the year is getting shorter in our minds every year, there is no way we can cross out every item from our to do list by the end of the year because pretty soon the list gets longer before getting any shorter.

When we were kids, we had a lot of time to kill. Hanging around with other friends, used to “walk-about” the narrow corridors and streets. Discovered secret trails to school and shared with your soul mates. We had nothing but hang out and have fun. By the time you are graduating from university or preparing for GMAT, the story looks much more different.

You have soul mate, friends, maybe your “meant-to-be” and people you socialize but you may not necessarily like them. No wonder you have less time. Yikes.

Your roles change in society as well. Students, an employee (employed or self-employed, doesn’t matter) or/and father or mother. You may be attending meetings in your community to improve school system. You may be attending about too little availability of parking lots in your district in regional hearings.

After a short thought like this, I replied to him:
“You know, I sometimes feel like your emotional length of 1 year can be calculated by 1 divided by your age. At the age of 1, it is 1 divided 1, so it is 100% of your life. However, when you become the age of 20, it is 1 divided by 20, so it is only 5% of your life now. So you feel one year is 20 times faster to pass by. At the age of 0 year old, it probably feels like forever, though a zero-year-old probably would not understand the concept of ‘time’ at all.”

This seems to explain what some people talk about their psychological one year -- it shortens exponentially every year.

Now I am approaching the age of 40, I have much less time to kill. It is difficult to find your own free time with many obligations as different roles in society, however, I always would like to keep myself being able to make time to kill whenever necessary.

Cherry Blossom Viewing aka "Ohanami"

2008-03-27T23:23:00.002+09:00

Cherry blossom is the national flower of Japan. It blooms right about this moment -- end of March to the mid-April depending on the kinds of cherry you are referring to. Not once, but multiple times, I referred Japanese as "shy and who does not usually express feelings verbally," if that stereo-type is still true. If you fall into the following category, NOW is the time to join us at "Ohanami" or cherry blossom viewing parties here in Tokyo, where you see the most joyful side of Japanese people drinking, talking, and sometimes even singing along with "karaoke," while massive amount of alcohol is consumed.

The Japanese obsession of cherry seems odd to some people and we even have seasonal "ohanami" information sites such as below. (The site is in Japanese, but you get an idea.)

An “Ohanami” site Courtesy of　Mapple, Inc.

Japan is not the only country which enjoys this flower, though.
Washington DC have number of cherry trees on the banks of Potomac River, that was actually sent from Japanese apple farmers some decades ago.

The prefecture of Aomori happen to be the famous apple region in Japan. Some decades ago, their apple trees were all ruined by the insects one year, which made them unable to grow as much as apple Aomori farmers used to be.
One girl (so I believe) from one of these apple farmer was an exchange student or the kind to the United States at that time. Coincidentally, her host family happen to be an apple farmer as well.

After this host family knowing the insect attack to their host daughter's farm back in Aomori, this family raised money along with other apple farmers of the region and sent Aomori farmers apple trees that they can use for recovering the apple farms.

Aomori farmers was struck by their warmth and kindness, and decided to send cherry trees as the gift.

Yes, these are the trees you see on the banks of Potomac River.

Maybe the descendants of these apple farmers no longer remembers what happened in the past, but it is nice to share the beauty on the both sides of Pacific with joy and cheer. :-)

National Museum of Japanese History

2008-02-27T00:27:00.000+09:00

Some of my American friends guessed that National Museum of Japanese History resides some where near the center city of Tokyo. “Well, Smithonian is in Washington D.C. Tokyo is capital, right?” A valid argument. Do you have the same guess? Wrong.

The place is far out to the west from the central Tokyo, about 70 minutes by train ride plus 20 minutes bus-ride, in the city called “Sakura.“ With as minimum as 420 yen or roughly 3 dollars and 50 cents, you can get the bird’s view of Japanese history.

http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/english/index.html

Some of the exhibitions are astonishing -- I did not that our ancestors colored our clay figurines with japan roughly 3,000 years ago.
(Japan is the kind of lacquer that you can obtain from poison oak.)
You see countless ancient copper mirrors and bells. The bells has carved patterns that share the similar shape with Egyptian hieroglyphs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_hieroglyphs

You will know our emperors made many capitals back in 5th to 6th century A.D. including ”sub“ capitals. You will learn famous aristocrat clothing of ”Juni-Hito-e,“ which literally mean ”combining twelve into one” actually do not have twelve layers of “kimono” but maybe 7 to 10 layers of rather thin “kimono,” whose textile differs by season, though they look the same at the first glance.

The place of full of green, birds are singing. On the very fine day, you probably would like to take your kids with you, especially when you would like to do something different from usual, but not going to Tokyo Disneyland.

You would find more history than in text books, because history books only talks about the side of story that writers would like to express and editors need to fit them into a one-year curriculum,, while museums don’t need to do so. I was surprised to find out “edo” (now called Tokyo) was founded in 4 or 5th century, while I get impression that there is nothing but grass-fields before 1603 from the history text book. It was also surprising to find out “edo” was one of the world’s largest city of the time without aqueduct and sewage pipes. They accumulated over 1.2 million people by early 1600’s.

It seems “Edo” era is nothing less than what we have today, except electronics and stressful pace of life.
They had earliest post system with messages transferred by relay of human runners that took only 5 days to pass the message from Edo to Osaka. Osaka is about 800 km or 500 miles away from “Edo.” They had world’s first ship freight insurance system, a “future market” to hedge the price of rice, and primitive banking system started off as the “currency exchange.” (Because Japanese had different currency units in the different parts of Japan, there had to be currency exchange.)

Going to Disneyland is exploring the wonderland, but going to museum is exploring the intellectual frontier. :-)

Build Your Own Mouse Kit

2008-02-26T23:09:00.001+09:00

As this year happen to be the year of mice, one of my co-workers made a very cute mouse kit out of felt.
Here it is. :-)

Pot Stickers with Insecticide

2008-01-29T17:11:00.000+09:00

It was yesterday’s news that Chinese exported pot stickers with insecticide. As the result, approximately 10 people experienced diarrhea or vomiting.

The insecticide of this kind (*1) is not regulated by Japanese law, however how can one possibly ship out the products that contains chemical which made 3 people in critical condition?

(*1) This chemical belongs to some phosphoric acid family. You can make sarin gas from phosphoric acid as well.

We don’t know who yet, but someone probably said in China, “Yeah, don’t worry about it. They don’t notice. If they do, they are not Chinese after all.”

Is this their show-down of their superiority toward Japanese because they are fast-paced growing country with nuclear war-head while Japanese is still struggling to go over 1990’s crisis and two bubble burst by IT and sub-prime loans with tanks that can run for only 30 minutes because we don’t have budget to buy oil?

I would like to be nice to the neighbor. Especially the old friends. Chinese has been our friend far back from 2,000 or more years ago, except during the war times. But I can’t do so this time.

Am I outraged?
Yes, because my family was almost hit.
We are not dead simply because we did not choose to buy the pot stickers while we purchased other food from the same distributor.

Outraged?
They are the country of double-standard, poors in the country side and riches becoming elegant snobs. They are the country of fast paced economy while trespassing our territory and stealing natural gas. They are the country of market liberation, but limited human rights.

Outraged?
Yes guys, even they teach their kids not to like Japanese, they are one of the biggest and most important partners, with people in peace.

Top 10 Ways To Receive Good Support

2008-01-28T00:42:00.000+09:00

For whatever the reason, including myself, customers only get mad at the support guy in a big system problem when upsetting the support guy does not take you any where. So here comes my favorite top 10 list again. Today’s top 10 topic is “Top 10 Ways To Receive Good Support.”
Some of them are jokes, some of them are true. So enjoy!

10. Control your tension and stay calm. Bitching about his support takes you no where.
9. Call his boss.
8. Ship him a new MacBook Air.
7. Breath twice before you start talking.
6. Write down what you would like t o talk about on a piece of paper.
5. Sign him up to the ClubMed and free ticket to Guam.
4. Try to smile even you are talking over the phone.
3. Write a blog, be a support critique.
2. Read manuals before you make a phone call.
1. Say “thank you.” Believe it or not, this is all it takes.

Saying Yes

2008-01-27T09:45:00.000+09:00

Saying "Yes" can be difficult in some moments to your life.
Do you accept his marriage proposal? (Not to mention you wonder about the future with him, his financial status, and/or his family members are jerks or not :-) ) Do you agree to resign when "organization alignment program" is run? Do you accept values of others?

Saying yes have lot to do with trying to understand others. "Would you like to make her wishes come true? Yes. Would you do it? Yes." This is exactly what you were just before your marriage or when you start
dating with someone.

It is funny for me, when I replace the "her" with the word "customer," suddenly we have many answers.

"Would you like to make customer wishes come true? Yes."
"Would you like to do it? Ah- I could, but I can't."

Doesn't it sound familiar? I hear a lot of them due to constraints of a lot of things -- organization, budgetary constraints, and or human factors. I had a exactly same conversation this week at work.

"I would like to have someone go to the field and support this customer since they have been supported directly by our company."
"Well, we would like to make sure we would like to do it right. That's why I did not respond to your queries. And if that's what you want to do, it is not exactly our job to go out to the field, but we use someone else. It's just not our job."

This was our first conversation. I am not sure this person was trying to be protective because they are already super busy or they just didn't like me, but it was certainly not pleasant conversation. I wish their response was something like "Well, it's not exactly our role to be on site but we will figure something out. If we can't do it, let's find
someone for the sake of customer."

Too much idealism? Maybe. However, saying yes to the customer is the bottom line of service business. We swallow what customers say, think about it and come back with the answers. You can say no to the customers when you come back with the answers, but you probably should not do it right away
even though you know the answers since it gives the sense of rejection.

Yes, the rejection. This was exactly the impression I had from his tone of voice.

Am I being an ideal business person to say yes to the customers all the time?
Well, I still have a lot to learn.

Tokyo Snowed

2008-01-26T23:43:00.000+09:00

As some of you may know, Tokyo does not snow much. In my rough recollection of last few years, it snowed less than 5 times.

Tokyo is such a metropolitan city with outrageous number of people taking subways and walking on the ped-walks. Even though they have picture of Mt. Fuji with snowcap in the minds, most people even dream about Tokyo with snow. This cause Tokyo to be unprepared for any snow fall that stays on the ground.

Take 5 centimeters or 2 inches of snow on the ground for example. Probably trains are late if you are lucky. Trains may stop operating simply because we don’t have way to shovel the snow out of the train track. As you can imagine human power is useless when it comes point to clean hundreds of kilometers of train tracks by hand.

People may slip on the ped-walks because their sole of their shoes is completely flat, not prepared for any ice or snow. They simply come off-balanced when they walk. Actually some people actually report to the hospital and ambulances run around to help people who slips and lose their balance, fly for a second or two, and then faint on the ped-walk -- possibly because of concussion -- so they need medical assistance.

It is amazing how much we are relying on to our mass-transportation system every day. Trains, subways and buses -- well maybe not so much buses but you get an idea. If I am asked to walk from one location to another in Tokyo, it would be troublesome because buildings and streets have completely different impression of the city. For whatever the reason, the whole city look different from the one I see right after climbing the subway exit to the ground.

Quite honestly, I could get easily lost if I am set to free in the middle of Tokyo without a map. To make the matter worse, snow put extra make up to our city -- though it is beautiful -- that covers up the landmarks of the streets.

I grew up in the snowy country side in Japan, so I considered myself to be a “pro” to walk in the snow. However the perfect disguise of city was completely puzzling.

Perpetrated Fraud to the Environment

2008-01-24T16:05:00.000+09:00

There has been may perpetrated fraud by food companies to Japanese customers for a while. People are almost accustomed to hearing about the fraud because there has been so many -- yogurt made from the expired milk, beef with false declaration of the product of origin to detour BSE regulations, and but not limited to the fat injection to tuna to make different part of tuna taste like its belly.

Today I found out on the news that paper manufacturers has been betraying the people who were willing to buy the “echo” paper that declares it contains certain percentage of recycled paper regardless of price they have to pay. I am one of such consumers.

I have been paying some extra money to digest the cost of recycling old paper wishing it may help my very own environment -- the paper I have been purchasing for printer paper at home supposed to have 40% of recycled paper.
It just not wasn’t. They only blended the lows of 11% and up to 53%. I even bought the New Years cards made from what they claim to be from the recycled paper, which only contained 1%.

Telling lies about food is one thing -- it’s a fraud to the current generation -- but telling like about matters of environment is something else -- it is the sin and lie to our descendants. It is the crime we are committing in this very age against to our sons and daughters. It is something we cannot tolerate or can we explain what happened to our grandchildren and grand-grand children? Do you think your children will casually ask you one day “hey grandpa, meting the ice in the north pole was awesome” one day?

The paper companies or companies like the same mindset should leave out of the market. They are in charge of the first degree murder of our one and only environment. People who were unknowingly helped them to destroy our world, it is our time to condemn them and start thinking about the way to filter them out from our daily shopping list.

We have to be smarter than we are -- learn about what we purchase, learn about the outcome. DO NOT let them fool you, and find yourself helping them kill our own planet.

What can we do?
Maybe we stop the air-conditioning one or two hours during lunch time and save some energy because we just found out we have lost a lot of tropical trees without knowing it.

Game Over, Reset, Continue

2008-01-23T01:08:00.000+09:00

Some critiques say that Japanese kids are less tolerant to the pressure and the problem with the human relationship than ever. Do you want to know why?

They say that it is the video game that have effect on development of their personality and their treatment of others’ lives. According to the critiques, the video games have violent, assaulting, and sometimes traumatic scenes within the software, which cause “inappropriate” development of children’s personality. Well, this sounds like what our parents used to say about the TV shows.

Are game consoles to the children of 21st century is TV shows is to children of 20th century, who are now complaining about the “violent” video games?

I believe they are very different. TV shows are passive amusement while some games are more active in the extent of requiring the users to actually perform something psychologically, even though kids are just punching buttons on the controller physically.

They actually kill animals, monsters and sometimes people in the game. They get hit, but no pain. They die, but they can come back with easy “reset” button or “continue.”

Unless the children can distinguish what is real and what is not real, it may end up causing them to confuse that actual lives have continue credits. In this sense, I am against children playing violent games at very young age.

The critiques may not be 100% right, but there may be some truth in their comments.

Dream Come True

2008-01-22T02:38:00.000+09:00

One of my dream come true sometime in future is spending a New Year's Eve in Vienna. My wife think it is a bad idea to go to Austria during winter because it is snowy, cold, and at the top of all, tickets are expensive due to ski season.

Well, I need to be there because I would like to be in thew New Year's Eve concert by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, dressed up in tux, listening to my favorite classic music, maybe start with Indigo-Marsch by Johann Strauss II, under bright antique chandeliers. Just like the concert in 2005.

Cost me a few million yen to take whole family on the business class? Well, I got save my mileage for upgrade then. :-)

Aiming High

2008-01-21T01:04:00.000+09:00

One way to spend a long commute on the train is seeing various "hanging" ads in the train.

In Japanese trains, there are various ads hanging down from the ceiling, such as magazines, make-ups, and even chocolates and chewing gums.

I was wondering around with my eyes on different eyes, seeing different ads in the train one day.

An ad caught my eyes. It read:

I Want To Aim Higher Than Anybody Else

"Wow, such an aggressive copy," I thought "maybe one of those 'your future is bright if you learn this' type of magazine."
It continued:

In Blood Pressure

I don't know if this was a joke, but it made me smile.

Some Phrases To Cheer Your Up

2008-01-20T17:48:00.000+09:00

Some people think I watch too much American TV shows on DVD and that's probably true.
I am making excuse for myself to watch them -- "Yes, it is to build my vocabulary and maintain my
listening comprehension skill."
(By the way, I realized that after started working with people in APAC region, this only helps me to maintain
listening comprehension of 'American' English.)
There are different phrases in my life that cheered me up (and some still do) at different stages of my
life.

The West Wing

1) When you are feeling down and asking your boss to take a break.

        “5 minutes. You can feel down, take a break, but get over it in 5 minutes.”

(I am not a good storyteller to tell you the warmth and dignity that John Spencer brought into
this line in the show.)

2) When trying to help your friend's son but I like this phrase in the different way.

        That's what friends do.

Whitney Houston

        No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity.

Latest From My Colleague

When I meant to say "I don't feel like a XYZ Employee since I am not blogging:
(by the way my employer encourage blogging on the intranet)

“Reading your comment on "whether you are a XYZ employee....." It looks like
someone has not done their job well to make you feel that way. Let me
reiterate, you ARE a XYZ employee.”

Though he misunderstood me, it was very nice of him. I am lucky to have such colleague in the same
team.

Time Passes Differently

2008-01-19T01:01:00.000+09:00

After Albert Einstein's "Theory of Relativity," time no longer passes equally to everyone. From the observer on the
earth, the person traveling very fast in the outer space has slower time.

Time actually slows down near the large mass or heavy stars, including black holes.

When they measure the time very precisely, you can actually measure the time difference between the
sea level and the summit of Mt. Fuji at 3,337m. (Something like 0.12 second/108 delay.)

You can actually experience how fast time passes. The boring class goes very slow and time flies when
you are with cute girls. While putting aside a philosophical question of "Where time starts and where is
it going to?" but you feel the time stretches and shrinks. How interesting!

"Oh my, time really flew because we were having fun!"
This is definitely the experience you want to go through as many as possible in your life.

Weight of Lives

2008-01-18T00:59:00.000+09:00

Back in 1992, when I was still called "fresh out of college," I often saw the news saying that certain line
of the train s delayed because someone jumped into the track in the morning.
It was disgusting to know someone actually committed suicide on the train track, but it was the reality I
had to face once in a while. Maybe, once every half a year.
It has been long ago since magazines and newspaper spotlighted "middle-age depression" and
"climbing number" of suicide.
I had may train ride delayed "delayed" to go back home because someone "again" jumped into the line
that I use to commute every morning. Any news coverage? Not at all.
I wonder when the weight of people's lives got so lighter -- no one seems to care if someone had to
jump into the train track any more.
Maybe like a girl with a pair of pumps, these people stretched all the way possible and -- snapped.
Is this something we can simply leave behind even in the busy city like Tokyo?

Magic Words

2008-01-17T00:01:00.000+09:00

I used to travel a lot. Not on vacation, but on the business trips.
I did countless business trips and traveled to a lot of destinations.

- San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Clara, Chicago, New York, Orland Florida
- New Orleans, Denver, Toulouse France, Silverstone UK, Hong Kong, and Sydney Australia

After having certain traveling, you get used to a lot of things. You get good at packaging, managing
your jet lag and tipping minimum at the hotels. But there is one more thing you get used to -- learning
magic words.

Every time I go to the different county speaking different language, I try to learn magic words in the local
language. My magic words are sort of "survival" phrases. They are:

1) Thank you. 2) Excuse me. 3) Hello and 4) This is delicious.

I recommend adding "one more beer" if you can drink any alcohol. (which I am allergic to.)

You may wonder why "This is delicious" is in these phrases.

One time, when I visited Hong Kong, having dinner with colleague Japanese workers accompanied
with a Kwantonees interpreter, the waitress of the restaurant was rude. Not obvious rude, but she wore
the atmosphere "yeah, I don't like you guys, speaking the language I don't get."

She almost threw the dishes onto our table when she served. So, I asked the interpreter how to say
"This is delicious." in Kwantonees. He said something like "how chee."

When the waitress came, I pointed at the dish she served to us with fully smiley face and said, "It's
delicious" in her language. Then, she returned me a bursting smile and mumbled something, which,
according to the interpreter, "Thank you for your comment and enjoy your meal."

She came back with the next dish, with some extra portion on the plate. She served the dish nicely,
even brought smaller dishes for every 15 of us and served one by one.

Well, I think this was a magic word.

What is your magic word?

New Year's Prayer

2008-01-16T17:50:00.000+09:00

New Year’s Day is January 1st in Japan. Other people such as Chinese may celebrate their New Year in February -- depending on the lunar calendar, I believe.

It is one of the most cheerful time of the year and eye-amusing day with young ladies with colorful kimono or people with other traditional cloth with the sprit of celebrating the New Year.

Hatsu-mode is first visit to the shinto shrines for the year, meaning a New Year prayer.

Unlike the mass at the Christian churches, prayers at shinto shrines are less time-consuming. It probably does not take more than a few minutes for most people who only visit the shrine only on occasion when they have wish to make.

Ni-rei, ni-haku, ichi-rei is a Japanese idiom to describe how you are supposed to pray at shinto shrines. “Ni” means 2 and “rei” means bow. “Haku” means a beat or clapping your hands once. So, ni-rei, ni-haku means you bow twice to before the actual prayer and clap your hands twice. Then, you put your palms together, close your eyes and make a wish. “Ichi” means 1, so you bow once again you are done praying. You do not say anything, but just make your wish in your heart.

Casual shrine visitors on the New Year’s Day are likely to skip “rei”s -- pronounced more like “lay” -- at their hatsu-mode. (“huts more day” is probably the closest pronunciation I can write in English words) It is unlikely to spend too much time in the super crowded shrine between December 31st to January 1st.

The most crowded shrine Meiji-Jingu <a href=“http://www.meijijingu.or.jp/english/index.html” target=“_blank”>(Link)</a> recorded approximately 3.1 million people between New Year’s Eve and the New Year’s Day this year.

Do people believe in shinto god? Well, that’s another story. The majority goes to hatsu-mode for making wishes or as the part of tradition.

A Frozen Lettuce

2008-01-15T17:49:00.000+09:00

I was not born to be a Japanese who also speak English. There are times I struggled to learn the language and made a lot of mistakes.

For relief of some co-worker in Tokyo, I once made a big mistake that my host family still tease me after almost 20 years since the home stay.

My host family happen to be polish origin, well-educated people. My host father worked at the federal research institute as a mathematician. My host mother used to be a tax accountant doing tax return, assisting to fill out IRS forms for employees and independent business owners. My youngest host sister happen to be majoring in international law, who later became a lawyer and then a DA.

As you can notice by talking the people from the east coast, they speak fast, swallow some consonants while they speak words like Manhattan. It was tough to be in the conversation among host parents with masters degrees, very talkative three teen-age sisters. I had hard time catching up with their speed of communication.

In addition to the normal difficulties to get accustomed to the eastern accent, this family had some family abbreviations. One set of them was "freezer" and "refrigerator." They shortened the "freezer" as "fridge" and "refrigerator" as "fridge."

It happened on the first day of that year my host father bought a ball of lettuce. I vividly remember him complaining about "being forced to buy lettuce" because of the cold summer in New York back in 1986. This family had a large garden in the backyard so that they usually do not have to buy any vegetable or fruit if they are in season.

When he came back from the supermarket, I was struggling with my favorite :-p American study book. Maybe I was leading about the Civil War. My host dad told me "Hisao, put this in the fridge." "Put this in the freezer," at least I thought. He gave me the whole bag of grocery including frozen orange juice, some portion of beef, and a ball of lettuce.

"Strange," I thought. "I would never put the lettuce in the freezer back in Japan."
Then I thought, "Maybe it is a cultural difference that I don't know of. The juice and beef usually go into freezer after weekend grocery shopping, so why not!"

Right before the dinner, when we are about to prepare our tossed salad, my host dad was swearing in the basement. "What's the ---."

He came up stairs and threw the hard, well-frozen lettuce onto the dinning table.
With a bursting smile, "Hisao, what's the heck is this?"

Obviously, he meant to say "put them in the refridge," meaning "put them in the refrigerator."

A Girl With Pair of Pumps

2008-01-14T17:49:00.000+09:00

"Aoyama" office is located in the part of district called "Aoyama,"
the center of fashion trend. You can imagine what kind of town "Aoyama" is if you happen to know Louis Vuitton has its Japan headquarters here.

Though "Aoyama " is a bit off from the center of Aoyama, you can still see a lot of "fashion-sensitive" female workers, going to their offices every morning.

And, if you are lucky, you may come across with one of the "top-notch" models that you see on the cover of different magazines.

One day, I was commuting on the subway as usual. It was very hot and humid day. Again, it was a very
typical Tokyo summer day. However, there was something different on that day.

As I was walking out of the subway station, following the crowd in the staircase, I noticed, one girl was
walking in front of me with a pair of pumps. Strappies in Aoyama, yes maybe. Pumps? Not often seen. I
moved eyes a little higher and noticed something strange again. A blue suit. A very conservative
style considering the district you are in.

I guessed she was going to one of the interviews or something. Then I looked her pumps again. On the
way, I noticed she had a "band-aid" on her left ankle. Tokyo seems such a demanding city forcing this
little girl to band-aid herself and still move on.

A strange thought? Maybe. But there are lots of girls moving their feet very hard under the water. Like
swans.

Maybe this is regardless of gender. Tokyo is such a demanding city that you have to stretch yourself out
like a girl with a pair of pumps.

Commuting Beauties

2008-01-13T01:07:00.000+09:00

In the busy city like Tokyo, there are multiple ways to be greeted by the mean commuters -- people who
don't say "excuse me" when they step on your foot, high school studs bumping into you with a huge
basketball bag, and the "mid-to-old" ladies who believes that they are at the top of the world and
believes others care less.

However, the worst of all I ever had was "commuting beauties." It's basically "sleeping beauties" except
they commute.

The cutest one is the one sleeps on your shoulder while you are sitting and by the time you need to get
off from the train, you feel so sorry for her to wake her up, because she has the happiest face you can
ever expect to see from the unknown woman sitting next to you. You end up asking a parody question
of what's in Hamlet -- "To wake or not to wake, that is the question."

The next one really impressive in a sense that she sleeps while she stands. She is standing, sleeping,
swinging around a bit as the train rocks at the curves and the train changes its speed. One day, I was
standing near this "swinging beauty," probably a girl fresh out of the college. I could not tell if she was
totally exhausted from the drinking party from the previous day or going through the tough newbie
training classes, but she was "really" sleeping. Then I thought:

"What happens this rather short girl keep swinging, with vivid rouge on -- I got a gray suit today..."

Bong. Oops, she left a very clear, nicely shaped kiss mark on the left collar of my jacket, and thanks
god, it doesn't come off quite easily.

Of course my co-workers made fun of me for a few days but that's another story.

Hot Spas

2008-01-12T17:55:00.000+09:00

Visiting a rural, calm place where my company cellar phone is out of range is one of the dream come true.
(I have another one, but I will talk about it some other time. :-) )

I used to be reluctant to travel since I traveled too much in my past career. Tens of thousands of frequent flyer miles once took me to a free asian resort trip with my wife. It was nice, but not a quite attitude of leasuire traveller.

Certain percentage of Japanese women population seems to go to the hot spas during winter time. Go to the place in the nature, enjoy decent food, relax in the hot spa and massage or some beauty treatment that is kept secret from “men”kind.

I happen to go to the hot spa in southern part of Japan, which was only a few day stay, however, we found a decent ryokan or Japanese style hotel with best cuisine made from local ingredients.

If you find a hotel with unforgettable hospitality, especially when it comes with superb recipes, the place is unforgettable.

The place was full of hospitality. I do not know how, but everyone knew our family name when we arrived. We rented a car near the airport and drove down to the ryokan. It is simply not possible for them to tell from the license plate on our rent-a-car because everyone flying in hires cars.

Ryokan has a butler like person assigned to your room during your stay. She takes care of a lot of things like from serving some tea at your arrival, to preparing futon or Japanese style bed along with the role of bell men. She will also be a company during your meal if you wish to. In the first class ryokan she serves tea for your guest visiting your room during your stay as if you are at home.

I told this person assigned to our room that we seemed to unable to locate some personal items that we might have left it in the car. It was a key of some kind. Not only this person found the key for us, but on the following morning, everyone in ryokan knew we had a problem on the previous night and mentioned in various phrases that they were glad to find my personal item after all.

Was I bugged? :-) No. This is how Japanese style “good” ryokan work. They have good communication and information sharing amongst the staff. This is only to make guests feel comfortable.

Am I still not interested in going to the hot spa?
Well, I would like to. Chilly weather make me think of hot spas with full of hospitality and smiles in first class ryokan.

Do You Have Any Plans On The Weekend?

2008-01-11T17:50:00.000+09:00

When I was an exchange student at the age of 17, I used to be in upstate New York. A colleague from
my previous employer kept teasing me periodically that "You got bloody American accent!" every time I
visited him in Silverstone, UK. "Take it easy" is a typical New York greeting when you are saying "bye"
to someone. "Good'ay mate" is a typical Aussie greeting in my vocabulary database made of neurons.

There seems to be a universal greeting that everyone use in English speaking country -- have a nice
weekend. What's the big deal about this? I used to hate the question that comes before this friendly
greeting. Says: "Do you have any plans for the weekend?"

It is laughable that I almost felt like "I had to" have weekend plans every week, but that was a serious
problem for me when I first went to the US. Because Japanese used to work on Saturdays when I was
a little kid plus schools were open on Saturdays (and I think they still are.) we had no concept of
Western-style weekend.

So, basically I had to think about the answers and every week, translate them into English and
memorize until I can answer like I am answering them from my reflection. They would just walk away
when I am slow to answer because people ask exchange students the weekend plans for the sake of
social courtesy. And my English was bad.

If I give a little more thought now, it was quite obvious that this exchange student was broke when I had
much weaker currency, and not much was happening to him because he was certainly not a Donald
Trump traveling for fun on his private jet.
(It was approx. 240 JPN against a USD before the "The Plaza Agreement" was made between two
governments. After the agreement in Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, it became 120JPY against a USD.)

My answer for this weekend?
Unfortunately, I got some work to do at the customer site.
I could go to Tokyo Disneyland with my family if I didn't have any weekend work. (smile)
What's your plan?

Timely Service

2008-01-09T15:01:00.001+09:00

I was working at home today.
My wife came, telling me our refrigerator is broken. It doesn't keep things chilled.

I called the manufacturer as a typical consumer does.
Call center was great, I only had to punch in numbers three times before actually talking to a person.

I told them things does not get chilled, explained what I did -- such as turning power-off and put it back on.
Setting the temperature to "low" it works at the maximum power.

They asked me to wait about three hours before it gets cold.
So I waited.

Around 13:00, I called them again asking for repair.

They told me "We will send someone tomorrow. I post your request with urgent flag."
C'mon, things were meting in there freezer and meat and fish are getting spoiled as the temperature inside of refrigerator goes up.

We shouted at them to express the urgency. They should know better than I that things get warmed up inside of refrigerator if it does not work. They promised me to come back with local depot calling me.

I put down the phone, I checked again, it looked like the freezer was not working either.

After half an hour, they called me back, telling me someone will be on site between 14:00 - 16:00 but cannot guarantee to fix the problem today. OK, good-bye to the best steak meat I have in the freezer.

I was dizzied by déja Vu.

Isn't this exactly what we tell to the customer in daily work?

This made me think about the timely service, and I still have a lot to work.

- Hisao

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU HAVE A BAD CUSTOMER

2008-01-09T01:54:00.000+09:00

You may know American TV show called "David Letterman's Show."
Within the show, Dave gives you the daily jokes in the form of "Top Ten List."
So, I tried a little experiment inventing my own for computer industry.

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU HAVE A BAD CUSTOMER

10. Customer keeps asking you "Is there better job I can apply to?"
9. Customer keeps sweating and the sweat keep dropping onto Sun Fire motherboard.
8. "Power-plug? What's that?" is the first reaction to your case resolution.
7. He always mispronounces "Google" and "gargle."
6. He purchases the spare parts on eBay.
5. He thinks escalating to our CEO is only way to tailor-made the color of his servers.
4. When you start talking about Java, he starts talking about his favorite Latte at Starbucks.
3. He keeps discussing which admin has the most power to shut down the data center.
2. He'd like to shutdown the server room air-conditioning because he is freezing.
1. He brings in an iron bat at the action plan meeting.

Eureka! Eureka!

2008-01-08T01:52:00.000+09:00

"Eyphka! Eyphka!" (Eureka! Eureka!)

They say that Archimedes ran out of his bath tab, naked and kept shouting this phase (meaning "I have
found it!") when he discovered the principle of buoyancy.

(Wikipedia, Archimedes --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes (*1)

Recently, I felt exactly like this. There was a favorite song from an American TV show back from
1980's called "Cheers." I like the theme song because I liked the part of the lyrics a lot.
Whole lyrics --> Lyrics on Demand (*2)
I like the following part the best.

"Be glad there's one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to go where people know,
People are all the same;
You want to go where everybody knows your name."

--
(*1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
(*2) http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/cheerslyrics.html

Safety Is Not Free Anymore

2008-01-06T10:07:00.000+09:00

Japan, in general, was known as a country where two things are free of charge. They were very much appreciated by a lot of tourists and company expats -- water and safety.

Water has in fact never been free of charge considering you have to pay the bills for tap water, but at least the tap water was drinkable back in some decades ago. Native Tokyo people may protest against my idea, because the city water has never been good since 1960s because of the pollution. However, the idea is you usually could get drinkable water, without buying them at the stores back then.

Now, either due to the people's preference to so-called "mineral water," or because tap water is as bad as ever, people no longer drink tap water unless they have a personal purifier. I am one of them and paying some amount of money to pay my due.

Safety has never been questioned in Tokyo -- thanks to the Koban or police box system -- before "Salin Gas" incident in Tokyo Metropolitan Area some years ago. The incident was some what symbolic to me -- the indication that perfect sense of secureness will no longer be enjoyed -- because some lunatic can buy chemicals at the local drug store, mix them and set them off in the subway at any time he wants. This was and still is life-changing event for me along with the World Trace Center collapsing into pieces on 9.11, since I was almost hit by the Salin terror and my colleagues saw people hit.

Regardless of the vanished security after seeing massive causalities from the crime scene in the subway, until recently, we believed in two more safety in Japan -- product quality and food.

One of my colleagues brought it up out of the air. "It was Sony which brought music into your pockets by introducing Walkmans, and Sony would have done the same thing Apple did for iPod if Sony were Sony 10 years ago. Panasonic used to follow Sony's concept and made product cheaper, lot cheaper with very good quality, but they no longer do the same. Something is changing."

You bet. The recent news article talks about Japan became number 8 in international competitiveness, far after the United States, Scandinavian countries and India. (Of course some significant portion of this statistics is delivered from the fundamentals of economics with massive amount of government bond Japanese government has issued.)

For the eye-opener to most Japanese people, you don't see Japanese TVs any more in American stores like SEARS, Radio Shack or Circuit City. What you see is by LG (Taiwan) and by Samsong (Korea). There are some Sonys and Panasonics, but they are way too expensive from the products from neighbor counties.
(Remind that Sonys and Panasonics have more functionality than others, but still expensive.)

Food was the last thing we thought it was safe. Not any more. Newspaper articles were talking about perpetrated fraud of food companies ranging from the changing the expiration dates of the food, false quality labels such as declaring imported food as locally-bred, to many years of conspiracy to use recycled food and repack them because it was simply not against the law.

What happened to the Japanese ethics and moral? We were proud of our high-moral, not betraying the customers, and meeting consumers' expectation at our best. We were proud of our high standards of not making quick money, but selling what's good for the customers. We were proud of well-preparedness to provide service and security that comes from the quality product/service. Isn't this how we gained trust from other counties and let them buy our products? Or is this only an illusion I thought they existed?

It guess I have to add the "ethics and moral" to my "No Longer Free" list.

An Escape From Work

2008-01-06T02:12:00.000+09:00

I happen to have two neighbor train stations.
One is going to the middle of the city and ends, the other going through the mid-town Tokyo and continues to go to the beach.

I often make joke with my friends that if I take the latter in the morning and over-sleep, I will probably be on the beach rather than showing up in the office. It is such a temptation to go to the beach on very sunny day during summer but also when you are very much stuck with something.

I like watching the sea, without thinking anything, watching the water.

When I visited Sydney with my previous work, I took the liberty of visiting one of the Australian beaches. The most favorite of all was "Bon Di Beach." (I hope I spelled it correctly.)

I wanted to see the famous "Bon-Di" blue so I took trains and buses to go to the beach.

There I was, looking at the pacific ocean for the first time in my life in the southern hemisphere.

Well -- it was cloudy. The water looked like as gray as granite, not so much blue.
I walked about 10 minutes, and decided to eat the famous "fish and chips." :-)

Where IS the Capital of Japan?

2008-01-05T01:35:00.001+09:00

Tokyo is the financial center of Japan. Most people believe that Tokyo is the “capital” of Japan. However, Kyoto, be-loved, ancient city is technically the capital of Japan though emperor family moved to Tokyo, because someone forgot some paperwork back in 1700’s, our capital still resides in Kyoto.
(Actually the emperor declared Kyoto to be Japan's capital back in 794 A.D., where Tokyo has never been announced as capital. There is Capital Region Development Act of 1956, which indirectly calls Tokyo Metropolitan Area as Capital Region. This law has no constitutional or imperial backup legally.)

I personally prefer the crisp sophisticated air of Kyoto in winter than non-human dead silence of Tokyo on New Years day. What is your preference?

The Truth and Nothing But The Whole Truth

2008-01-05T01:14:00.000+09:00

Being totally honest is one thing, while telling whole truth without making others misinterpret you is something else.

I still remember about 25 years ago, when I met my old friend at the bus stop, waiting for the first school bus to go to the school. I was an exchange student at that time. He was tall, light blond, white male at the age of 17.

As years passed by, I use more English in my day-to-day work, talk with people overseas over the classic "Lucent" phones that you see any companies whose head-quarters is in the US, I cannot help but wonder how difficult it is to communicate anyone correctly without any bias or misconception of what I am about to convey.

Twisting around words make people upset under certain circumstances, simplifying the expression too much make people think you are under-estimating them. How can I present "the truth and nothing but the whole truth?"