Also short, and no photos. But still sweet.

I didn't have a good photo opp today, so no photos.  Tomorrow there should be some because the president and his daughter are taking me sight-seeing in Tokyo with a fellow Bloomingtonian.  That oughta be fun.

It turns out the Bloomingtonian here now for the big trade show is leaving the company in February.  That's a little too soon for me to hope to take his position, which s considerably higher than mine, in the company.  However, what it does mean is that I will be jet-setting a lot sooner than I imagined.  He used to be one of the point people who went to all of the trade shows in the US and some in Japan.  Now that's going to be me.  So lookout US and Canada, here I come.  I will almost certainly be in the following cities at the following times: Orlando FL, first week of April.  Vancouver BC, second to last week of May.  Denver CO, first week of June.  Santa Clara CA, first week of December.

The trade show, which has hundreds of vendors and probably in the tens of thousands range of visitors, plays Auld Lang Syne every day at 5pm.  It's hilarious, because you're exhausted from being on your feet and talking to customers all day, and then they play that and you feel like you should pop a bottle of champagne and balloons should be falling from the ceiling.  I kind of feel like they should have a countdown to 5pm every day, just to add to the atmosphere.

Anyway, that's all I've got.  Join me tomorrow for more fun!

Short but Sweet

This entry is going to be, in the words of the title, Short but Sweet.

I was at the Tokyo Big Site today for a trade exhibition.  There were a lot of booths and a lot of Japanese people.  There were also some "foreigners," by which of course I mean non-Japanese people (myself included).  It was a good time, and lots of people were milling about.  But I realized that you know you've probably hit on the right line of work when someone asks "how much will it cost for you to come install this machine at our warehouse?" and you say "roughly 3.5 million U.S. dollars" and they say, without batting an eye, "how long will it take for you to train us how to use it?  how fast does it run?"

So, without further ado, here's a picture of the Tokyo Big Site:

PS I did eat a bowl of soup tonight that was two boiled new potatoes and a cluster of octopus tentacles, which looked like Guinness Book of World Records Longest Fingernails clutching a pair of men's manlihood.

All the Charges Become Consuming Including Tax

Well, today has already been a long day.  I worked the first half of the day.  No plastic rolls for me, I was just polishing machine parts all morning long.  Then I left shortly after lunch and flew to Tokyo, took a couple of trains, an BAM!  I'm at the hotel.  But on my way I did notice this at a train station:

If I had known that was an option, I would not have lugged my suitcase through two airports and four train stations over the course of five hours.  Why didn't someone mention this to me?!

Luckily, as I approached the hotel, I was greeted warmly.

By a drugstore bearing my name.

Here's my view from the fifth floor hotel room. It's a really cool view, actually, even if only of a train station.  The OTHER side of the hotel has a view of a giant Ferris wheel, some waterfront, and a it more of the city, but you can't see it all that well at night anyway.  I'm hoping to have some daylight at the hotel to get some better shots.

Now here's the fifth floor hotel room's view of me.  Yes, I look tired and unshaven, but more importantly, FREE BATHROBE!

Quite frankly, that's all I've got in me tonight.  Travelling will take a lot out of one.  Plus I have an early and long day tomorrow at the trade exhibition and I have to get up EXTRA early to make sure I tie my tie correctly.  Yes, that's right, I'll be wearing a suit tomorrow.  Perhaps you'll get to see a picture of THAT!  Perhaps...

Apparently hotel employees aren't good wall cleaners.

The Airlines Only Do Safety Demonstrations In English When I'm Aboard

First of all, my apologies for not posting anything yesterday.  I came home late and tried several times to get my pictures from my phone to my computer, but my internet was being weird and I couldn't get them there.  So I just didn't post.

That being said, I'm leaving tomorrow around 4pm for the Tokyo Big Site for a trade show, and won't be back until Sunday.  I think I'm going to take my computer, but that doesn't mean I'll necessarily have a chance to post again until I get back Sunday evening, so don't get too discouraged.

Anyway, today was another day of rolling plastic back and forth, so I'm just going to talk about yesterday.  Yesterday was the sort of day where I didn't have to do anything and I didn't feel like doing anything, so I didn't do anything...most of the day.  I did spend a few minutes in the morning with Mikey and the kids on Skype.  I did watch a few episodes of the Simpsons on Project Free TV.  Then I went for a bike ride, out the opposite direction from my long walk last weekend.  I really didn't discover much.  There were a lot more stores and houses, and some more beautiful views of the sea but I didn't want to brag.  But then, I rounded a corner and saw this:

Yes, those are beautiful Japanese cranes in a Japanese rice paddy in Japan.  It's as if the Japanese gods of Japan folded two perfect Japanese origami cranes out of Japanese crane meat and covered them in feathers, and then put them in a Japanese rice-paddy-diorama.  It was breathtaking, or so I thought.  Until I rounded a corner and saw this:

It's difficult to tell from a phone-camera photo, but it was pretty cloudy yesterday except for the shaft of light coming down out of the clouds onto this holy dome at the top of a mountain.

I could feel an irresistible force drawing me in the direction of the shrine.  It was as if the Japanese gods of Japan had crumpled and thrown away the crane diorama of my mind.  By the way, the corner I "rounded" from the crane scene was a 90-degree corner to my immediate right (clockwise).  The aforementioned rice paddy is immediately to the left of the white fence in this picture.

Needless to say, the irresistible force was not strong enough to drag me up the mountain against the wind on my bicycle, so I gave up and went home, pretty shortly after taking this picture.  But boy do I want to see that place.  Local legend tells that something big and white and both dome-shaped and pointy is up there.

One last thing I'd like to touch on is the complexity of "trash day."  I have a giant poster-sized chart that tells me how to divide my trash (recyclable plastic, recyclable metal, glass, combustible trash, non-combustible-non-recyclable trash, clothes, pillows/teddy bears, appliances, etc.).  Then I also have a 36-page book on how to put out the trash, accompanied by a separate poster-sized chart telling which day of the week each different type of trash is picked up and what kind of bag to put it in.  I was going to go through all of that, but then the company president told me to throw my apartment trash away at the company.  The only thing I have to separate out there is recyclable metal.  WHEW.

Now, look how cutely the Japanese package their bacon!

Which Made It Unite and Calmness

Today was a nice relaxing day.  I woke up late, took a bath, read part of a book, and had just made a cup of tea (aren't I fancy?!) when my coworker showed up.  He and his wife were kind enough to take me around for about an hour and show me some of the places in town that the "townies" like, places that are off the beaten path and not easy to discover by your average tourist or visitor.  They even took me to a store called "Trial" (in English), that is like the Japanese Wal-Mart.  And, much like a large portion of the Wal-Mart demographic, these shoppers we even less prepared o see a foreigner at their store than the folks at the store I had been shopping at.  As such, I restrained from making too much of a spectacle of myself by taking a picture of the giant sign hanging over the milk, yogurt, and butter that said "DAILY."  But I did manage to snap this picture of a shirt I was thinking about getting for Jude.  Because I hope that he, too, would like to pass life with many pleasant things or delightful things.

I did get the company president's bike up and running, so after my coworker dropped me back off at my place, I was able to galavant about town without my foot hurting.  I discovered that it takes less than five minutes to get to Lonely Palm Tree Park.  That's not what it's really called, even in Japanese, but that's what I have renamed it because I like that name.  

It's not like there aren't other palm trees in the park, it's just that this one's been sequestered from the others, I assume for something bad it's done.  There's even an amphitheater built around it so that visitors can com an publicly shame the poor tree when the weather's suitable.  One nice thing about this place is the view of Nagasaki Bay from the edge of the park.

I also managed to snap a picture of the Omura Municipal Police Headquarters, shrouded in mystery.  It's actually shrouded all the way around.  I don't know why; I can only assume it's either because of construction or secrets.  And I didn't see any construction vehicles.

Right across the street from the police building is the Omura Municipal Driving School, where they have about 16 (4x4) mock-city-blocks with various types of street styles or practice when getting your license.  I'm pretty sure that a guy stands up in that tower watching the would-be-driver, too.  Apparently it's quite difficult and expensive to get a license in Japan, and in order to own a car you have to show official proof that you own or rent a parking space!

Lastly, just a comment on how cute things in Japan are.  Look at my bank card!  I didn't even request a special one!  Of course, it looks a little like this woodland creature is censored but that's just because my account number is right there.

VACATION ALERT

I'm taking a vacation from blogging today.  After a long day of cutting plastic into little, measured  squares and drawing grids on it, I'm beat.  Plus, that's all that happened today--no funny shenanigans or anything!  Not even a single funny photo.  It's like I went back in time to 1930 when nothing ever happened.

However, I have the whole weekend off, and I already have a number of funny antics lined up.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's big adventure.

Only Connect the Whole House How to Various Enjoy

Today was another long day of winding and unwinding and rewinding plastic.  I even got a turn at holding the flashlight and searching for lost atoms!  And I would make circles in marker on the plastic, and everyone would look and look and look and finally say "Spot on!  Good job Nikku!" and pat me on the back.  It was quite rewarding, and I didn't even get upset on the way home when I got cut off by an orange Midget II.

This morning, I did manage to get up early and take a walk through the neighborhood.  I forgot how early fishermen get up, so I'm certain that I missed the boat (no pun intended...ha!) for photo opportunities with them.  However, I was feeling shy in a neighborhood where I stuck out like a sore thumb coming out of your forehead, so even the extremely cute little old lady with the shriveled-apple-doll-style face intimidated me enough to not ask for a photo.  But she smiled and said good morning, and I think she was just out for a morning walk too, so if I make it a regular thing to go on a morning walk, I'll probably become the best of friends with her.

Here are some things in my neighborhood:

This little stream (left) runs right down through the middle of the neighborhood.  I guess it's kind of like a gutter, only it's beautiful and full of cheer.

This road (right) is, in fact, a road.  You can't see it very well because of the light, but at the far end, a truck is coming.  I wouldn't be surprised if he knocked those clothes off that hanger as he passed.  It's really narrow.

Here (left) is the first picture I took in the morning.  Right as I was about to take it, I saw some human beings and got shy and nervous, so I put the phone down and as a result I got this picture at a kind-of weird angle.  But you ca see in the far background a telephone pole coming up in the right lane.

Above on the right you can see again (even though it's a little blurry) the crowdedness of the street and how it takes a sudden turn, and the houses come right up to the very edge of the street so that you might open your door and step right out into oncoming traffic.

And here on the left you can see the view from the terrace upstairs at my apartment building.  There is an old abandoned building that might be a haunted fishery!  Or an abandoned factory (also haunted!).  Behind that, it's difficult to see, but there is a really beautiful old-fashioned Japanese house or temple.  I can't tell which, because its nearly impossible to see from any angle because they have high privacy fences and privacy shrubbery.  I wanted to stick my camera in through the shrubbery and take picture, but I was afraid I might offend someone.  Then also the guard dog started barking (guard Akita puppy), so I left well enough alone.

Lastly, I discovered today that my phone has this function available:

ELECTRICAL SHOCK! PRESS! CRASH!

Today was a busy busy day at work.  We had a very important client, and a lot of work to do for him.  We took these HUGE rolls of plastic to our second largest machine.  Each roll had 2200 meters of plastic on it!  (Roughly 58 feet!)  We loaded them, one at a time, on one end of the machine, and then unwound them through the machine and wound them back up at the other end.  This time when we held our flashlights up and looked closely, we all oohed and ahhed and said things like "marvelous!" and "beautiful!", but when the client came in and looked at the same samples later, he drew some black circles in magic marker around what appeared to the naked eye to be some misplaced atoms.  He was afraid we'd have to scrap the whole lot, but after scrunching his forehead a lot and wiping sweat from his brow, he finally concluded that it would work itself out when we load the same rolls in our largest machine tomorrow.

While everyone was busy, I managed to snap a quick picture in the "Cameras Forbidden" zone.  I'm pretty sure this photo does not give away any of our "family secrets", unless they haven't told me yet that we construct torture devices, in which case I can't wait to be fully trained.  And call me crazy, but the guy who is getting his hands PRESS!ed and CRASH!ed has his hands on backwards and probably deserves to have them removed by a machine so they can be reattached on the correct arm.  Also, the yellow triangle with the lightning bolt makes sense, the yellow "no" circle with the hand makes sense, but can someone please explain the yellow triangle with just a hand in it?

At the end of each work day, when the client is about to leave, we stand outside next to the taxi, and as the client comes out of the office building we all bow a lot and say "thank you" and "we look forward to doing business with you again."  Today, between the time we went outside and the time the taxi showed up, the conversation ended up being about how much it hurts to get kicked in the B-A-Double-Hockeysticks-S.   This conversation seriously went on for 10-12 minutes, from describing the pain and how it spreads all through your stomach and sometimes even up into your neck to how if you got kicked hard enough they might come out of your eye sockets.

Finally, I left to go home.  I tried really hard to beat the sunset again, but much to my chagrin I realized I was not going to make it, so I stopped at the drugstore.  The cashiers are getting used to me there, or at least they seem friendlier now than when I first stopped there.  I try to be friendly but still not make too much conversation, because I'm always afraid I'm going to say the wrong thing like "this town grows a lot of cabbage" or "you sure are short."  At any rate, I was looking for cheese, because my grocery store fails to carry that necessity.  I finally found "Candy Type Cheese."  It looks good but it tastes about the same as Kraft American Cheese only blander and less cheese-textured.

I decided that if I can manage to make myself get up early enough, I'll try to take pictures of the nearby neighborhood in the morning.  I think the sun comes up well before I leave for work even though it sets before I get home.  Plus if I go really early, I might catch (no pun intended) some scruffy old fishermen to be in my photos.  I'll take my running shoes.

No, YOU Ring Him Up

Today was another slow day at work.  We had a client, but he didn't show up until around 1pm and his testing was done around 3.  We were using an altogether different machine this time.  This one unwound plastic from TWO rolls at one end and wound them together as one roll at the other end.  It also trimmed about an inch off the edges as it went.  Fascinating!

I tried to hurry home to get photos of the crazy windy neighborhood near my apartment while it was still light out.  Unfortunately, I got cut off by a truck and stuck behind a really slow car, plus it has been rainy and overcast all day so I really was racing against the odds.  I was thinking it would have been perfect to catch the neighborhood in this weather, because it looked so desolate and eerie.  I snapped this one on my way to the car while I was leaving the office.  Much to my dismay, I did not beat the sunset to my house, and the following pictures don't do the neighborhood justice.  But maybe you can see JUST well enough to have your interest piqued.  If the sky had been clear, there probably would have been just enough light to take some real photos, but unfortunately I missed it literally by minutes.  I did, however, get a dirty look from a weathered old fisherman, a look that said "what the H-E-Double-Hockeysticks are you doing in my neighborhood?!"










Hopefully when it's lighter out I can get a picture of him too. Maybe he'll even pose with some mangy sea-cats.















That's all I've got for today.  Nothing too funny this time.  Oh, but I did get this great picture of the parking brake in my car when I accidentally hit the camera button while I was climbing in:

All Wound Up

Today at work, we had a new client and we were on a new machine.  Well, new for me.  It's actually probably one of the oldest machines at our facility.  For THIS machine, you take something like plastic or thin metal foil that's rolled up on a cardboard tube and load it on one end.  Then it unwinds and goes through the machine and winds back up on a different cardboard tube at the other end.  I would have taken pictures but I think you're beginning to get the idea.  Today we were running brown plastic through the machine.  We sent it through at several test speeds, the final speed being 0.1 meter per minute.  If you don't know how long a meter is, think about the length of 100 million football fields, each the size and temperature of the sun.  It's hot, isn't it?  So our testing took a really really long time, and during that time there was nothing to do but once in a while shine flashlights at the plastic and say something like "oh, I see little bubbles" or "is it supposed to look like this?"  Then when each round of testing was done, the client would cut a small sample o plastic (which looked the same at the end as it did at the beginning) and hold it up to the light and point randomly at it saying "see?" to my coworkers, and they would comment on it like "ah yes" and "ohhhh."

I spent a couple of hours at work today cutting copper foil off of rolls.  The rolls look something like this picture, but not much really.  Well, at least not the ones I'm cutting copper off of.  It's the same copper foil, but the one's were cutting away are the spent test rolls and/or rolls that didn't go well.  So we just slice away at it with box cutters and peel it away layer by layer until we get to the cardboard core in the center.  Whoever finishes peeling away layers last has to eat all the copper.  Just kidding!  But that does sound like a fun Japanese game show!

My foot hurts from my long long walk yesterday.  It was a little sore yesterday, but today it hurts like it's bruised on the bottom, right on the tender part, just north of my heel.  I didn't know if there was anything like Icy Hot or Ben Gay around this part of the world, so I went to the drug store and bought a bottle of red wine.  Now it's raining and dark, and I wish it were a little warmer so I could sit with the windows/sliding doors open and enjoy the sound of it.  Unfortunately I don't think my company would appreciate the gas/electric bills if I ran the heater on high while I enjoyed the rainsounds.

I guess that's all I've got for today.  Stay tuned for tomorrow though; I took a shortcut home from the drugstore tonight and found a great neighborhood to take some photos in.  Definitely a "fishing village" sort of neighborhood, with all sorts of mangy stray cats, and two-way streets that are no way near wide enough for two cars and have telephone poles randomly sticking up like crazy teeth in the driving lanes.  Hopefully its still light enough to take photos when I get home from work; otherwise, I've gotten you all excited for what will have to wait until the weekend.

I Thing My Dream Forever

Today I went for a walk.  I just figured I'd walk around town, get to know what's out there, check out the stores and restaurants and parks and whatnot.  I ended up walking around for about 4 hours.  I walked all the way to where I work, which is at least a few miles.  But first I walked to the sea. I timed it, just so I could brag on my blog.  Yes, it took me 4 minutes to walk here.

There are a lot of cats who live near the sea.  I guess that's because there are a lot of fish parts that end up getting tossed around.  Omura grew out of a fishing community and is still chock full of fishermen.

Just your average suburban Japanese neighborhood

It's also a fairly suburban town.
Sure, there are a lot of stores and restaurants and things to see and do, but it's very quiet and laid back, and people don't see foreigners very often so when they do, they often stop and gawk or blatantly point, and if they get up the courage to say hello (usually in Japanese), they look SO proud of themselves.  And rightly so!  I'm proud of them when they do it too!

I did run across a group of 3 elementary-school aged boys who got really quiet as I was passing them, and then when the crosswalk turned green for them they shouted "Hallo!" (in English) and ran across the street giggling.

When I was mistakenly chosen as the Crown Prince of Omura, they took me to this park for the  coronation.  Of course everyone was already on their way to the after-party when I took this picture, but you can see where they would have been sitting, in the amphitheater area, and where I was officially crowned out over the water.  It was quite the event.  And I made it home in time to blog about it!

Below you can see it from a different angle, plus in the far background you can see the incredibly frightening footbridge over the dam from whence I took this first picture.  Also you can see the view from the top of the amphitheater where one would descend to the crowning zone.

I don't actually know how to get these pictures to sit just exactly where I want them, so you'll have to deal with the weird, awkward layout of my page.

Anyway, while I was hiking up the mountains, I did stumble across another little historic spot, all covered with bramble and dried leaves and dust.  I thought it was forgotten or abandoned, but then when I reached the top of the steps I saw that someone had put fresh clothing on the Buddha and fresh-ish offerings alongside him, so someone must be tending to it.  Or at least to the Buddha's clothing and dietary needs.  Someone might want to think about cleaning up his place a little though.

Lastly, on my way home, my right ankle started hurting.  Then it spread to my foot.  Then my right knee started hurting too.  Then my left knee.  Then my right hip.  I concluded that that had been enough walking for the day, and I needed to go home.  Right after the grocery store, of course.  Lots of little old ladies were shopping at the store while their husbands (I assume...it was quite a large number of old men for them to have just showed up) milled slowly around the alcohol section.  Little old small-town ladies like to do everything in their power to avoid foreigners, so no matter how many people were shopping in an aisle, it was usually completely empty within seconds of me entering it.

But, it's like I always say: I thing my dream forever, I wish you will be happy life.

I'ma De Spaaaacemaaaan

Not a lot happened at work today.  We used the same winding machine to wind some of the same stuff.  We unwound it off of one cardboard tube onto another, then we moved the new roll back to the beginning and wound it off of that tube back to the first.  This was not a training exercise. I know there was something about "2" and "5" going on, but other than that, I'm not really sure why we did what we did.

However, I did snap this snazzy picture of one of the many areas in which I work.  In this room, we have to wear "clean room suits" which are known in Japanese as "clean room suits" only with a Japanese accent.  There's an airlock between the outside and this room, and an "air shower" where you get all the dust blown off of you before you enter.  It's very tidy.  There is a room further to the interior of this one where clients are not allowed to enter and no one (even employees!) is allowed to take photos.  So I won't post those on my blog yet.  Haha, just kidding!  I won't ever post those on my blog, because even the awesome American can't get away with taking photos of the top secret area.

This is me in my clean room suit.  Hopefully my eyes don't start shooting out dust, because they're not covered.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we work on Saturdays?  Well, every other Saturday, anyway.  I guess that makes up for the generous amount of holidays scattered throughout the year (seriously).

I'm guessing I'll have a much more entertaining blog entry tomorrow because I might go out with some friends tonight, and tomorrow I will have the whole day to explore the town on my own so I'm sure there will be shenanigans and hilarity may even ensue.  I will most likely become well known around town and possibly even elected mayor by mistake, hopefully all before 6 or 7 pm so I ave time to blog about it before bed.

I Have No Clue What You're Saying

Today was a really loooong day for some reason.  5:45 couldn't come soon enough, and lucky for me just a little before 5:45 I found out we work tomorrow (Saturday) too.  Oh well, I'll save my town-exploring for Sunday I guess.

Today I learned how to operate a machine called a "spacer."  You put a roll of something on one end, and it winds through and comes out the other end, just like all of our other machines.  I think  it does something, too, but mostly the winding.  But it does have this control panel, if you need an idea of what this machine could do.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  And what you're thinking is correct: EPC does stand for Edge Position Control.

Actually, the spacer machine itself looks like this.  Well, this is the winding end.  That black tube on the white roller is NOT what we wound today, even though it looks like machine-precision winding.

Really, not much else happened today.  It was a long day of grueling work with The Guy With The Teeth, and in the end I didn't even get to bring home a tooth.  Today was his last day, too.  Oh here's an interesting story: our boss watches us from headquarters on video cameras.  Headquarters are located about 700 miles away.  But you know when he's watching because the cameras start swiveling and "looking around" the work area, and then invariably the phone rings and the president is on the horn asking what the heck everybody is doing and giving "advice."

Similarly, The Guy With The Teeth said that when he's inside our work facility, his cell phone GPS signal doesn't go through, but as soon as he steps outside for a smoke break, his GPS shows up and his boss calls him almost immediately almost every time.  He thinks his boss is monitoring him via GPS.  So now I'm paranoid, like what conversations/emails/facebook posts/blogs are my boss reading?  Does he have a microphone in my car?  Is this computer that the company bought me bugged so that he knows my every key stroke?  Oh hang on, the phone's ringing.  brb

QUICK UPDATE

I didn't realize that little tiny bits and buttons on my blog were in Japanese until this morning.  I mean, when I view them, they're in Japanese but my computer is all in Japanese and so some things that would normally be in English show up in Japanese.  For example, I know IU doesn't have a Japanese version of their website, but when I go to log in to my IU email it looks like this:

I mean, it doesn't have those red arrows; I drew those in to highlight what I'm talking about.  Anyway, I swore when I started his blog that I wouldn't scatter Japanese words throughout it because I feel like a lot of people who do that are だるい and つまらない.

Anyway, buttons are fixed.  Gotta go to work.

1978 Is Also Known As the Year 53

Today at work, we were testing new CCL-creation methods (if you don't know what a CCL is see my previous post, which also offers no explanation).  We had to adhere some sort of goo to 100 meters or so (about 10 billion feet) of extremely thin copper foil.  This copper foil was about 6 microns thick!  If you don't know how thick a micron is, think about a human hair.  I don't know how many microns thick a human hair is, but if you think about it long enough you'll decide to keep reading instead of wondering how thick a micron is.

This morning I went to finish getting a bank account.  We went a couple of days ago, and the bank said they wouldn't issue an account to an alien resident who had been in Japan less than six months.  They also said they wouldn't issue an account to an alien resident whose visa was valid for less than six months.  By my calculations, that would have given me approximately a 24-hour window to set up an account sometime in late June or early July, or approximately the time I will back in the U.S. for summer vacation.  Fortunately th bank gave in and said we could open an account if the company provided a certificate stating exactly when I was starting and for how long I'd be working there.

Next on the list was getting a cell phone.  The office secretary volunteered to go with me to help me with the transaction and picking out the right phone, and we were all set right up until about 5 minutes before we left when the office manager decided to volunteer instead.  I thought that was really nice of him until we got to the cell phone store and the only help he was able to offer was "which phone do you like?" and "that coffee over there is free."

I think I got a decent cheap phone and cheap service, although I'm currently trying to get my phone set up without incurring data charges and the like, so I'm a little apprehensive.  Rather than being super excited about my brand new cell phone like a Christmas kid in a Christmas candy store on Christmas, trying to navigate these instructions all in Japanese makes me feel like Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue.  Luckily, there are a lot of pictures that don't match what my phone looks like or acts like at all.  That way, if I run across someone whose phone does what's in the pictures, I can help them get it set up and then ask for their help with my phone in return.

My work friends did tell me that they're excited to learn my cell phone number so that they can all text me "Hey Nic" (in English) every morning.

Now even though I put this together quickly in a free online version of Photoshop, please love this picture:












PS - I realize that I don't often explain the title of my blog entries with the content, so if you ever are curious about the title feel free to ask!

Nagasaki is like the Indianapolis of Chicago

Ok, I suppose I should bring anyone who's reading this up to speed.  I landed in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon.  I got through customs and immigration relatively quickly (they print your Alien Registration Card while they're asking you if you're bringing into the country any drugs, porn, or swords, to save time).  I took a couple of trains to a different part of Tokyo and then walked around for about 40 minutes before discovering that my hotel was actually right next to the train station I had just come out of.

The hotel was nice (read: quaint), and I really wanted to get out and see Tokyo for a little bit but I had been travelling for almost 24 hours solid so I ate a dinner of Reece's Pieces and went to bed pretty early.  After all, I had more travelling in store the next morning.

Monday I woke up around 3:30 in the morning thanks to a horrifying dream involving several creepy dead girls from horror movies I have seen and boogers.  Also, I'm sure the jet-lag helped me wake up that early.  I walked to the train station (but not the same one I had come out of the night before) and took another train to Haneda Airport which used to be Tokyo's only airport until they built Narita.  I met the company president at the airport and we flew down to Nagasaki.  There's a short and potentially illegally-taken video of the flight's take off if you missed my previous post.  From the Nagasaki airport we took a taxi to the apartment to unload luggage, and then another taxi to the company to pick up my car.

I spent the afternoon following the president around town, him in his car and me in mine, buying food and dishes and things I would need for my stay here.  After errands, we came back to the apartment.  This picture is my apartment.  That is to say, it's the front porch of my apartment, looking across the street towards a really nice house with a big garden.  You can't actually SEE my apartment in this photo because it's right behind me.  Anyway, we chatted and drank a couple of beers and napped until dinnertime, when we met a friend/company client for Japanese-style barbecue.

I officially started working today (Wednesday).  Yesterday was spent making most of my final preparations like registering myself at the municipal building and trying to open a bank account.  Today was spent mostly learning how to make CCLs which are basically one of the major components of printed electronics.  The client, however, I could not look at for very long because he had super crazy teeth.  I'm not one to talk about physical appearances normally, but his teeth were REALLY long and windy, like a country road.  And also like a country road, there was no real set order to them, they just kind of came in wherever.  

Ok, I suppose you want to see the inside of my apartment.  Here:

Tiny Kitchen

The Living Room

The Bedroom (From the Living Room)

Toilet Quickle

I couldn't figure out how to make those last two pictures side-by-side.