Wherein I Visit the Post Office

Today I spent most of the day at work monitoring oven temperatures.  It's like I work in a bakery!  I also got to be the one to say "I see wrinkles!" and I got complimented on my cleaning skills.  I was a pretty good day indeed.

On the way home I had to stop for gas.  I have never stopped f gas in Japan before.  I couldn't find a self-service station quickly enough to not be afraid that I was going to run out of gas, so I stopped at a full-service station.  And indeed, full-service it was.  They told me how far to pull up, then while I waited they asked if I had any trash in the car and if I wanted my windows washed.  Then they told me how far to back up before pulling out, and then ran to the road to help guide me safely back into traffic.  What fun!

After that, I wanted to sop at the post office to see how much it would cost to send my package overseas.  The girl at the desk was clearly startled by my foreign appearance, and flustered probably because she was afraid I couldn't speak Japanese.  But after a lot of formalities, I was able to convey that yes, I do want to be signed up for the city marathon and also a tennis tournament.  Sorry--for anyone who doesn't know, that bit refers to some things I got roped into the first time I was in Japan (in high school) because I just smiled and nodded a lot and got signed up for things I didn't mean to.

So, I learned how much it will cost for my package, and it's a surprise package for Mikey and the kids so I hope they don' read this blog.  But during the conversation, we did get to the part where if I send at the cheapest rate, the package isn't insured, but the girl did't know the English word for insured and I didn't know the Japanese word, and suddenly about 10 employees were scrambling to find it on their smartphones and the girl was frantically looking around at her paperwork trying to see if it said it in both languages anywhere.  At long last, I announced that I have a Japanese-English dictionary on my phone, and I looked it up.  And sure enough, it meant insurance.

Then from the post office parking lot, I couldn't turn right, so I took some back roads home which were fun because they were nearly all 2-way streets about the width of 1.15 cars.  I even ended up on the back roads in my own neighborhood, where I was not surprised to see the familiar stray telephone poles and mangy sea-cats licking various strange puddles from the road.  It was an exciting car ride and I wish I could have taken a video because dodging telephone poles and mangy cats is like driving in a video game.

Here's another t-shirt.

I like to consider myself somewhat of a Fake Master.

No But Really I Probably Washed Several Hundred Dollars Off of My Hand

Today's hot-button issue around the office was my bicycle.  I mentioned to the receptionist that the president had told me to get the apartment bicycle in working condition and the company would pay for it.  I asked what I should do--get an estimate on the refurbishing it needs or pay to get it fixed and submit a receipt, or should I just get cash from the company and bring them the change?  So at 9am she called over to the accountant who said he couldn't dole out the money because that hadn't been mentioned to him by the president.  So then our receptionist took it straight to the top and called the president and asked him to call the accountant and set things straight.  THEN the accountant called her back and said that I should take the bike to a shop, and get an estimate on the repairs and also the price on a new bike, because we'd go with whichever one as cheaper.  Then all day long people talked about that bicycle.  Did it need new tires?  Was it rusty?  Is it big enough for me?  Does it have a light ("the police around here are strict about bicycles without lights after dark!")?  Does it have a basket?  Is it self-cleaning?  Will it roast a ham?  How many horsepowers does it have?  Does it come in red?  What if cats spoke Japanese and people meowed?

By the end of the day (and I do mean END--people were still talking about it at 5:45) we decided to take it to the nearest shop and have them fix it up and if they needed money right then I'd get a receipt but if they would accept payment upon completion I would just take the quote to the office.  But I refuse to go alone, so I won't have a fully-functioning bicycle until probably Saturday.  I mean, I can ride it, but I think it has a slow leak in the back tire and I can't ride after dark and I think it's out of gas.

Aside from that, I operated a different machine today.  It was a teeny-tiny cute version of one of our much much larger machines.  It even fits on a table-top!  I'm hoping that you can also purchase it with options like "Hello Kitty Accents" and a soothing voice that walks you through the operating procedures.  Oh, I forgot the most interesting part; we were coating a solution onto thin strips of various metals.  This top-secret solution comes in tiny bottles that each hold about 1/5 of a cup.  Each bottle costs around $5000.  We had four of them.  So in one hand, we were able to hold $20,000 worth of solution.  And on one tabletop I was able to spill $4000 worth of solution.  JUST KIDDING!  I didn't spill any because I didn't handle the bottles.  I was like "no thanks."

We ran the tests in a sealed box inside a sealed room inside a sealed building.  It felt a little like a tesseract.  But this expensive solution was really expensive, so we took great care to control the humidity and temperature.  But after each test strip, we opened the box really quickly and I took a picture of the test strip with an iPhone.  It was all very calamitous and exciting.  Then at the end, we threw it all away and burned down the building.  THAT'S how top secret it was.

Try Lifting Weights With the Back of Your Hand

Today was another grueling day at the plastic-rolling plant.  Actually we rolled copper foil again.  Today was 700+ meters of 600mm-wide copper foil.  That's almost 2 feet wide.  Imagine a narrow   red carpet rolled out (but in copper foil) the length of more than 7 and a half football fields.  That's a REAL size comparison, not one of those made-up ones from my earlier blogs.  And I put it in terms of football fields not because that's the standard of comparison in the US but because the Superbowl has just recently ended I hear.

Now, while rolling all that copper, I have to monitor this touch panel.  Not just monitor it, no, I have to make adjustments to it.  Pretty much everywhere you touch on this screen takes you to an input screen where you can adjust oven temperature, line speed, tension, automatic centering, something about nips, and lots of other stuff in Japanese.  It's hard work. My coworkers are always like "Now, when I tell you, change the line speed to 1.7" and I'm like "What did you just say?  Does anyone around here speak English?  I think I took a wrong exit just outside of Indy."

If you take one step backwards from the picture I just showed, you can see there are additional buttons not included on the touch panel.  One confusing thing is that most of the green buttons down there make things stop and most of the red ones make something go.  However, I think "Giant Red Button" is universal for "Don't Ever Press This Button".  At least that's what I've been told.  I imagine if one of my coworkers got caught in a roller and started having his body wound back and forth around a bunch of steel rollers and then baked at 250+ degrees, I would be allowed to press it.










At work we got some new stickers to put up in appropriate places around the workroom.  They're cute, and brightly colored.  They asked for me to help decide where they should go.

The one on the left says underneath "If your hand already looks like a cute elephant, try massaging your trunk finger here."  The one on the right says underneath "Try lifting weights with the back of your hand."  I'm having a hard time deciding where to put them.  Except they're clearly stuck to that thing under them, so I guess that's where they go.

On the way home, I decided tonight I'm gonna get CRUNKY.  So that's just what I did.

Lastly, I hung my laundry BACK out to dry last night.  Of course all my laundry is wetter now than ever (EVER!) before.  I give up, I'm using the dyer.

If You Don't Like the Weather in Nagasaki, Wait a Day Then Rewash Your Landry

Yesterday I did my laundry.  I hung it outside to dry.  When it was time for bed, I felt the laundry and thought "well,it's ALMOST dry" so I left it to hang overnight.

Overnight we got a HUGE house-shaking rainstorm.  Of course, it woke me up at around 3 in the morning, but I was so tired that I decided it was already too late for the laundry and went back to sleep.  When I woke up, most of my laundry was in a big, sopping wet heap on the porch.  Luckily none of my dainties flew over into the schoolyard behind the house.  Actually, I'm pretty lucky none of my clothes flew off my back porch at all.  Unfortunately all articles were waterlogged with 1.3 metric(!) tons of water, so I left them all right where they were and went to work.  I was secretly hoping someone would happen by and feel bad for me and hang all of my laundry back up for me.

Thankfully, at work they have a time machine.  The main control panel looks like this.

And up close each individual panel looks like this.

And all I have to do is monitor this little device until the electric capacitor reaches 1.21 Gigawatts.  Then, in the words of my co-worker, "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're gonna see some serious sh-".

So after a long hard day at work, I took the time machine and went back in time, to the time just after the storm when no one had done anything about my laundry for me.

Then I rewashed most of it and that was that.  

And yes, those are all really machines I work with.

Seriously?  That's all I've got today?

At Stone, Family Parts Ways

Today I went for another bike ride.  It wasn't anything fancy; I just had to pick up a few things at a few stores.  First I got up around 6:45 and Skyped with Mikey and the kids.  Then I went back to bed.  Then I woke up and put some laundry in the washer.  Then I went back to bed.  Finally, I woke up and hung the laundry out to dry because it was a gloriously warm and sunny day here, and then I left on my bicycle.

I got to the store and bought a few things and pretended that I was a dad whose significant other would know more about fashion than myself so I took a bunch of pictures of tshirts "to send home and see which ones would be good for the kids."  Of course, my kids have PLENTY of tshirts, so I was mostly just taking pictures of tshirts that had English on them that struck me as odd.  I imagine it's the same thing when there are Chinese/Japanese characters on clothes or even tattooed on bodies in the U.S.

In case you have a hard time reading it, the circle says "A sport is played, and it sheds".  On second thought, I don't really think it's quite the same as having a character tattooed, because if you wanted to get the WORD "power" or "strength" or "unanimity" tattooed on you in any language, it wouldn't be that difficult.  But trying to get whole phrases, sentences, or passages tattooed on, you had better be more careful.

I only wish I knew what "refyge" means.  I mean, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't personally in a million years try to have text I wrote in a language other than English be printed on shirts to sell across the nation.  But I certainly would buy them and photograph them, so maybe the people at work for this company are actually onto something.  This was all at the same store that has a "Daily" section and signs above the clothes that say "Lock On!"  I am glad that their other slogan sign correctly says "Less is More".

After this store, I needed to make one other stop.  But I figured I'd take the "back way" home and in so doing, figure out what the "back way" is.  I actually did a pretty good job for a while.  But then I got to a familiar street, where there was that same sign I've mentioned before that points to the landmark "At Stone, Family Parts Ways."  The weather was nice and I didn't have anything to do, so I thought to myself "doggone it, I'm gonna see that site today."  

The problem is, the front of the sign points left and says "100 m" and the back of the sign points right and says "100 m" but the sign isn't hanging above a place where you can turn.  So I saw the sign from one side, and thought "oh, it must be down the next road."  Then I passed the sign and looked back up at it and thought "oh, it must be down the previous road."  In the end, I turned down a weird alley.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but this two-way road was about the width of one car.  And windy (not as in the wind was blowing, as in the roads wind back and forth).  Much like my local fishing-village-neighborhood.  I rode and rode and still no big stone with families being rent asunder.  I did pass two middle-aged-but-weather-worn-men walking the tiniest cutest dog ever have I seen.  But I didn't get a picture because the scary men scared me.  In hindsight I should have asked them if they knew where the Stone was.  

After quite some time, I realized I was probably on the wrong path and that I would never find the Stone.  In the process, I did happen upon this off-the-beaten-path beauty:

It's not a tourist attraction, just a normal church/temple.  I thought for a minute maybe the Stone was housed in here, but I'm pretty sure this was MUCH further than 100m from where I turned. This temple is either 2 hours from my apartment or possibly 10 minutes or so.  I did get turned around a lot on this trip.

At last, I'm home.  I tried to find information about the Stone online once I got here.  Google translate helps me offer this tidbit:

As stone wet with tears of stains, also called "tear stone" aka,

It is said that I would not grow moss still. You are up to seven pre-war

Was, but now it does not remain only three.

Sad indeed.  Tears of stains?!  Why are the stains so sad?!  I vow to find this Stone again next weekend.

Rock'n Roll is MY best too.

Tokyo Recap

I don't actually have a lot to post today.  I woke up in Tokyo, ate a hotel breakfast and caught a bus to Haneda Airport, then flew back to Nagasaki and went in to the office for about two hours, and finally made it home.  I realized that the small handful of cash I brought with me is dwindling and I still don't know for sure when or how I'm getting paid - I checked my bank account balance (here) and I haven't gotten a direct deposit yet, so there's the potential that this job is actually just an unpaid internship or possibly considered community service.  Luckily all my boarding and utility bills are paid for by the company, so I don't have to worry about not having electricity or internet by which to blog.  Still, I find myself wishing that the meat I bought right before going to Tokyo for a week was in the freezer instead of the fridge.  I think the talking ATM started crying for me at the end of my balance check.

I would like to mention that the whole Trade Show Exhibition experience was a blast.  I got to wear a suit every day and pretend like I knew what I was doing, and I got to see approximately one bajillion people.

As I think I said before, I went across the hall at the Tokyo Big Site to check out the NanoTech convention going on there.  All kinds of really small things abounded, but the interesting thing was that most countries or world regions had country-centric "pavilions" set up so that the businesses and technology from their country could be represented all together and promote that country's advances and capabilities.  By far the biggest and most popular one was Germany.  They had a huge pavilion with bright orange accents, and it was really popular because they were giving away free beer.  Much smaller but nearly as popular was the Australia pavilion (for some reason specifically Victoria), because they were giving away free wine.  Then there were Spain and Italy, both beautiful pavilions and giving away coffee and espresso, and a few other countries around the world who had very pretty and inviting pavilions with lounge tables and private meeting rooms.  South Korea had a large pavilion that was very clean and very high tech but all business.

Unfortunately, the United States was represented by a cluster of booths that very closely resembled Detroit, other than the fact that the majority of them said at the top "Illinois."  Come on U.S.!  Where's your pride!?  I expected a full casino, a 1:2 scale-model of the MagLev New York City of the Future, a bunch of Playboy Bunnies on souped-up motorcycles wearing nothing but jet-skis, and at LEAST free moonshine.  But no, I think they were trying to sell rust or something.  So if anyone knows any NanoTech firms in the U.S. tell them to get their rears in gear with flashy booths and futuremusic.

And since people like blogs with pictures, here's a picture of my bathroom:

I Heart NY

Tonight I got to fly into the Big Apple and snap this quick picture of the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge behind it.

Just kidding!  I know that the Golden Gate Bridge is several counties over from the Statue of Liberty.  This was in Tokyo!  Little known fact: France gave this Statue of Liberty to Japan as a gift, much like the one in the U.S.  Second little known fact: France gave the Statue of Liberty to the U.S. as a gift!  Third little known fact: just like nearly everything else in Japan, this statue is much smaller than the one in the U.S.  This photo was taken from mere inches away.  Little known fact: Just kidding about the inches away thing!

Today was the third and final day of the exhibition.  Our newest machine, only recently ready for sale, was featured in the Nikkei newspaper, Japan's largest economic and business newspaper.  So the number of people who filed in to see it and inquire about it was roughly the same as the population of Jan Mayen, which contrary to what is floating around in your head is not a location in East Asia at all, but rather in northern Europe.  And also, I kid because Jan Mayen has no permanent population!  But there were quite a few people interested in buying our machine, and that was awesome for me to see because I will eventually be trying to sell them myself.

Here's a picture of a place in Tokyo that has a big ball lodged in it.  You can see clearly that Tokyo is on the cutting edge of architecture and coolness.  Also, every night at 10 seconds to midnight, that ball drops slowly to the street and then Auld Lang Syne plays loudly.  Just kidding!  Boy is my blog chock-full of hilarity or what?

Today I was asked to be an intermediator/translator/interpreter between one of our folks from the US and our president and one of our materials suppliers and someone from the Mitsubishi corporation.  It went like this: 

Pres/MatsSupp/Mitsu: japanesejapanesejapanesejapanese.

Company President (in Japanese): Nic, tell Kyle.

Me: They said something about some kind of materials or something, and maybe a discount?

Kyle: Oh yes, a $100 discount per metric ton of materials for an entire year?

Me: That sounds right.

Everyone else (smiling and nodding): Japanesejapanesejapanesejapanese

President (In Japanese): Nic, tell Kyle.

Me: I think they want to make a decision.  Or hold off on the decision until the supply is confirmed.

Kyle: Yes...?

Me: Yes.

Everyone else: Japanesejapanesejapanesejapanese

President: Nic, tell Kyle.

Me: zzzzzzzz...huh?  wha?  Where AM I?

It was a really great experience and I hope to do it again soon.  I think the meeting went very well.