Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Off to the east…



Well, not the Far East, but east none-the-less.  I was home for three days and then I was lucky enough to win an award from my company and they are sending me to Texas to pick it up and attend a ceremony.  So this trip is much different than the one I am just recovering from.  More "fun" type of work than "easy" type of work.

This may be a boring read for many since there isn’t cool new stuff to see, but it will give me an avenue to relay a travel experience I hope none of my lovely readers ever experience and is the second time for me.

I arrived in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and hopped off the plane with my minimal carry on (just a laptop and ipad really).  I was able to finally get TSA Pre-Check flying out of San Diego and it was much quicker (if the scanner isn’t malfunctioning so bad that it is picking up the change in someone’s pocket 15-feet away).  Didn’t have to remove the baggie of liquids (if I had any), the laptop, or my shoes.  I highly recommend using it if you can.  Anyway, back in Texas:  I head to the baggage claim area (they have one for every gate or pair of gates it seems).  Follow travelers on my flight gleefully, almost mockingly, trapse away with their bags, but mine?  Mine and three other passengers seem to have no luggage.  Sure enough, the conveyor belt stops signaling the end of bags and the raising of the middle finger to me and hopes of stress-free travel.

No problem, right?  This happens often enough.  I head over to where two … human beings are sitting.  I state that I just landed and all the bags seem to have been delivered, but mine is missing.  I’m asked my flight number and am told that hasn’t landed yet.  Um… riiiiight.  Well, I’ve been here for about 20 minutes and I assure you that I have landed.  He says that they’re probably not done unloading.  The “helpful scale” on which I’m judging these two … humans (I don’t even want to dignify them as being employed in a capacity to which they are obviously not fulfilling), has now broken through the lowest levels recorded in eons.  He says that he’ll call down “to the ramp”, which I take it to mean the area where the gorillas shuffle bags from plane to cart and back again ad nauseum.  After a quick conversation, he says that he’s been told that they haven’t finished unloading the plane.  Umm… the other 98% of the passengers have already walked away with their bags and there are only four people waiting for bags.  Try again.  One of the … humans … walks away to see what is going on down there.  He comes back stating he got nothing but attitude from the ramp people and promptly called his supervisor.  He’s moving up the scale now.  After getting a call back from the supervisor, he informs us that the ramp crew was on a shift change and our bags should be en route any time.  As if on cue, the carousel whirrs to life again and four bags magically appear, one of which is mine.  So, the shift change caused a 40-minute delay in four bags.  You want to know what’s wrong with America?  Unions.

After that fun, it was a 30-minute long wait for a car and then figuring out the labyrinthine ways of DFW airport.  I <3 GPS navigation.  Check in at the hotel: 2 minutes.  My third hotel in as many weeks and they’re increasing in “meh” each time.  Oh hey! I can get ice here!  It’s a good thing, because it’s 102°F.

I unpack and meet a co-worker in the lobby later for dinner.  He used to live here and we head to a “good chain” steakhouse that won’t set us back $100 each.  I had the Cowboy bone-in rib eye.  It has been a while since I had rib eye and it was nice to know it is still really good.

We chat over dinner about stuff we have worked on together over the years but have never met (he lives in Melbourne, FL currently), colleges we work with, etc.  A fun night to be sure, made even better by his insistence that he buy for “all the work that you’ve done for me over the years.”  Fine; I get beers tomorrow.   Speaking of beers: I did get a chance to stop by a local beer joint to browse their bottles and walked out with a beaut:



So I have no idea how big a production tomorrow will be or how big a deal these awards are (fairly if they’re willing to fly people in to get them), but I will update tomorrow if I get a chance.

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Last Times


I wanted to start my last day in the office early to make sure I got everything done before I left the country.  Breakfast was back at the Garden Lounge overlooking the beautiful garden (go figure) and it was overcast out and promising some precipitation.  The walk to work was somber and I purposely wandered through the back streets to impress that upon my mind and not the dull, main traffic street as my last memory.  I pass by Bic Camera knowing that I’ll be here in a few hours to buy a printer and a monitor for one of the users.  I get into work and now know the trick for getting in if I’m the first to arrive.  I apparently am not the first and spend a couple minutes chatting with the one other in the office as I wait for my tea to seep.

Bic Camera is an onslaught to the senses.  I can read about 2% of the displays.  When there with one of the office workers I’m just there to answer the technical questions they may have or I have them translate my questions.  We settle on a printer and a monitor and I carry them out.  They personally strap and create handles for you to carry out your boxed items including wrapping the handle in bubble wrap to make it comfortable to carry.  These people think of everything.

One thing I that sticks out about that store is their very catchy jingle, but if you hangout in the PC department or the TV department for long, you’ll hear the very catchy song from Frozen, “Let It Go”, a few times in English and a version in Japanese which sounds pretty cool.  It’s no AKB48, but it was good.

Getting all the new hardware installed was no problem and I say my goodbyes to some of the office staff that are heading to meetings at the US Embassy and the Japanese Ministry of Defense.  Afterwards, a couple of us head to a shabu-shabu place for my last lunch on this trip.  That was a fun and relatively healthy lunch and even came with a choice of mango pudding or orange sherbet.  That sherbet was perfect for the 85% humidity outside.

The afternoon was filled with last minute emails and minor panic items and me trying to get receipts scanned so I can get my expenses paid.  I say my good-byes and “mata rai nen” (see you next year) and I’m corrected to just “mata ne” (see you later).  That sounds a lot better.  I am looking forward to coming back and helping these people and seeing a bit more of this country.

For the evening, I decide to go back to Akihabara and explore Yodobashi Akiba.  Remember my description of Bic Camera?  Ok,  same number of floors, but the floors are about 8-10 times larger and one floor is dedicated to restaurants.  It was crazy in there.  I wanted to explore a bit more of the Akihabara area after browsing through Yodobashi Akiba but the weather report had lied to me when it said no chance of rain and I didn’t bring my rain jacket with me.  Oh well, there will be a next time.

I take the subway back and as I finish my final trip on the Tokyo Metro, I have ¥75 left on my PASMO card.  Perfect.  I will keep the card and use it when I return.  I didn’t find anything tantalizing on the 8th floor of Yodobashi Akiba for food so I decided to try one place that I have been passing by practically every night.  It is usually busy and tonight was no exception.  It always smelled awesome, but I had so many other restaurants on my list that I never got to this one until tonight.  This was a great little find as well.  It’s a restaurant where you order meat (or tongue, or inards) that is thinly sliced and you have a small, round grill in front of you and you cook your food to your liking.  It was very cool and very tasty.  There were two native-looking people sitting next to me and they struck up a conversation in perfect English with me as they were leaving and made a suggestion on what to order next time.  This was their first time here as well and they too had passed by it a few times in the past and decided to try it.



On my way back to the hotel, I spot three guys from the office sitting in front of a pub.  I sit and join them for a bit for conversation.  It has been a while since I’ve been able to just listen to a conversation or contribute to one.  It was a nice experience.  All four of us are staying in the same hotel and we talk shop as we head back to our rooms and get ready for tomorrow’s long day.

I now sit relaxing and typing the last entry in this blog for this trip gazing out of my hotel room window at the skyline of east-south-east Chiyoda-ku.  I am amazed at the luck I’ve had getting here, the memories I made, the new friends I’ve met, and the joy of visiting a country I’ve longed dreamed about but never thought I would get to experience.  One week was not enough for me.  Two is just about right.  I’ve seen a lot, experienced a lot but I am ready to come home.  I am looking forward to coming back and it will be even better as I will be able to bring the love of my life here and share what I have found in this beautiful country.

Wrapping up a business trip can be a bit taxing.  Finally finishing jobs, tying up loose ends, saying good-byes to new friends are all part of the experience.  A bitter sweet end to the work here for now.  As the last day of this sojourn completes, I am thankful for the opportunity that got me here and to all of you for allowing me to share my times here.  Relaying my experiences helps me keep a connection to all of you and makes the distance seem not so far after all.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

On The Importance of Literacy



Stay it school kids and don’t forget to learn all you can about this emerging technology called “computers”.

Today: rainy but that’s cool, I like rain.  This city is still pretty in the rain and how it was built to handle it.  Apparently snow is a different story here.  First dusting and six people die in the morning commute and everything is fine again.  In a society where walking and biking are the primary forms of locomotion after the subway, it can make for some interesting situations I am told.

Breakfast was at a place that wasn’t a buffet.  The only place here where your coupons for breakfast of the four that isn’t a well-appointed and disguised food trough for guests.  It was also a place that served traditional Japanese breakfast.  It was delicious and I can only assume by the ingredients, healthy.  Another bonus was that it was just beyond the Garden Lounge from yesterday so I had a pretty amazing view of an uninhabited garden.


Work was nothing but calm.  There was a meeting that started at 8:00am (an hour early for the office) and I needed to help someone just before.  So I made it, even in the rain and breakfast, by about 7:40.  I got the meeting going with not much work, finished working on the one user’s computer I needed to and then waited for others to start showing up.

It seems they finally realized that their IT support only had two more days in country because I was bouncing between the three offices constantly.  As soon as I would get one fixed and try to understand what the next issue was with a different user, the first would have a question.  Towards the end of the morning, I was having to fix “panics” involving printing when I knew it was just working (user changed the default to Microsoft OneNote) and basic usage questions for Outlook.

It is still cooking on the plate.
Lunch wasn’t until 1:00pm, but that was just as well as we went to the Kobe steak house just down the road and it can be incredibly busy between 11:30 and about 12:45.  Oishi kata desu!!  (Was very tasty).  So we drag ourselves back to the office through cold winds and wet sidewalks.  The steak place is maybe about a 45 second walk from the front doors of the office building so it wasn’t too long outside to feel cold.

The rest of the afternoon I felt like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation in the scene where he’s film the commercial and the assistant tells him that the director wants “more intensity” after going on a 20-second tirade.  One of the users in trying to understand Outlook was asking me questions that would be the equivalent of something like:  “I have two rock. One for moon, other in shoe.  How can I make ocean become rock for old way?”  Umm, OK.  I *can* help you, I just need to understand what you need.  So I got the bilingual person to assist and after, and I not kidding, an energetic, three-minute, back-and-forth conversation that had me thinking of ham, she explained what he wanted and about two minutes later I had him all set.

Thinking I was done, I head back to my desk to check on the situation where someone locked their account and we had to wait for the UK to wake up.  Yup, I’m dealing with friends and family in the Pacific  and Mountain time zones, co-workers in the Pacific, the international support team based in the East and the international server team contacts in the UK.  16, 15, 13, and 9 hours behind me, respectively.  Joy…  I didn’t get to enjoy myself too much with email as I was called back to answer some other issues about transferring contacts from Outlook Express [shudder] to Outlook.   Welcome to comma-seperated value address books.  I hope you didn’t have any commas in your addresses or comments or anything like that.  Oh and since it is basically a flat text file, just guess what happens to all those kanji characters when converted to text?  If you guessed it looks like ASCII up and barfed in a file, you’d be right.

After 6 again, I drag myself from the office for the penultimate time for this trip with a slight sense of sadness.  To feel better, I apply a copious amount of すし.  I’m sure there is a kanji for sushi, but that is how I know how to spell it now.  Walking around Akasaka-Mitsuke, I'm beginning to be able to read more.  Now I need to start learning what words mean.  Time to get a dictionary.

Tomorrow’s sojourn may be very brief or it may be a long night.  I may go to Akihabra again to stroll through the electronic nirvana some more.  I was way too tired Saturday night to enjoy it.  I’ll have to check the balance on my PASMO card to see if I have enough to get there and back.  They have Japanese language learner devices. I may look for one and see how it works.

Mata ne

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Continental and Forbidden Fruit


Today’s day started out nice with a new restaurant.  It had many of the same selections, but not all of them.  It was a continental (not The Continental) style breakfast overlooking the gardens.  It was a very nice way to begin my day.  I leisurely strolled through the entire garden on my way to work.

I received some updates to the some work items during my night and was able to start some work right away.  One user has one of the strangest problems in connecting to the internet that took a long time to resolve and in the end needed brute force to get it to work.  That is more of a story for a beer:30 and not so much here.

It wasn’t a real exciting day other than the computer I ordered getting here.  However, since I was dealing with the other user’s internet issues, I didn’t have a chance to do much other than unpack the system until about 4pm.  I was at work late working both the systems and have more work to do early tomorrow before they show up.  A leisurely meander may not be in the cards for tomorrow.

Practically stumbling out of work, I head to that ramen house I ate at last night and before the waiter even bothers to bring me an English menu, I order up my 6 Gyoza and a bowl of rice.  Within about three minutes I have my repast steaming in all its glory in front of me.  My only regret?  I didn’t find this place earlier in my stay.  This hit me as a touch of comfort food as I felt the day’s stress just wash away.  Another nice thing was I was the only gaijin in the place.  Well, at least I was until a couple and two guys showed up.  I’m not sure what it is about this place that attracts us foreigners.  I’m going to go with the awesome food as my answer.

I schlep back to the hotel later than I’d care to be getting back.  It is still hot, muggy, and not all that comfortable outside, so the interior of the hotel is a welcome feeling as the air conditioning washes over me.  Tokyo may be a beautiful city 99% of the time, but it cannot be accused of having beautiful weather that same amount.  That aside, I love it here.

Cracking the door to the room and peeling off the work clothes brings another shot of welcome relief and I head to the mini-fridge in the room where I have my latest acquisition waiting for me: De Verboden Vrucht.  A wonderful little fruit beer that is dangerously easy to enjoy being that it is 8.5% alcohol.  I kick back enjoying the brew and staring at the bright lights of Chiyoda-ku letting my mind wander and marvel in the luck I’ve had in even being able to enjoy this wonderful nation and a few of its people.  I was beginning to dread leaving not knowing if I’d be back, but knowing that I will is making the last few days that I have here not so urgent.

Until tomorrow’s sojourn…