Truly Foreign Food and The Wrong Clothes

Today’s escapades were fairly mundane.  Up at 6:00 to try and catch people on the east coast as they were getting ready to leave (5pm yesterday for them) and working with my team on the west coast as it was only 2pm for them.  I called my boss and worked through the labyrinthine expense system we use at work to book domestic travel to make sure she approved any of the choices that were being made.  She’ll ultimately need to approve them and hope the ambivalent gods that control the skein of rules see fit to bless us with not having to fill out numerous justification forms.

This will be great… I’ll have three days at home before back on a plane for that other slightly foreign land of Texas.  I’m looking forward to it actually.  It’s an award ceremony for a few of us, so what the hell, I can look forward to that, right?  Damn skippy.

I head into work at my usual time, about 20 minutes before 9:00, which will get me there about 10 minutes early.  I was almost late.  I saw something totally cool.  I took a video or two of a very tight parking lot on the busy Sotobori Dori street.  It was one of those turn tables that rotates the car 90°.  Very cool.

Working in a foreign country is … different to be putting it lightly.  I was given instructions on getting some users on an international Exchange server that were “slightly outdated but should be close enough” and the usernames and passwords of the users to get them going.  So, I’ll be working on two locals’ machines… with full Japanese installs.  With help of [REDACTED]-san, he points me to the right boxes.  I’m generally close as I’m familiar enough with the process of clicking the third tab, click the second to the last box, press the button that activates, etc.  I just get confirmation on the dropdowns as there are either more or less options and I’m not sure how they’re ordered.  Everything is going perfect.  Until (you knew that was coming…).  Yes, until (and my fellow techies out there may appreciate this) I need to specify a domain and username, which for the rest of you means: “domain\username”.  On a Japanese keyboard, if you press the ‘\’ key, you get ‘¥’.  Yup,  ‘¥’.  Well, that won’t work.  I know, some of you are thinking, just use the ASCII escape sequence.  Hai!!  Pressing ALT+0092 gives me the finger and a proud little ‘¥’ staring back at me.  Crap.  I try to use the ¥ in place of the ‘\’ anyways and get an error in which [REDACTED]-san informs me says that it means an invalid username has been entered.  No sh!t…  <sigh>.  We send an email with a ‘\’ in the body of the email, copy and paste that, and get a ‘¥’ again.  Ugh… OK, I hit my laptop for some research, come up pretty much blank and then fire off an email to my east coast guys that have been traveling like this in the past.  They say to change the language to English.  Brilliant! Didn’t help the keyboard issue.  There is spare US keyboard around, we plug that in and I hopefully press the \ key and am rewarded with … guesses anyone?  If you guessed ‘¥’, then you have lost.  If you guessed ‘]’, then you win!  Pressing ‘]’ yields a ‘[‘.  Pressing ‘[‘ gives me, as I would have guessed, a ‘@’.  OK, time to give up on that avenue, it is producing madness.  I decide to try browsing the network, since that needs to use ‘\’ as well.  I look up the machine name (<3 DOS commands… “hostname” for the win) and punch that into the address bar with “¥¥” in front of it and am greeted with a small folder listing of what is being shared on the network from this system.  Huzzah! OK, so it appears ‘¥’ is the equivalent of ‘\’ here.  I redo all the work knowing that and still get errors.  I try the same process on the US English system that I’m going to replace next week with a known good account and the steps work fine.  OK, so it’s their accounts.  I follow up my previous email with a request to make sure the accounts are enabled and the passwords are correct.

The office manager invites me to go to lunch with her and I happily accept.  Anywhere the “locals” like to eat is where I want to try.  Monday was a great sushi place.  Today was a Korean place she really likes.  She suggested the bibimbap, with some spicy, pickled cabbage, some red sauce that was similar to Sriracha but not as hot.  Holy moly, what a great meal.  There were signs all over the restaurant that had pictures of famous people that have eaten there and their signatures and well-wishes.  When I say “all over”, they truly were all over.  They even lined the long entry hall from the side street to get to the restaurant.

We stopped in a little discount store because she wanted to show me where it was if I needed it.  She grabbed some shampoo, I found green tea Kit Kats, and ones you’re supposed to bake, pumpkin spice Kit Kats, and Vanilla Ice Cream flavored ones.  Huge bags though.  I may have to go back and see if they have smaller packages.  I also noted they sold small bottles of laundry detergent.  I’ll need that soon.  I’ll be doing laundry at a coin-op place about 20 minute walk away according to the concierge desk.  It’s about $4.00 to wash and $1.00 for 10 minutes of drying.

Back in the office after lunch was routine stuff but around 3:00pm the lady I went to lunch with asks me if I brought an umbrella.  Uhhh…. Nooo?  I glance outside and see that it is indeed raining and pretty windy.  A quick check reveals that it will be like this for the next 24-36 hours as near as I can tell.  Great.  I have my rain slick… back in my hotel where it is nice, cozy, and dry.  She offers an umbrella for me.  She is a life saver.

A few minutes later, I hear a different person in the office talking to someone in English and hear them say that we’re having some bad weather.  I am reminded of hearing an Eskimo proverb a few years ago that says: There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.  Too true.  Dress slacks and shirt are the wrong clothes to be out in this weather by themselves.

Bad weather?  No, just another reason Tokyo is beautiful no matter what the weather.

I take the umbrella with me as I depart the office slightly happy that I’m beginning to catch phrases I know and be able to respond.  Still woefully inadequate to function, but it’s a start.  I head out into the rain and decide that since I’m already out, I’ll hit dinner before going back to the hotel.  Since I started today with foreign food (or at least foreign in this country), I’ll finish with foreign food.  Off to Saray, the Turkish underground restaurant for lahmacun.

I am warmly greeted in English and asked if I have a reservation.  Uh oh.  I respond that I do not and they say that they’re sorry, but the tables are all reserved and that I would have to eat at the counter.  Uh, OK!  No worries there!  I order my lahmacun.  Even though it is not in Turkey, it’s the same continent and cooked by Turkish people, I’m happy.  I’m even happier when I get to eat this delicacy.  Oh so good.

Dessert is Turkish ice cream and Turkish coffee.  MMmmmm.  The cup is about 1.5 inches across.  Almost big enough to be used in a child’s tea set, but very beautiful in design.  I put my watch in the picture as a reference to the size.

I walk over to the grocery store for my breakfast for tomorrow: blueberry yogurt, maguro sashimi, and some Meiji orange-apple-banana milk.  Don’t you judge me.