ianlewis

So things are all set for us to go to Kyoto! We'll be there starting the 29th of April to the 2nd of May. We plan to go lots of places and take lots of pictures. I'm still not sure exactly what day we will be going to each place on our list but I think that our time will be quite full.

For all of those interested I'll be sure to post the pictures after we get back. I'm really looking forward to having a long break.

So Goldenweek is approaching. It's a week in Japan with no less than 5 national holidays. They don't all fall on the weekdays but essentially you got a full week off from work.

Since I'll have a good time off from work I was wondering what I should do and I'm thinking of taking a trip with Reiko to Kyoto and Osaka. Currently I'm putting together a list of possible tourist destinations in the Osaka/Kyoto area. You can see the Map here.

So if anyone has any suggestions about a place in the Osaka/Kyoto area that I don't have listed on the Map , let me know.

It's springtime in Japan!! The weather was gorgeous this weekend and was perfect timing for going to see cherry blossoms, as they are in full bloom now. Yesterday, Reiko and I went to Yoyogi Park to see the cherry blossoms and they were beautiful. You can check out more pictures of cherry blossoms here. Cherry blossom viewing is pretty popular here and a LOT of people were out at Yoyogi to picnic with friends, drink alcohol, and look at the beautiful flowers.

Recently I've been pretty busy. Reiko and I haven't gone out to visit a lot of places partly because she is trying to save money, and partly because she has been trying to finish some school work.

This has been exacerbated by the fact that her mom's lymphoma has returned and will be in the hospital for a while. During the treatment her body will be weak so she will also spend some time in a 無菌室（むきんしつ）or clean room and her visitations will be limited. Her mom is still relatively young and strong so I have high hopes that she will be fine. But it has put a heavy psychological burden on her's and Reiko's shoulders.

I also learned that some friends from the Virginia area meetup are moving to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. It really seems like the meetup is fairly well dead. Without someone as a decent driving force who has enough time and interest in Japanese language it seems inevitable. This latest news is just the latest in a string of blows to the group (not the least of which was my coming to Japan, but also Emily coming to Japan and Joel's plans to move later this year).

So that's the end of the bad news. My next posts will be good news I promise.

Somewhat recently, Google released their online version of Microsoft Word and Excel. Essentially, it is a document editor that can import and export various formats and allow editing of documents on the web. I originally thought that the AJAX approach of Google Docs could never touch the feature set, speed, and usability of a native application. After all, documents can be big, and native applications like Word, and Open Office have huge feature sets that couldn't possibly be replicated easily and efficiently on the web using AJAX.

So I thought. But in reality Google has replicated many of the important features in Word and Excel already with surprisingly good results. But even still that's missing the point. The point is being able to manage all of the documents for you and/or your organization collaboratively online. And then once finished being able to publish the results to the web. The power of such an idea only hit me fully today. Once you publish it on the web, your users and customers can view it. If you were able to integrate this functionality into your organization, namely writing documents online collaboratively and publishing the results to the web, think of the things you could do with such functionality. You could release financial data and reports this way. You could release and manage revisions of software documentation this way. Many things are possible with this approach.

Managing revisions of anything is a hard task. Maintaining what versions of the software are installed where and what versions are published is an annoying and hard task to manage. This sort of approach would make it easy. Publishing documents on the internet this way could allow customers and/or users to view new documentation or new versions of documentation from your organization's website instantly. I feel that, more and more, integrating standards based applications to create working systems that help people manage their businesses (including publishing) and access data from anywhere via the internet is where the future will be heading.

I'm not sure how much of all the great new things Google is putting out were the result of Google's own inventiveness or whether Google simply read the writing on the wall (which is not such an easy task itself) but it's exciting to see the new companies direction first hand as many of the applications are available for free for essentially non-commercial use.

Google of course wishes to remain an innovator but history has shown that companies, just like people grow up and gain responsibilities (to employees and customers) like people gain responsibilities to their families and that the innovation really rests in the hands of those who are young and free to explore their whims. I just hope that Google can maintain it's innovation well into the future. It's quite amazing to watch.

Recently I have found that while I am studying Japanese language, as I have not studied Japanese formally, I lack a good degree of knowlege of historic and cultural context.

So I'm playing a bit of catch-up reading some articles in Wikipedia. I'm already familiar with some of the large events such as the Boshin War and Meiji Restoration and the general idea of the events. But I'm missing details that are important to learning more about Japanese culture and society.

Maybe I'll look into picking up some books about Japanese history in order to get a more in depth knowledge of Japanese historic events.

I went to see the Pursuit of Happyness with Reiko on Saturday night. It's a film based on a time in the life of Christopher Gardner in which he struggled financially and for a time was homeless while raising his son.

The movie starts with Christopher Gardner struggling as a bone density scanner salesman. As he becomes farther and farther behind on rent and expenses he soon realizes that he cannot continue selling the scanners and though his tenacity gains a position as an intern at Dean Witter in a competitive program which awards only one of 20 interns a position as a stock broker.

But soon after he is kicked out of his apartment and is forced to live on the streets for a time. Being a father and homeless, he has to leave work early to pick up his son from day care and get in line at 5 o'clock to ensure a space in a shelter to sleep. This forces him to learn innovative ways to compete with the other interns.

Throughout this whole time he somehow finds time to take care of his son, study for the stock broker exam, and repair and sell the remaining bone density scanners that he has left to pay for food and daycare.

I found that the being a movie where Gardner gets a position at a financial firm as a stock broker the ending was a little anticlimactic. But I couldn't help but feel a real sense of congratualation for the character who is no doubt quite an outstanding individual in real life.

Today I worked on finishing the upgrade to the website and I went shopping in Ikebukuro. I picked up a new shirt and sweater. Hopefully it should look ok with my blue slacks. I got a game called カブトレ, a stock trading game, for Reiko。I also bought her a small Mario ball thingy. It looks like a dog's toy but I think she'll like it. She likes Mario and stuff. I hope she isn't too stressed out about me spending so much money on her. ;)

I'm watching Metropolis again after about 4 years. It's a pretty interesting movie. Reminds me of the Animatrix short that describes the world before the war between androids and humans.

Tomorrow I'll go to Musashimurayama with Reiko to the Diamond City Mall. We'll meet at Kojira at 11 before we head to Tamagawajyousui and then take the bus to the mall. Then we're going to Emily's place at the Yokota Air Base to study some. I hope we can work out something where we can study again. That would be pretty fun.

Last Sunday I bought JUMP Ultimate Stars for the Nintendo DS. Since then I've been pretty addicted to the game. The format is that of a melee type game like Super Smash Bros for the Gamecube. But the characters are all from the weekly JUMP comic book in Japan. JUMP is kind of like a weekly book/magazine with various comics.

Part of the reason it's so addictive is the number of recognizable characters. JUMP prints comics like "Fist of the North Star", "Dragonball", "One Piece", "Naruto", "Bleach", "Kenshin", and "Yugioh". All of whom have representative characters in the game.

You progress through the game by traveling to different planets that are themed around each of the JUMP comic series. At each planet you advance by winning a number of battles which generally have different objectives like gaining the most points, or collecting symbols, or just defeating all other players. Because the types of matches are limited they do get somewhat repetitive. But usually they change it up by pitting you against different characters from the various comics or forcing you to use the characters from the comic to achieve your goals.

In order to choose which characters you play with, you create a deck or what looks more like a comic page using cards or comic pictures for each of the various battle, support, and helper characters. Each card takes up a specific amount of space on the page so you have to arrange them so they fit. The cards come in 3 types, battle, support, and help. The battle cards are those used for the characters you control in battle. The support cards are for characters you can summon to perform an action and help you fight during the battle. The helper cards give the battle cards extra power ups and abilities. Each character could have any array of cards. For instance, Naruto has 2 different sizes of support cards and 3 different sizes of battle cards. Of course the larger sized cards are more powerful versions of Naruto since they take up more space on your comic page.

Of course it also allows full wireless play with those who also have the game and a limited amount of wireless play for those without (they can download a piece of the game wirelessly so they can play). Though I haven't had a chance to check it out with anyone yet.

Happy new year everyone!! Been a while since I posted last. A lot has happened since the last time I posted. I was pretty busy for the holidays. But I spent a lot of time with Reiko so naturally I had a great time.

Reiko and I spent Christmas Eve together (Christmas Day in Japan was a regular working day and I had to work) . We had roasted chicken and exchanged gifts. Reiko is pretty low on cash since she is taking classes finishing up her college degree so we had a low budget Christmas but that's the way it should be anyway. The important thing was spending time together.

New years is a big thing in Japan so I had 4 days off of work. I spent most of that time with Reiko at her house with her family. We went to see the "Mysteries of the Human Body" exibition near her house at the Saitama Arena. On New Years we went to a local shrine to ring the bell but there was a huge line so we opted to just drink tea and watch others for a while. On the 2nd we had a party with Reiko's family and had lots of new years food.

Unfortunately, I had to work on the 4th but I took the 5th off instead so it balanced out. On the 5th, Reiko surprised me and came to my apartment and cooked me yakisoba for lunch. Then we went to Meiji-Jingu (Shrine next to Yoyogi Park) for Hatsumoude (first visit to the shrine in the new year). We went to Meiji-Jingu last year when we met in Tokyo, so we remembered some memories from last year, and made prayed for the new year.

On the 6th, Reiko came over again and we went to the Edogawa-ku Sports Center and played badminton for a couple hours before coming back and watching Piglett's Big Movie :-P My mom gave it to her for her birthday last April but we never got to watch it together.

Sunday, we went to Ikebukuro and returned some DS games that we didn't like. I returned Kanji-Ryoku since it's too hard for me. Reiko returned the Mario Basketball game I got her since it's too hard to play. We got some new games instead, Tales of the Tempest, and an English language game. I stayed at Reiko's house that night and we ate gyoza dumplings. Today we went to eat kaiten sushi with Reiko's family and went shopping.

After such a long break from work it'll be hard to go back. :sigh: I have to work this next Saturday so it'll suck, but I can see Reiko on Sunday probably so I'll look forward to that. Anyway, Reiko and I bonded a lot during the time together these holidays. Since the 30th, we have been together every day except the 4th when I was working. No matter how much time we spend together I don't feel like we've spent too much time together :)

On Monday this week I went on a one day business trip to Osaka. I met with some coworkers at the head office and talked about my next project at work. Though it was pretty short it was a good experience for me.

I took the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. It was my first time taking the bullet train so I was pretty excited. You don't think it's so fast at first but once you get to full speed you feel like you're in a jet plane. Looking at the scenery would make you dizzy. It's SUPER FAST.

I've used Gmail for my personal mail for almost 2 years now. But I had never had a phone where I could access the internet from the cell phone until I came to Japan. So I was delighted to know that Gmail has a mobile feature that allows me to read e-mails from the cell phone.

However, it's not all Samurai's and Green Tea here in Japan because Gmail doesn't work on Japanese mobiles. In fact almost none of Google's services work on the cell phone. Google has a news reader that you can access from your mobile phone as well. But that doesn't work either. The simple search seems to work ok but any service where you need to log in fails and Google doesn't support Japanese phones.

Each service complains that you need cookies enabled in your browser in order log in. Though cookies are enabled in the browser and other Japanese sites like Mixi have no problems logging you in.

I tried searching the internet for possible causes and solutions to the problem and I came across a few websites but nothing seemed to work. This site seems to suggest that at first there is a possibility that it would fail but if you login again it would work. But nothing seemed to work for me and gmail seems to spend you to a page that isn't for mobiles. I suppose all of this could be my phone's lousy browser implementation but lots of phones in Japan seem to have the same problem.

I suppose the lack of resources in Japanese, not supporting Japanese phones and not having services useful to Japanese (like train schedules etc.) is why people in Japan tend to use Yahoo and not Google. Yahoo just serves Japanese people better. And besides the messenger has cuter smilies

I recently bought a Nintendo DS and though I've had it only about a couple weeks or so it's already become one of my favorite game systems, handheld or otherwise. The touch screen, and level of innovation in the games adds greatly to it's appeal.

So far I've picked up 3 games. One is Kanji Kentei which is a practice and learning game/software for learning Japanese characters. It follows the Kanji Kentei standarized test and includes a testing mode and practice mode. The practice mode has separate modes for testing how to write kanji, reading kanji, and stroke number/order. As you practice it saves the data on which you got right and wrong for each level and mode. The testing mode combines all three of these modes into a test which it grades and gives you a pass/fail score.

I also picked up the Kirby DS game. Somehow I really like Kirby and how you can suck in enemies and use their powers. It also has really nicely designed levels. It's a refreshing game that doesn't require a lot of time . More recently I've had less and less time I've been able and willing to give to playing games. It also has some simple but fun mini games which yo u can play with friends. One of the nice things about the DS is that you can play with others who have a DS without both of you owning the game. The person without the game can connect and temporarily download the part of the game they need to play along.

I also picked up Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin which like Dawn of Sorrow borrows a lot of gameplay aspects from the PS Symphony of the Night. Which is one of the cooler Castlevania games. So far it hasn't disappointed. I especially like the dual character aspect. And as an added bonus the game has a coop mode so you can play two player! So far I don't have anyone to play with but it seems like it would be fun.

Anyway, if you don't have a DS I strongly encourage you to get one. They are relatively cheap but are a lot of bang for the buck with all the features.

This past weekend Reiko and I hung out with Emily again. On Saturday, we all met at Reiko's house. We went out to the store to do some shopping and checked to see if they had Nintendo DS, and they did so I bought two for Reiko and I (Emily already has one from the 'States). It's a cool toy but I'll talk about it later

After that we made Gyoza, Chinese style pork dumplings. After making those Reiko's Aunt and Uncle came over and brought Kimchi Nabe, Kimchi flavored soup with vegetables. After dinner with the family we played with the DS and learned how to use it and try our new games before going home for the night.

Sunday, we met in Shibuya, at Hachiko-mae (in front of Hachiko the faithful dog). After that we went to Yoyogi to see some Autumn leaves. We ate some lunch at at the park and did a bit of shopping before stopping in a Starbucks for some gingerbread latte. After that Emily had to go to meet some friends so Reiko and I went on a "date", though it didn't turn out too romantic. I corrected her school assignment, and then we went to the bookstore, and ate some Korean food and talked and headed home.

Recently, it's felt like though Reiko and I have been dating almost a year, that we don't know each other that well. Language, communication, culture, and our expectations have proven to be large barriers. However, if I think about it a minute, there is a lot we take for granted and we really know each other better than we think.

This weekend Reiko and I spent time with our friend Emily who moved to Japan last weekend.

On Friday Reiko and I went to visit Emily at Yokota Air Base.　Walking around base you hardly realize that you are in Japan. All of the buildings are American style and aren't right next to the roads. All the stuff in the PX Walmart-like store are American goods at American prices.

On Saturday we went to Shinjuku and got Emily a cell phone, then we went to Ueno to look around. Emily bought a new wallet at the Mujirushi department store. After that we went back to Reiko's house and hung out with Peter and Mariko again before going to sleep.

Sunday was basically a hunt for the Nintendo DS which ended fruitlessly as every store we went to had sold out. This included shops in Akihabara, Shinjuku and Reiko's home town. Though it was a bit depressing not finding a DS, all in all, the weekend was pretty fun.

It's been a while since I posted last. Now that I have internet in the apartment here in Japan I'd like to post more often. Though it's a little hard because I'd like to keep my English and Japanese blogs pretty much in sync and writing Japanese takes time. I'd write every day if I could, but it's just too hard.

Anyway, Today I went to an engagement ceremony for Reiko's cousin Mariko. Mariko met her fiancee, Peter, in Canada while in college studying music. Peter plays the cello and Mariko the piano. Reiko's family is Christian so the ceremony was at a local church. It was pretty interesting to attend the ceremony since it's pretty similar to Christian ceremonies in the 'States. After the ceremony there was a reception and Mariko and Peter played a little bit.

Afterwards we went to Marko's house and ate dinner with the family. That was probably the most fun for me. I got to interact with Reiko's family some more and practice Japanese. While it's still kind of hard to keep up with everything that's going on, it feels pretty good to be more involved with Reiko's family.

Last Saturday Reiko and I went on a tour of Akihabara with the Tokyo Japanese-English Language and Culture Meetup. The assistant organizer for the meetup, Asako, planned out a pretty interesting trip for everyone. I guess she wanted us to see all the fantastic, and strange places in Akihabara, so we went to two maid cafes, a cosplay costume shop, and and finally an adult department shop. They were some pretty strange destinations but all in all it was pretty fun.

Well this Sunday is my birthday and my friend Emily is coming from the 'States so I imagine I'll be pretty busy this weekend. Though, I don't know if someone is coming to meet Emily or not...

So I've been in Japan 2 weeks already. I only started work Monday last week so I spend the first week buying things and setting up the apartment with Reiko. I had to buy a bed and furniture, and get a cell phone and stuff. This past weekend Reiko and I went to Yoyogi park again.

While I'm not yet used to Japan, the folks at work seem cool and there are English speakers here so I don't think I'll have any problems

It seems that the internet company that I'm going to use is busy, so the internet isn't going to be hooked up until the 20th. I guess I'll just have to make do with the cell phone and work internet for the time being.

Anyway, So far I'm having a great time though the trains are crowded

Well I've been in Japan almost a week and I'm trying to get settled. It's pretty hard with such a small apartment but I'm doing my best. So I've been working on getting things for the apartment like some furniture and appliances.

I can live in a pretty small space but the kitchen is very basic. So it'll be hard to cook at the apartment. Though the kitchen is basic Reiko and I bought some kitchen stuff, pots and pans mostly, when we went out yesterday. Also the company bought be a microwave, washing machine, and refrigerator but the refrigerator hasn't come yet so that makes things a bit complicated since I can't keep food for longer than the day I bought it.

All in all things have worked out ok, and I haven't had too many problems. Though, the washing machine that came at first didn't work, it was quickly replaced by the company where it was bought.

I'm using an internet cafe so the clock is ticking. I should have internet in my apartment in the next week or two. More later...

I'm leaving for Japan at 12:30pm on Sunday, so today I'm in the middle of a late night packing session. The downstairs living room at my parent's house is still a complete disaster area. They'll be thrilled in the morning.

I learned a few new tidbits that will be useful from my friend Doug, who just arrived in Japan last month as a JET. Like, it takes 2 weeks to get the foreigner registration card (ID), so you need to get a special form in order to get a mobile phone and get a bank account, and some other things.

I'm pretty excited and nervous at the same time. Life will be quite a bit different. Right now though, concentration is on packing and how I'll get the baggage from the airport, to Tokyo station to pick up the key from the contact at my new company, and then to the apartment. It'll be a pretty crazy day on Monday.