Socially awkward lunch parties

Bit of an awkward moment this weekend when we got home from lunch with my boss and his family at their apartment, and realized that one of his sons had bitten my boy hard enough on the calf that he left two half circle bruises with teeth marks.

Not Required Reading

So, I wasn't exactly having a ton of fun working in Japan and starting to get a bit frustrated with the experience. While my wife and son were in the US on a three week trip to see family and friends, I decided that I was going to fly over for just a few days and be there in time for my son's 4th birthday party. We figured out when we originally moved here and I came three weeks before they did, that three weeks is definitely over the threshold of acceptable separation periods.

The flight from Tokyo to the US is 8ish hours, and should theoretically just be a very short nights sleep, and then you try to power through the subsequent day to a decent bedtime to avoid any funky jet lag. But, seeing as how I was flying economy on United, I knew there was no chance in non-medicated hell that I would be able to get a decent amount of sleep so instead I wanted to just make the trip as relaxing as possible. To help me on that front, I had a ton of movies on my PSP and wanted a book to help fill in the gaps. For the previous six months, I had been teetering between blushes of enthusiasm for the incredibly unique challenge of working in a somewhat hostile environment, and an overwhelming desire to tell them to go fuck themselves if they didn't want my help after asking me to move my entire family to Japan for two years. So with that looming over my mind constantly, I went into the bookstore to grab a little light reading material. Because I was at the airport, I had plenty of English language choices, as long as I wanted a book about Japan, or Harry Potter. What did I get? The Book of Five Rings, one of a half dozen books on breaking through the rice paper ceiling and succeeding in Japanese business, the history of Japanese baseball ... all appealing choices.

No, I got The Rape of Nanking. Brilliant. That will really help.

Alien in the Middle

We've been living in Japan for 9 months now. I expected to be updating the blog much more often, but have rarely had the desire to post anything after the first few weeks. The reality of it is that while living in Japan is surprisingly easy and very entertaining, working in Japan is difficult and it's just made it even more obvious how incredibly work orientated my life had become. I define large parts of my personal happiness on success at work, to the point of my family time on evenings and weekends feel more fulfilling when I have busy, engaged work days. When I am productive and busy at work, then time away from work becomes a very separate thing and a needed break, but when work is a fairly blank 9 hours in the middle of the day, for me it makes everything else seem less defined and less entertaining.

I'd like to think that I haven't had any problems adapting to the Japanese way of doing business, other than the Japanese way of doing business including a dislike for accepting help from non-Japanese sources. As it seems to be with most companies, for years the Japanese team was operated as it's own unit, separate from the rest of the company. Japan is a different market with specific needs is the rationale. The more complete rationale is that Japan is an extremely isolated domestic market that wants to keep things that way. Even here, at an international company that is apparently very non-traditional for a Japanese office, getting involved in the business as a non-Japanese speaking person took more than 6 months. For 6+ months, I would come to the office and make up someone to do, or work on a project for my old team in Sydney, because no one would involve me in any meetings. After the first couple of weeks, I stopped asking to be invited. After the first month, I stopped expecting people to schedule follow-up meetings to discuss my input, realizing that "let's have a meeting about that later to talk again" was really a polite way of ignoring me. It took 6 months and many boozy nights out before I started getting involved in the management of the business here.

And now we are leaving. We are going to be here through November, and then it'll be off to California. I've got a meeting next week with my replacement, so I need to think about how I can accurately describe what it's like to work in Japan, without making him not want to do it, because once you get past the initial sense of isolation and rejection and just accept being an alien in their midst, it's an amazing place.

How to make a 4 year old seem quiet

Send them 7000 miles away.

The house is amazingly quiet without the boy around as even when he is being quiet he still makes a lot of noise. He is never still, even when he is sleeping. It's like 4 year olds are the little human equivalent of a fluorescent light tube, just emitting a constant buzz. I have been watching this video of him singing the planets song from Blues Clues every day.

Swallows umbrellas

Because I am wife and childless at the moment and our apartment is a lonely place with just me and the cats hanging around, I took off work a bit early and went to a baseball game last week. It was one of the first really nice days of spring, so I opted to go to outdoor Jingu Stadium to watch the Yakult Swallows play as opposed to heading over to the Tokyo Dome to catch the Yomiuri Giants ... that and people apparently are not as interested in watching a Swallows game as there were very good seats available compared to nothing at the Tokyo Dome.

If you want a really in depth review of what baseball is like in Japan, either NPB Tracker or Marinerds can give you a much more informative view than I can. Instead, I will give you the slack jawed yokel American view of their first NPB game. Jingu is a nice stadium to catch a game, although I would compare it to a big AAA stadium more than an actual MLB park. The same goes for the majority of the players, the majority of which would probably fall into the AAA or imaginary AAAA level of talent. There were definitely exceptions to that, and from what I understand neither the Swallows or their opponents that evening, the Chunichi Dragons, are exactly the cream of the crop, so the talent level for a team like the Giants might be significantly better.

If the stadium and the talent level don't remind you of the US minor leagues, then the pre and in game festivities would. It's a more casual, fun atmosphere with multiple stuffed mascots shooting shirts into the crowds, the players throwing out soft baseballs as they run out to take the field to start the game, a full squad of cheerleaders that come out between innings, and coordinated chants for every player that the entire stadium knows. Oh wait ... yeah maybe that last one we don't do so much in the US. I have no idea what they were saying, but every player would be serenaded for their entire at bat by a rhyming chant from the appropriate side of the bleachers. The stadium is pretty evenly divided in two for home and away fans, and plenty of people made the two hour trip from the Dragon's home town as well, so there was a constant stream of chanting. All of the Swallows players also had their own walk out songs for their stroll from the on deck circle, with the majority of them being the fairly standard hip hop, upbeat rhythm that seems appropriate for a professional athlete, except the shortstop. He is apparently partial to mid-80s soft rock and chose to go with Toto's lovely rendition of Rains of Africa.

I think the Swallows are my team for the duration of our stay here in Japan. For starters, Jingu Stadium is really close to my office so I can easily head over for an evening game without having to travel all the way across Tokyo. Plus, even if they are not really that good of a team, their center fielder, Norichika Aoki, is apparently one of the best hitters in the NPB, their closer wings it up there at 95+mph, and of course, I'll get to hear Rains of Africa at least three times a game. I am scheduled to go to another game later this month, but first I will have to get an umbrella, just like the 4000 of them in the picture above. Every time the Swallows score a run, the entire home half of the stadium gets out their umbrellas and does a coordinated shaking. Definitely not like an American game, but somehow way more pleasant than a bunch of random shouting, swinging around monkeys or white towlies.

Sakura sadness

It's easy to see why people in Japan are crazy about sakura. It was amazing how precisely tied the blossoms were to the weather going from eye-watering cold to beautifully temperate to the beginnings of uncomfortably warm. One week the trees are barren and brown, the next week they are so pinkish white with blossoms it looks like it has snowed across just the treetops on every street, and then a week later they are gone and the green leaves are starting to bud. You'd never think that seeing green leaves in spring would be depressing, but they are no where near as pretty as the blossoms.

This is one of the things that makes Japan so interesting and will keep us happy here. The oppressive heat that I can already feel coming will not be one of those things.

Life goes on

I realized yesterday that it has been 12 years since I last raced.  I can't even remember why I ended up on the AFMs site, but I saw an on-board video from Buttonwillow and started to get nostalgic.  I was disappointed that I couldn't find my name in the old results, even though I probably should be listed in some of the first sets they have on the site.

It was so long ago, when I was so much younger and had fewer commitments, and cared less about a few bumps and bruises ... for a little while, I forgot how expensive it was, and how much I hated getting up at 5am on race weekends, and the heat of Thunderhill in August, and the long nights rebuilding motors.  For a little while, all I remembered was tucking in behind the fairing down that straight at Buttonwillow, the little shallow dip right past the start/finish line that you can hardly see from the side of the track but that can unsettle a bike flat out in 6th gear, the long tow that a 600 can give you if you suck in right behind them when they assume they are going to just walk away from the little two stroke, the little skip your heart makes when they pop up and hit the brakes 100 feet before your normal brake marker allowing you to fly past them, popping up with shoulders tensed for the weight transfer, that cracking blip of the Honda RS250 downshifting, then immediately down on to the left knee and looking for that perfect arc, throttle back on to settle the chassis and power winding in until you feel those little pulses, the little slips and can feel the RPM tick up slightly faster as the edge of traction is right there.  And you do it all and think, holy shit that must have looked demoralizingly wicked from that 600.

That feeling of just doing it perfectly, that's what anyone who ever does any sport is after.  For that little moment in time, it's perfection, or least as perfect as you can possibly make it.  The trick is doing it perfectly 15 more times a race, and doing it on every corner at every track you go to ... or on every pitch, or every shot, every swing, every wave, every sprint.  That's what I couldn't do, but I could do Turn 1, Buttonwillow Raceway, Buttonwillow, California perfect nearly every time.

Kawaii sells

This is one of those pictures I mailed in from my phone, intending to add some commentary but then never quite got around to it, for reasons which I will go into later.  But, since I actually got a comment on it from someone who isn't my wife (love you, honey), I should probably fill in the details.

This is the local used car dealer right up the street from our apartment.  They usually have a dozen cars, all newer models and more often than not something unusual for Tokyo like a massive Benz, American full size trucks, or a Hummer.  When I was walking by today, they had a model out front with the cars getting ready to take some photos.  In the US, you get used to advertisements getting a little kooky and maybe sometimes trying to catch a little kitsch genre flavor like throwing in an Uncle Sam, going for the patriotic angle.  You see it, shrug it off, and probably think it's a bit too corny to be effective.  Not in Japan.  Kawaii is the word for ultra cute, like Hello Kitty levels of cutsie, and it sells ... everything.  This girl wasn't listlessly standing around waiting for them to get ready, she was bouncing around, practicing her poses, waving at cars, and when the camera was ready, it was on.  She was tossing the head from side to side, smiling, winking, throwing one foot up, and always with the obligatory peace sign.

This is what sells in Japan ... everything has this type of advertising.  If it's not cute little Japanese girls throwing peace signs, it would be a hyper-adorable little cartoon animal/monster of some kind.  Kawaii ads are everywhere; my internet company, our mobile phone provider, my sewage and water bill, the instruction sheet from the garbage company on how to sort my trash into 18 different piles, the warning stickers on the subway doors advising how to avoid losing your fingers.  Kawaii is just one of those Japanese things that makes the culture here so confusing and fascinating to the rest of the world.

If you have to ask ...

As a point of reference, brand new uncustomized versions of these posh scooters are around $5k USD.  When you lower it, do custom leather upholstery on the seat and throw on a wacky yellow metallic pearl lizard skin paint job, well ... that's just fuck money levels of extravagance.

Plenty of room

It's always going to be hard to take pictures on the subway without looking like a weirdo creep, so this one is a little sideways.  After the girl here squeezed into the train, another 4 people got on after her in the same Tokyo subway fashion; see a spot big enough for your foot, stick it in there, and then slide the rest of your body in to the car while simultaneously twisting to face the door and compacting the crowd of people behind you.