TheLeong.com

Found this image on some weird Japanese video game fan art page. This is by far the best one:

I’ll be heading back to St. Louis this summer from June 26 to July 17, and after that I’ll be in LA until the afternoon of the 20th. Will be back in Japan on the 21st.

Airfare was really cheap so I’m taking advantage of my flexible schedule and coming back to get some real pizza and Mexican food. If you’re going to be around, let me know and we can meet up. There’s also the possibility of a drive out to Indiana if there’s enough demand.

I remember once upon a time I wrote things occasionally on this blog that were funny or interesting, but recently I feel like I haven’t been posting anything but boring LiveJournal-esque stories about what I ate for lunch or what color socks I’m wearing*. I should try to change that, but I think a big part of the problem is that my life has been so mundane lately there isn’t much else to write about. I don’t even have as many complaints about Japanese culture or society because with the whole working at home/flexitime thing these days I’m not getting exposed to the public as much as before. That is not necessarily bad.

I’ll try and come up with better material one day, but don’t hold your breath. This blog has still and always will be for myself and my own amusement, slightly adjusted for friends to read and perhaps waste a few minutes of otherwise productive time wasted browsing the interwebs.

Quick story: This is about one of the hobos here in my city, who I guess I’ve started calling No-Nose Joe on account of a bandage or duct tape always covering his likely frostbitten/missing nasal organ. This guy has a very impressive collection of hobo junk, usual stacked on his tiny (child’s?) bicycle, which he is usually seen creeping along on near Chiba station or Yodobashi Camera. I say creeping because I’ve seen earthworms move faster than this man. I was pretty surprised a few weeks ago when I saw ol’ No-Nose Joe in the supermarket near my house, where he was creepin’ along with a shopping cart rather than the usual bike chariot. He was, of course, in the liquor aisle, mentally debating which carton of cheap booze to buy for the night while at the same time doing a great job of repelling other customers from the aisle because, let’s be honest, hobos don’t smell great**. I too was trying to avoid him, but after making my rounds in the store and completing all my other shopping, I still needed a loaf of bread and Joe was still blocking the bread shelf, which is in the same aisle as alcohol. I took a deep breath, gripped my basket, and headed into the aisle. . .

I don’t know what I did to this man, in this life or a former one, but somehow he is deathly afraid of me. As soon as he spots me entering the aisle, his eyes open wide like a deer in headlights and he goes off in the opposite direction. I don’t mean he creeped away at his usual 1mph – he RAN away from me as if I were charging at him with a bloody machete. I was of course startled but more surprised at the fact that this normal slow-moving homeless man had apparently channeled into Usain Bolt. End.

So yeah, other boring stuff.

It’s been just over 4 months since I left my last job at a Japanese company and started working for this American start-up doing business development and stuff. The job is great: I have a lot of freedom, work at home, and even get to travel sometimes. I have control and responsibilities that I never even got close to having at my last job. The problem (well, not really that bad) lately is that I’ve been given so much freedom and open-ended goals that it’s difficult to get myself focused. Of course I like having freedom, but sometimes I do slightly miss more concrete direction and specific assignments. It’s a lot like running my own business, so I guess I just need to get more used to working like this.

It’s been almost three years since I graduated from IU and headed out to Japan to work. I’ve changed jobs a few times, done a lot of fun stuff, met a lot of good people, but I’m finally starting to see that it might be time to leave Japan. It’s not that things are bad here at all, but I feel like it’s time to move on. It would be more beneficial for my work for me to be in St. Louis as well, and I’m definitely looking forward to having an apartment again that has space for furniture and a giant computer station like I used to have. Japan is great but if there’s no specific reason for me to be here, I don’t think I should stay. One reason I didn’t leave immediately after starting this new job was the chance that I’d be starting up business here in Japan, over in China, and other places in Asia that would make it advantageous to have someone already in the region. That possibility’s not gone at all, but I personally haven’t been focusing on it much yet, which means that the company’s not either. I’m thinking that if I get some solid reasons to stay in Japan, like with work, then I could definitely stick around for a bit longer. But on the other hand, if I don’t end up doing that, then it’s probably time to head back to the “real world.” I’m thinking I’ll give myself until next spring.

*white, if you really want to know

**of course, if you don’t have a nose, you probably don’t care what you smell like. NNJ ftw.

Short yet nerdy post.

The MicroSD card that I’d been using in my R4 died somehow a few nights ago. I was using it just fine one night, and the next day it wouldn’t work. I tried it in both the DS and on my computer several times using different readers, but no luck. The card was corrupted or something. Thus, my Chrono Trigger save file was gone Ugh. I was playing that game for quite a while and had just gotten the Doppel Doll, ready to go get Crono back.

I thought I’d have a chance at recovering the files – I used a bunch of different file recovery programs and finally had some luck with one called Recuva. It was able to scan the SD card following a quick format to make the card accessible, and was seemingly able to recover most of the files. Unfortunately when I actually tried using those files they wouldn’t work. I tried looking for a solution to unscramble those files or something, but didn’t have any luck. I think I might just be totally boned on getting that save file back.

I’m pretty sure the card crapped out on my just because it was a horribly cheap, generic Chinese SD card that I got with the R4 last summer in Beijing. It was a no-namer that I’d been using fairly frequently for almost a year, so I guess it’s not that surprising. Went and bought a SanDisk 2GB card at Yodobashi yesterday for like 1700 yen. (Storage is so dirt cheap these days – I’m always surprised at that.)

So in short, back up your files. Especially if you’re playing on an R4 and have like 30 or 40 hours logged on a sweet RPG.