First hanami of the year, tomorrow at Chiba Park. See you guys there!
I really just wanted to post that picture.
H A N A M I
March 28, 2009 at 5:37 PM
2 comments
Wedding, work, insomnia
March 17, 2009 at 4:38 AM
3 comments
I think the buzzword for January and February must have been marriage, because it seemed like everyone around me was talking about it, either around here or just people I still keep in touch with over the net. People getting married, people talking about getting married, people talking about planning to talk about getting married, etc. I don’t know what the deal was. It was with my friends both in the US and Japan, so maybe it’s just getting around that time. Kind of freaky. And of course Facebook has always been like this, seeing who from high school is now married, but it’s just about at the point where people’s newest picture albums are of their newborn kids. I never would have thought Facebook would have been around this long.
The buzzword has of course changed, everyone now talking about work. Either enjoying their job, hating their job, quitting their job, getting fired, or looking for a new job, it’s everywhere. I guess everyone needs to work to pay for those weddings. (I am half joking there). I suppose the global recession and all that fun stuff is partially to blame, since I know a lot of people who have gotten laid off or had their hours cut down a lot. But for me, work has been good the last few weeks. I attended the Foodex convention in Makuhari for about a week, used InDesign for the first time in probably 3 or 4 years, and have been feeling pretty satisfied with my mini-accomplishments for now.
Back to weddings, even though I know it’s the old buzzword now. I went to my first Japanese wedding on February 22nd, which was really fun and an interesting experience. My friend Konosuke got married and was nice enough to invite me. It was even a traditional Japanese Shinto-style wedding as opposed to a Western-style church wedding, which are really popular here. It isn’t because people here are Christians, but it’s just because people think they’re cool. Kind of like why they have Engrish t-shirts. I think Shinto weddings are less common than church ones these days maybe in Japan. First there was the formal Shinto ceremony in a shrine where there were many chants chanted, many sets of bowing, and the 三三九度 (San-san-ku-do, 3-3-9 times) ritual where the bride and groom drink from 9 small cups of sake to represent family and stuff like that. They did rings and there was more chanting, and it was official. It seemed like a very quick ceremony probably lasting less than 30 minutes.
Cracking open a big barrel of sake for the reception.
After the ceremony we all headed back to the big building/memorial hall for the formal reception which was a really fancy dinner interspersed with long speeches. The bride and groom changed costumes before the reception and then again during the reception, going from super formal Japanese wedding ceremony clothes to formal Japanese wedding clothes to formal Western wedding clothes. It was pretty awesome when they came back from changing clothes during the reception, because they made a really dramatic entrance from the balcony. The lights went low, music started, and the MC announced their return. Junko was in a Western style wedding dress and Konosuke was in a tuxedo minus the overcoat with… a parachute on? No, it wasn’t a parachute, it was actually a beer keg backpack. (see pic on the left) He went around to every table and filled up pitchers with his backpack of beer. The whole day was pretty formal so this was a cool addition. After the reception we went to a second party at a small club-type place in Shibuya, which was also pretty nice and a lot more relaxed.
Insomnia. I don’t really have insomnia, just a really messed up sleep schedule. One of the sweet yet dangerous parts of working flexitime from your home is staying up super late and then waking up in the afternoon, only to repeat the next night. I think it really got bad last Thursday night when I was working on designing some sales materials, and to communicate with the US and everything I started working again around 2 or 3AM. It was easier this way because I wouldn’t have to wait hours to get a response about whether something looked good, etc. I ended up working until about 9AM, which was pretty rough but then I passed out until it was almost dark outside again. There’s always something embarrassing about doing that. Anyway ever since then I’ve been going to sleep way too late and pretty much keeping my schedule permanently messed up. For example, why am I still awake right now?
Biznass cards
February 26, 2009 at 11:49 AM
2 comments
Had to get some business cards made for the new job; checked out the printing corner in Loft in Sogo, but they were mega expensive and it would take apparently 2 weeks or more. Instead, I went and looked online and found this site called Meishi Shop* (Japanese site) that can not only do it for cheaper, but easier and faster. They let you upload an Illustrator file with your own business card design, you choose the paper and quantity, and they ship it to you. Also, if you get your order in before 5PM, they guarantee next day shipment. Sounds good, right?
But wait! There’s more!
So Wednesday I put my order in at 6:14PM, and got the standard confirmation/”thank you for your order” e-mail. Then again at 6:49 they e-mail me saying my data file has been verified and they had started printing. At this point I was pretty happy, because service like that is not what I’ve come to expect, even living in Japan. It got better later at night when I checked my e-mail and had a message sent at 9:43PM saying my order has been shipped. Seriously. Less than 4 hours and my order was finished and shipped out.
My order arrived just a bit ago at about 11:45AM Thursday. 18 hours total from sending them my Illustrator file to having the Sagawa courier bring my finished cards to my door. Everything looks good; can’t say there was any room for disappointment with this shop. There’s like a 500 yen discount for new customers, so my order of 100 full-color double-sided business cards shipped only cost me 1180 yen. Awesome. If you’re (in Japan and) looking for some cheap business cards, this site is ridiculously good. And yes I realize this all sounds like some terrible endorsement, but I’m not being paid to say this. If I were, it would be a lot better and I’d use more words like mega, super, and kazowee.
*meishi (名刺) = business card
TheLeong @ Facebook
February 26, 2009 at 2:54 AM
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Trying out having Facebook import my blog feed automatically. We’ll see if I leave it this way.
By the way, if there are comments left on Facebook I’ll probably copy them over to HaloScan for storage/OCD purposes. Can’t imagine anyone will have a problem with that (I’ll just put your first name or something), but let me know if you do.
Hadouken
February 26, 2009 at 1:03 AM
6 comments
Recently I’ve been re-getting into Street Fighter IV at arcades here, even though it came out last summer in Japan, and even though I suck. Coincidentally, the home version on X-Box 360 and PS3 just came out last week, but I own neither so that didn’t really have anything to do with it. Actually it’s probably because I started playing Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom in arcades and on Wii.
Anyway, you guys know Street Fighter: Rye-ooh and the Ha-doo-ken, etc. So I’m not going to write about the game so much as the players you see here. As expected, Japanese arcade players are insane. They know the games they like and they play them a lot. I don’t mean like every day they’ll throw in a few coins to play a few rounds. These guys spend their entire evenings (maybe days too) at the arcade, huddled around their weapons of choice, endlessly pouring coins into the games and being a major cause of Japan’s population decline. Normal arcade games here cost 100 yen, but the more expensive ones can go up to even 500 yen for the battlepod-esque Gundam game. Occasionally they’ll be there with a friend or two, but a lot of the ones I’ve seen are just there by themselves. OK, so they can socialize with the other people playing the same game, right? NOPE. With the exception of people who already know each other, I have never seen someone talk to another player. Not even something like “hey, nice game,” “wow, close one there,” or “TATSUMAKISENPUUKYAKU!!!!” Only silence. It’s kind of weird. At least that’s what I’ve seen.
Going back to how much these guys spend. Usually it would be impossible to know or even guess how much someone’s spent on playing a game. Luckily, SF4 has, like a lot of Japanese arcade games these days, a special card to keep track of your player information. When you’re playing at the arcade with your card, you accumulate points which can be used to get extra costumes, special content on the mobile site, babies, etc. Since this card also makes you commit to a character, a lot of people didn’t use the cards initially while they got a feel for which character they liked the best, etc. But when you do use your card, it’s all recorded. Your opponent during link matches can see your stats, like your ranking and win percentage*. This is where it gets scary. The other day when Brian and I were at one of the local arcades getting absolutely destroyed in SF4, we noticed the stats of some guy who was playing as C. Viper, jumping all over the place and embarrassing us horribly. Of course he had a fairly decent winning percentage, maybe 60 or 70%, but the shocker was the number of games he’d played on his card. The number was over 1,100. He has played a lot.
Let’s do some veeerrrrryyyy rough math. This might be wrong because it’s 2AM and I’m not wanting to think too much into this. Feel free to do some real thinking and correct me. So in SF4, each time you start playing, you pay 100 yen. If you win a link match, you get to play the next one for free, and so on until you lose. For today’s estimate, let’s say that the Player in question has spent 100 yen for every loss he’s had. If he had 1,100 games with around a 65% winning percentage, he lost 385 times. So right there he spent 38,500 yen. Of course we don’t know how many consecutive times he won on average, but let’s be generous and say he averaged 3 wins every time he played. So from the 715 matches he’s won, he only had to pay for a third of them, about 238 or 28,800 yen. That’s a total estimate of 62,300 yen (about $645 USD) he’s spent on this card alone. That is crazy. He could have just bought a new PS3 and the home version for that much. Again, this is just on the one card. It doesn’t include matches he plays on no card or with a different card. He could very well have it at home too. By the way, yes, that is him up in the picture.
The sad thing is that this is mainly just about arcades I go to here in Chiba, which I’m sure aren’t nearly as intense as the ones in super nerd districts in nearby Tokyo. And thus concludes our fuzzy math lesson about nerds.
*I am currently ranked “Rookie” with a “0%” winning ratio.
Premature Perceived Friendship Syndrome
February 20, 2009 at 1:03 AM
3 comments
Am I the only one who’s annoyed by people who prematurely think they’re your best friend? Surely I can’t be. You know what I’m talking about: the kind of person you meet maybe once or twice, usually a friend of a friend’s cousin’s girlfriend’s friend or some equally distant connection, who for some reason or another instantly believes you’re their new closest pal? This isn’t really a recent thing: there have always been people like this and it’s always bothered me. Sure, there’s a certain level of “friendliness” and “politeness” that society expects you to exhibit when meeting new people, but taking that too far can be annoying.
I have nothing against making new friends; I’d like to think that I do that quite often*. But if there’s someone you haven’t gotten to know well yet, they shouldn’t act like you’ve known each other for years: that’s going too far, and a severe case of PPFS. Suddenly asking “where’s the party at?” when you’ve never actually done anything with the person without your mutual friend(s) present; calling you (when did you give them your number?) out of the blue and pulling the eternally loathsome “It’s me”; running into you at the store and insisting that you finish your shopping together when all you needed to get was TP – all of these are classic signs of PPFS. And yes I’ve been unfortunate enough to experience them all.
Does this make me sound anti-social? I’m really not. But come on. I’ve known our mutual-friend-separated-by-10-degrees for years, so yes, we hang out. But I only met you at the barbecue last summer and talked to your briefly about how hot the weather was. OK, I suppose we also gave each other the half-head-nod of acknowledgment at another mutual yet distant friend’s Christmas party. But that doesn’t mean we’re good enough friends** for you to call me up this weekend to help you move. Don’t you have any closer acquaintances?
*maybe even 1 new friend a year!
**we’re not friends
