Day 3: Wednesday, Aug 25, 2004: First photos

This isn't going to be very exciting or very long.  I hope to have
something more interesting to say tomorrow.

I'm rapidly discovering several things:

* I'm really not going to get any scheduled programming work done
  during this trip.  My boss probably isn't going to like that much,
  but, then again, if I weren't here, he probably would be here.  So,
  it's either my schedule or his schedule that slips.  Oh well.

* It's surprising how quickly my brain has decided to ignore kanji,
  the format Japanese writing system.  Well, hiragana and katagana,
  too (the mostly syllable/phonetic-based alphabets).  There are all
  sorts of styles, and they're quite fun to look at, but I find myself
  starting to ignore it.  As if I've given up hope of deciphering it.

  Gemini's CTO, who is Chinese, told me that he believes that if you
  haven't learned how to read kanji by the time you're 16 or so, your
  brain loses most/all of the ability to learn more than a few hundred
  characters.

* It's quite amazing, bordering on scandalous, how few things I know
  about this country and its culture.

* It's quietly remarkable how easy it has been to take care of three
  days of professional and off-work life in an environment that I know
  so little about.

* In the past two days, I recall seeing two European looking faces
  (both yesterday).  Since leaving the airport, I don't remember
  seeing a single Indian, Middle Eastern, African, or Central/South
  American looking face.  This may be due, in large part, to where the
  data center is located.  Lee-san said that he thought the office of
  his previous job was in the most boring part of Tokyo possible.
  Then he went to work for Gemini and started going to the Hitachi
  data center ... and had to change his definition of "boring".

* I'm not taking many photos because I don't have much opportunity
  outside of work.  My little routine has been:

  * Go back to sleep after waking up at 6am.  That seems to be the
    only remnant of jet lag that I have, because goodness knows I'm
    not waking up at that hour voluntarily.  ... If the jet lag coming
    over here has been relatively painless, I'm afraid of what it will
    be like after getting home next week.
  * Catch up on email, mostly with all the stuff that took place in
    the US while I was asleep.
  * Lunch
  * Data center
  * Oops, it's 9:30 or later, time to go back to the hotel.
  * Try to do things like worry about what I'm wearing tomorrow and
    what I'm going to write for everyone back home.

  I do have a few photos now at
  http://www.snookles.com/scott/images/japan-04-08/.  Set #1 includes:

  * An photo of that wacky aloe & grape juice box.  I went back to the
    vendo machines to get another box, but it has already been
    replaced with some other kind of drink.  I'm not sure what the
    replacement is: a surprising number of drinks don't have photos or
    have only kanji on the label.  ... Then again, there isn't a photo
    on a can of Dr. Pepper.  (And what would a Dr. Pepper look like,
    anyway?)

  * A photo of the restaurant that's kiddy-corner across from the
    hotel.  I really like the pigs.

  * A set of photos from the balcony, looking east to south to west
    ... just to give an idea of what the buildings look like.

  * A photo of my bento lunch from Tuesday.

    Tsurumi-san met me at the hotel today for lunch.  He asked if I
    liked clams.  I haven't had them enough to know if I'm a big fan,
    but I've eaten them in the past.  He took me to a place that's
    well-known for its clams.  It was quite good: brown rice, clams,
    and shredded nori (seaweed) in a bowl that you can pour as much or
    as little broth into as you wish, along with a bowl of squid &
    wasabi (the green horseradish stuff ... accidentally ate a hunk of
    it with the last bite of squid ... quite a sinus adventure!) and
    two small bowls of vegetables.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a
    photo before I started eating!

I'll see what I can do about the photo situation.  On work days, my
only chance of taking photos is before I get to the data center,
because the data center will consume every moment of daylight
afterward.  On non-workdays ... well, I am not quite certain yet if I
will have non-work days.  Hitachi-san has people working all shifts, 7
days per week.  I haven't found out yet if I'll need to be in on
Saturday or Sunday.

Oh, a couple other things, courtesy of Louise:

1. The current exchange is about 110 yen to 1 US dollar.  So that
   yummy 500 yen bento lunch yesterday was about $4.55.

2. There's a 1MB Acrobat (PDF) map of the Tokyo Metro at
   http://www.tokyometro.jp/network/pdf/rosen_eng.pdf.  You'll have to
   zoom in to read anything at all ... but straight above the key in
   the lower righthand corner, on the light blue line, you should see
   the stops for T-12, Monzen-nakacho (hotel stop), and T-15,
   Minami-sunamachi (data center stop).

   That won't really tell you where physically these things are
   located, unless you know that Otemachi (in the middle) is the big
   central station near?/in? the central part of downtown ... so that
   puts me somewhere on the east side.  {shrug}