Living the so called life in the Tokyo sabaku..
Sakura is blooming in Tokyo. It is really fabulous around my home and office. Very beautiful and the weather is great. I spent 3 hours walking around Suginami last night.. I am ready to pick another part of tokyo!
tumblr blog. I am keeping a second blog here.. this is a quick post and m0blog..
I had another welcome party friday night. It was also a going away party for one of the pinos I work with. This one was a lot smaller, just the guys from my group and about 5 of the office ladies that we interact with a lot.
The party started at a all you can eat/drink chinese restaurant. The food that I could eat was pretty good and I kept myself from over drinking. Mainly because I spent most of the night talking to with one of the ladies that is also a rhythmic gymnastics coach and dance instructor, and these women can’t drink very much (think 5′8″ and barely 120.)
The dinner was fun, but due to projects the three other guys from my group didnt come till about an hour after it started, so I basically sat around listening to the women gossip and talking about america and dance to Hirano-san.
Continue reading ‘A new start…’
Well, I didn’t embarrass myself to badly at the party. Everyone was friendly monday and only a few people made comments about how strong of a drinker I was. The judo girl just giggled and hasn’t talked to me.. So pretty typical in japan if someone gets really drunk at a party.. So I am relieved, and now I know that if you miss your train you can sleep in Denny’s in japan. Good to know.
So hungry…. I have roughly 20 bux to last me till the 16th till I get paid from my old job in Hiroshima. Too bad there are no hiroshima banks here though, I will have to pay the stupid withdrawal fees, but it will be nice to have money. I cannot wait to eat some mexican and sushi from tsukiji.. fresh tuna and hamachi..
I miss Hiroshima a lot, you are reading this. You know why. I have not made it to aikido or yoga, due to lack of funds. So I have been doing a lot of walking. Luckily the area around my apartment is fabulous for that. There are a lot of parks and quiet suburbia type areas, all 10 minutes from the hustle of shinjuku. Again, I really like this area alot.
Anyways.. job is good. Today I started doing atm line build outs and layer 3 testing. Thursday I am taking a field trip to a data center to run some cabling and familiarize myself with the L2 and L3 hardware we use. Should be fun.
Well I had my first drinking party with the NTT people last friday. I have to say that as serious as the people are in the office, get a few drinks in them and they are really fun.
I talked with a lot of people, in both japanese and english. Quite a few of the people had lived and worked in America. One older guy lived in the states for about 8 years, in fact he was able to guess the area I was from by listening to me talk. Of course he had a very west coast accent. I find it amazing to speak to a japanese person in english and think that, wow, this person sounds like they lived in the states their whole life.
Continue reading ‘始めて飲み会 — my first company drinking party (and maybe last)’
Well, my apartment has free fibre internet, up to 100mbit for free, or up to 500mbit for a 40 a month fee. Aside from hosting a server farm in your apartment, who the hell needs over 100mbit? Anyways, I have to wait till thursday for them to come out and install the adapter box. I am still abit confused how they are running this over phone line. I will have to follow the tech around the building to find the demarc and see what kind of setup it is.
In the mean time, I have found a cheap internet cafe near my apartment, 100y every half hour and free drink bar. So I can get my internet fix on.
Continue reading ‘Weekend…’
Well I started work Thursday. I have to say it is a nice change being in a high tech sector again. I have not started doing anything yet besides getting familiar with documentation and lay out, and due to NDAs, all I can say is that I am doing provisioning for the worlds largest provider of IP, VPN and MPLS networks.
For the technical side, I am working the managed network services from layer2 to layer3 delivery at the the customer premises (usually the router.) Frame Relay and ATM circuit build outs and testing. What this means for everyone else, when the internet leaves your office, I made that!
I used to hate MCI and Sprint when I had to deal with them to fix circuit problems…now I am one of those monkeys!
Anyways, my team is the only gaijin team and kind of diverse. Hong Kong, Batangas (Pinos x3!), 2 Indian or Pakistani guys, a guy from Myanmar (Burma) and your’s truly. The guys are really laid back and the environment is interesting. We are the 11th floor with about 60 or so other japanese people. I am pretty sure I am the only american, I have had a steady flow of people coming to talk to me (mainly women.) But most of the people that interact with my group on a friendly basis are women for some reason. I guess we are so intimidating.
It’s nice that I have been to the Philippines and Myanmar, it gave me a good in with the guys, plus I have some lumpia coming.. Can’t beat that.
Continue reading ‘Work and Tokyo’