Qingdao
I visited my sister and girlfriend in Qingdao (China) last weekend). It was pretty rad. Stuff in China is dirt cheap at the expense of it being, well, dirty.
- Spent the whole weekend partying, basically.
- I'm kinda jealous of how I make like 3 times more than my sister in Canadian dollars, but she can afford to buy like 3 times more stuff than I can! Stupid economies...
- Qingdao beach
- Crazy statue thing
- Choking the Chicken!
- A crazy hat
- A crazy dog
- Girls gone wild, Qingdao edition!
Also, I FINALLY got my internet. It is fucking fast! Fibre optic baby! The guy did the speed test and it was like "85MB/s, 91MB/s, 88MB/s"... Seriously!
And I FINALLY got my stuff from IKEA! I now have a sweet shelf! And an incredibly sweet easy chair (which is also my bed). I would contend that it is the most comfortable chair of anybody in Co-op Japan!
BEHOLD! THE CHAIR OF GREAT JUSTICE!
Canada Day
Yeah, it's a big update, but I decided to talk less and put things in point form so my blog isn't a lot of stupid words. Hooray pictures!
- Scary bones
- Celebrated Canada day 2 weeks ago (July 1st) in Shibuya (Maple Leaf Pub and some other random place)
- By chance we saw some chick (CASCADA apparently, you know "Every time we touch I get this feeling...") in concert. Not too bad.
- Guy from Poland joined tri-Ace. His name is Bart. And this was a pic from his welcome party.
Minor Update
Hey all,
So, not too much to report since last time. I'm officially feeling more Japanese now. I've got my foreigner registration card, my health insurance card, my pension plan booklet (majide!), my work access pass, my business cards, cell phone, and my inkan (personal stamp). I also took the liberty of purchasing a plastic Armored Core mecha kit. Sure the game had control issues, but it had some of the most kick-ass mech design I've seen (not too mention a totally wicked customizable UID).
Before:
After:
I also visited IKEA on the weekend.
It's the reason apartments all over the world look exactly the same! And I bought a good swatch of furniture, though it was far too heavy to carry on the train from Chiba (the White Rock of Tokyo) to Shinagawa (the Burnaby of Tokyo). But man was I tempted to try! I think if I hadn't bought the shelf, I would have gone for it! As it is they whacked me something like $50 CDN for delivery! Even still, it seems delivery is way more popular in Japan than in Canada. You'd only see *maybe* one or two people in Canada go for delivery. In Japan, EVERYBODY who bought something even remotely large queued up for the delivery service.
It was like an hour wait in line just to get to the desk! And they can't deliver my stuff till July 5th! (Which is actually the same day I get my Fibre internet installed, booya!) But I figured since the delivery was by distance (I was in the most expensive zone, fuck) and not by weight, I'd make them carry everything I purchased, save myself a little hassle!
Oh, before that I went to Akihabara to get my cell phone. After a few hours of walking around comparing prices and plans, I decided to go with AU, since they had some good free phones, and every plan is expensive anyway... The phone claims not to be bilingual, but I discovered the English mode anyway. Go, go me! It's pretty nice I guess. I miss not having T9 input, but I guess the Japanese input is good... I discovered it has the very peculiar ability to read the decimal value of bar codes. I cannot fathom anybody having a practical use for this particular function, but there you have it.
In other news, Valkyrie Profile 2 has been doing well,
And I bought an XBox 360 for myself for my b-day! Hooray! As soon as I get my furniture, I will declare my house the official hang-out spot!
And if you haven't heard, Crossfit Japan now has it's first student! w00t! Sakazume-kun, ganbatte!
crossfitjapan.blogspot.comThat's all for now. Till next time,
Keep your stick on the ice!
- Jeff
My Crazy Weekend
Introduction:
Yes, like the title says, my weekend was certainly crazy. I have a new apartment too. Witness:
It is Tuesday now, and I hope I remember enough of it to convey the extent of the craziness. It started on Friday; a good day to start, if I may say so. I finally managed to get in touch with the other Canadians in Tokyo on the co-op Japan program; so naturally, we arranged to get together for a good time. The proposed meeting place was a club called the Gas Panic (cheekily spelled Gaspanic inside) in Roppongi, the foreigner district of Tokyo. They were to watch the NBA game beforehand, and I, after getting off work at 8 or 9 PM would meet them at 10:00.
Roppongi, Friday:
Well, I arrived in Roppongi (Witness: Tower),
at about 10:00 on the nose, and I had to find a payphone in order to call those Canadians. The atmosphere was way different than in the morning when I was there to go to the Chinese Embassy. It reminded me of Granville St. In the day, it’s business as usual, but at night, the streets are flooded with Jamaicans in white suits trying to hustle you inside whichever enterprise they represent. I asked some guy where a phone was in Japanese, but he didn’t understand Japanese, so I tried English, but that didn’t work either. So I resigned myself to finding a payphone without assistance. I found one in short time, and called up my friends, who were waiting at a nearby McDonalds. I met up with them there, where we caught up a little on how things were in Japan, and waited for others to arrive. At 11:00, with a group of 4 Canadians (and only 1 Caucasian in the lot of them) we headed to the GasPanic. Cover was free at said club; the caveat being that you are required to be holding a drink at all times. While on paper this theory is sound, in practice the only thing it accomplishes is that drinks get much warmer than they usually would, as the rate of consumption of an individual beverage decreases. At about 1:30, we got a call from a few more Canadians who were arriving, increasing our total party size to 7. At this point we took a hiatus from the club and headed to a local 7-11 to buy beers on the cheap before returning to the elevated cost structure of the club.
In Japan, they let you drink on the street, which totally weirded me out. I felt like a real hooligan. Anyway, me being the only white guy (and one of the 2 guys with a girlfriend), Clem recruited me to help him find chicks. I insisted that I was a natural chick magnet not because I’m white, but because I’m actually just a cool guy! (Nobody bought it.) At one point, I had a group of about 6 girls talking to me. Clem couldn’t get a girl. Even Billy, this skinny little dude, was able to pick up some girl, but not Clem. Man, it was pretty hilarious, to see him trying so hard. He tried things like telling girls I was his brother, and he was half white, or that he was actually Hawaiian. Clearly, none of these strategies worked. That night, I met a nice girl. Hanae-san was her name. I talked to her for a while, since she was supposed to meet her friends, and they weren’t there. She told me that she broke up with her boyfriend 3 weeks prior because he was cheating on her with a Korean girl, so she was sad. Man, I felt bad for her. Anyway, she eventually found her friends, at like 3:00AM, so that was cool. Though at about that time, we Canadians were discussing going to the Tsukiji fish market (famous for the sushi fresh from the ocean). It’s only open like 4:00AM till 9:00AM, so we had to catch the first train at 5:00 to get there. We invited Hanae-san and her friends to come along for breakfast, since they had never been to the fish market (it being a pretty touristy thing).
A few of them came with us, namely Hanae and her friend Taka. We got to the fish market tired and hungry. The most famous sushi shop, Daiwa Sushi, had a lineup from here till doomsday,
so we asked a local fisherman his recommended spot, and he pointed out a smaller spot close by, and there wasn’t a lineup there! Score! So we went to that place, and the sushi chef was pretty friendly.
He couldn’t speak any English though, so I did my best to talk to him in Japanese. The sushi was excellent, particularly the O-Toro, which is the most expensive… Though really it was all pretty delicious. After breakfast, Hanae and Taka had to take off to Kyoto, so they left for their train. We Canadians stuck around a little longer, looking at the little shops and stuff, then went back home. I got home at around 8:00AM and felt like death. I then slept until 2:30.
Saturday:
I woke up at 2:30. I took a shower. I went to the store. I was buying curtains and other essentials. I got what I needed. I came home. Now I have curtains and a frying pan. I love my gas stove. I went back to sleep.
Sunday: Game Day:
I woke up close to 12:00 today, after getting a good night’s sleep. The futon is surprisingly comfortable, but my pillow is too high for my liking, it hurts my neck a bit. I am contemplating buying an expensive orthopedic pillow that I’ll take back to Canada. I wanted one for a long time... Maybe as a birthday present to myself. Anyway, I planned to go to Akihabara to the Sporting Goods district to buy a medicine ball. “How expensive can they be?” I thought, maybe $20 or $30 bucks. I eventually found my way there using the poor quality map in the back of the Lonely Planet guide. There were mostly ski and board shops there, which would be cool if that’s what I were looking for (maybe I’ll come back), but as for medicine balls, I only found one shop that carried any. And the heaviest was 5kg (roughly a 12lb’er) and they wanted $100 for it!! I was outraged, and I left. I figured I would buy stuff on Amazon.co.jp later. (But I checked and it is also outrageously expensive on the internet… Sigh…) Anyway, I stopped by Electric Town on my back to Ooi, and picked up a cool little anime figure (of a hot girl, naturally, and on sale too!) and continued on. I picked up a little bit of a snack on the way to the office in the form of some gyoza. I met up with Takeshi-san there at about 4:30, and we hung out a bit waiting for some more people. Shortly after 5:00 we took off to Roppongi again (my third time). We got to the “Tokyo Sports Café” where we had to pay $40 cover. >(
We found out though, that the NHL game was rescheduled to midnight because of the World Cup. So we had some time to kill. We went to the FIFA store and bought some team Japan merchandise (I got an official towel, the cheering implement of choice.) Then we went to an okonomiyaki restaurant where I experienced okonomiyaki. It was really tasty, but you have to cook it yourself! (Jerks! What are we paying them for?)
Then when we finished eating we went back to the Sports Café. We had a little bit of time left before the game started, and there were a bunch of guys making a lot of noise cheering loudly and stuff. Takeshi-san went to join them. He was definitely the most enthusiastic of our group. He bought a Japan cape to go along with his towel. I wasn’t quite so into it as he was, but I was cheering nonetheless, and the Japanese TV cameras picked up on me, and asked me for an interview! I thought it was pretty cool! I answered the questions in Japanese, and everybody burst out cheering when I was like “Nihon no sa-ca- chi-mu ga dai suki desu!” That was exciting.
Then as the game was going the place was so hot and packed, it was crazy! It was unfortunately not a very good game though, Japan and Croatia tied 0-0. Oh well… The place emptied out, and we pulled up some chairs to watch the Stanley Cup. It wasn’t without challenge though. The people at the Sports Café kept flipping off the hockey and putting on more soccer, presumably hoping I would leave so they could fill the little void between me and the hockey TV with soccer fans. Anyway, about the time of the opening face-off this girl started talking to me. And she was pretty annoying too. She wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept following me everywhere. And showing me pictures of her cats. Holy Shit! Don’t show me pictures of your fucking cats when I’m watching the fucking Stanley Cup Playoffs fuck! And it wasn’t like I was talking to her either, I didn’t even try to speak Japanese to her! It was all English. She asked me for my email address, so I gave her my gmail… I don’t have access to that account right now anyway… :P Oh well… And because the Stanley Cup got rescheduled, we missed the last train, and were required to stay there until 5:00AM Monday morning… We eventually got out of there and went back home. Me feeling like death again. I got to sleep at about 6:30. I woke up again at about 11:00, enough time to get to work.
Monday:
Of course the guys who stayed out all night were all fucked up that morning. I wasn’t sure I could do much work that day, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to. I came in at the crack of noon. Matsumoto-san and Ito-san took me out to get my Gaijin card that day. And then after lunch I had an extended meeting with Isi-san and Gotanda-san. We started off going over the feature requests from the sound designers in regards to the midi sequencing system. Then we had a bunch of tandems and talked about various things like lighting techniques, going to University, mathematicians’ names and how Japanese people can’t pronounce English words… It was cool. I also did some laundry that day. I brought a giant sack from home, filled with all my dirty clothes, and was a little worried about the quality of the wash from the laundrymat machines. So I just washed my socks and underwear, but they seem okay. Maybe I’ll do my shirts too. Unfortunately at this point it was quite late due to that little palaver, so I postponed the shirt washing until another day.
And as I conclude this episode of my adventures, I have a stack of dirty shirts and one new clean towel.
And as always:
Till next time, keep your stick on the ice.
And this week's random photo:
Okay, here's the report for the first week of work:
Monday:
I found out that the tri-Ace server filters https, so I'm unable to check the bulk of my mail, do any online banking, or post to most blog sites...
I did, however meet my team today, and they all seem like pretty nice guys. They set me up with a good workstation too!
Yeah, that's a Sony Bravia 1080i HDTV on my desk :D Not that I'm bragging or anything.
We went over office procedures n' stuff today. Typical stuff. As it turns out, becuase there is currently no one working on any next-gen audio at tri-Ace I got assigned to be THE audio department. I'm going to be building the entire sound library for Xbox360 and PS3 from scratch! It's really exciting and a little daunting at the same time.
I went home pretty late that night (by North American standards, I guess) at about 11:00PM. There were still people at the office when I left. But then, work here starts at around 12:00 noon, so I guess people would rather sleep in and work later...
Tuesday:
Mostly work. Though we left early that day to take me to my welcoming party! I wanted to take some pictures, but my camera had no battery power (I wanted to discharge it completely before giving it a charge. They say memory isn't a problem with Lithium Ion, but it so is). Too bad! I learned some new Japanese terminology, namely "Yabai!" It apparently has usage like the English "Wicked!" in that it is used by young people to indicate when something is awesome, and by everybody else to indicate when something is bad. We went first to an izakaya in Yebisu that night. It was pretty cool, they brought us a lot of appetizer kinda things to eat, which eventually filled me up. And the matcha tiramisu was amazing! After that we went to a little bar up the road, and some of the older guys decided to go home. I talked a bunch to Gotanda-san there about games and stuff. He told me the story of how tri-Ace got started (3 founding members = three aces), and that he was kinda forced to become CEO after the seconding two guys dropped out. He also told me he had lunch with Ueda-san (of Shadow of the Colossus & ICO) fame the other day. Apparently the animations in Shadow were entirely procedural, and that he tried to convince tri-Ace to go with procedural animations, but that the animators would have none of it.
I'm learning more and more that the game industry is a very small place. As an example, when I got signed up for my complementary IGDA membership, I opened up the IGDA forums. As I was skimming through, I noticed that some guy was bandying about Mike Corey's name (a guy I knew from CDIS), and upon further inspection, this was a guy who I exchanged business cards with at the last GDC... And that's only one example! It's crazy!
Wednesday:
I made a nice dinner:
The Japanese take onions seriously:
And milk comes with detailed readouts:
Thursday:
I did my first crossfit workout in Japan. I found a park nearby with a swingset to use as a pullup bar. I of course wore my "Not a pussy anymore" T-shirt, and of course I got a ton of strange looks from the Japanese. Some old people sat on a bench nearby to watch me. Barbara: 28:35.
Takeshi-san is a cool guy. I've been hanging out with him & his crew for lunch the past few days. He told me they want to start a band, and they don't currently have a DJ / producer, so I might just fit the bill...
Friday:
Went on a shopping trip today with Nishina, Matsumoto and one of the receptonist girls Ito-san. We bought a futon and some quilts, and some essential small appliances: microwave/toaster oven, rice maker, and lamp. I plan to buy more stuff this weekend, like dishes etc.
Hey alright! I've got some basic effects happining on Xenon audio! w00t!
Till next time,
Keep your stick on the ice!
- Jeff
That first weekend, I didn't have internet
June 3rd:
My third day in Japan. Relatively uneventful so far. I’m writing this entry offline, as I cannot find an unsecured wireless network anywhere! It’s as if everybody knows how to use their network here! (Which seems preposterous!) I also had no problems getting through the airport customs. (Which, again, seems preposterous!) The flight itself was also quite uneventful, especially given that it was Air Canada (they are way low tech), except for when we landed and some of the Japanese school girls who were on the same plane with me asked if they could take some pictures with me. I was pretty flattered, and of course I said “Sure.” I was met at the airport by Matsumoto-san and Nishina-san, where Matsumoto-san is a preposterously generic looking Japanese businessman, and Nishina-san is a slightly portly, short dude with dyed hair and nearly perfect English.
I gave them the omiyage (souvenirs) I brought from Canada, and they were both impressed. We drove first to the tri-Ace offices to meet with some of the people there. Nishina-san is a pretty funny guy; he was giving Ishii-san a hard time when we got there! And I’m always surprised by Gotanda-san. He’s the president of the company, and yet he seems like just a regular squirrelly game developer. Well, after that we went to drop stuff off at my temporary apartment, which is actually pretty nice. See pictures:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have internet. Well, after that, they took me out for dinner nearby. We ate sushi, and I forgot how much better Japanese sushi is than Canadian sushi. It was absurdly delicious, (and it wasn’t even a very good restaurant). I tried uni (sea urchin) for the first time, and it was actually quite good, I don’t know what Fred is talking about. It tastes a bit like tuna, and it is so soft it melts in your mouth. We also drank some beers, and those were pretty good too, even though I was like “Oh my god! Not more beer!” After we finished eating, I was really feeling the jet lag, so they walked me home and I crashed right away.
The next day I woke up at like the crack of dawn due to a touch of jet lag. It was good though, I had plenty of time to shower and stuff before meeting Matsumoto-san and Nishina-san again. I tried to withdraw money from the bank, but as it turns out, my Canadian ATM cards don’t work in most places. Oh well, no money / breakfast for me… Well, I met those guys at 10:00 in front of tri-Ace, and we walked to the realtor’s office. (In Japan, you need a realtor to rent an apartment.) The realtor printed off a few sheets to show us what was available, we picked a few that looked decent nearby and set off the check them out. The first place was awesome. The building was only 2 years old, it was right near tri-Ace, looked really modern inside, and had a reasonable (for Tokyo) rent. The second place we checked out was a shit-hole. It was old and run-down and there were stains on the wall and it was smaller and further from tri-Ace. We were scheduled to keep looking for places on Tuesday, but I know how fast good places get taken in Vancouver, and since Matsumoto-san kept talking about it, I decided that I would go with the first place I looked at (as preposterous as that sounds). So, we returned, filled out some paperwork, then went back to tri-Ace. After figuring out where to exchange some money, they gave me the rest of the afternoon off, so I decided to venture back to Akihabara to buy a camera.
Again, Akihabara is the Mecca of geekiness on the planet Earth. After looking around a bit, I decided to buy a 5.1 mega pixel Olympus FE-150 camera, because it has the only two features I care about: image stabilization, and a lithium ion battery, and it was pretty cheap at about Canadian $200. Most of the other cameras were 6 – 8 mega pixel, so I feel like I have a small e-penis as a result, but I saved like $100, so I’m not complaining. I looked around Akihabara a bit more (DS Lites are sold out everywhere, and Xbox 360 is dirt cheap; preposterous!) then decided to go home.
I bought some groceries and realized why people say the cost of living in Tokyo is high, GROCERIES ARE PREPOSTEROUSLY EXPENSIVE!!! For example, I paid $5.00 for THREE apples, $5.00 for THREE oranges and $5.00 for a small thing of cherries! (The cherries are the best deal in my opinion, at least they are about that price in Canada too.) Milk was $4.00 for 1L, eggs are okay at about $3.00 for 10, chicken is reasonable at $3.99 for a half pound of breast meat. But the produce scared the shit out of me! $50 FOR A FUCKING WATERMELON!!! $70 FOR A FUCKING HONEYDEW!!!!!
And I thought Safeway was expensive at $1.49 / lb of melon! $70!!!?!?!?!?!?! How the fuck can anybody afford $70 for a fucking honeydew!?!?!?! IT’S THE SAME PRICE AS A PLAYSTATION 2!!!! And they’re not even fresh! I checked them, they are pretty past ripe! I figure I’m gonna keep eating on the zone diet (and for those who don’t know, it’s not a “diet” in the “I’m gonna lose weight” sense, it’s a diet in definition of diet, ie, the set of everything you put in your body). Anyway, I figure I’m gonna do that, spend the extra money to keep my intake levels up and say “fuck it” to buying any extraneous technology. I’d rather keep my CrossFit Elite level of performance than have more crap any day.
Well, anyway, the today I managed to get a bit more sleep. When I woke up, I went war-walking (I tried to walk around finding an unsecured wireless network), but it was fruitless, as my rant at the beginning has alluded to. I also tried to use a payphone to call Kylie, but it didn’t work, and I wasted a dollar. Fuck. I’ll have to wait until Monday to tell anybody I am alive. Oh well, such is life…
So, here I am, without internet, and without any means to contact the outside world; feeling bored and sitting at home alone… And as a result, I’m on my like 8th cup of tea.
Well, at least I have a camera…
Until next time, keep your stick on the ice.
- Jeff
First Post! w00t!
Hello World!
I'm looking for a blog that doesn't use ssl to submit posts... I can't see why people feel the need to encrypt the transmission of their blog posts when the whole world can read the thing anyway... The tri-Ace servers don't support forwarding of the https protocol, though I can't reckon why not. Maybe they think employees plan to hack the planet with secure sockets...
Oh well, it seems blogspot uses regular http, so that makes me happy. That being said, HERE WE GO!
