I want to go to Monkey Park

I like monkies. I was in Shiga for Monday and Tuesday. It was a lot of fun. Monday was basically just translating lectures. But it was okay. The presentation that I translated was really difficult. I can say it wasn’t my fault because the guy that made it just kind of made up all this special words that don’t mean what they general do in Japanese. How am I supposed to know that? Anyway there was a guy that knew English and knew what was going on so he saved the day. On Tuesday we went to two different sites where Daifuku had installed distribution systems. It was really cool to see all of those things working. I came back after that. I lost my umbrella on the trip and of course it rained the next day. The rest of this week I have been working on the manual I was assigned right at the beginning. Mostly I just revised it and formatted it to how it looked originally. They have some cool programs that run off of Word that make it really easy to do all that stuff.
I had a lot of fun talking to the American guys. They were really nice and one of them bought me dinner on Monday. One of them had been to Japan before so he knew what was going on but the other two goys were clueless. It was really funny to watch them try and figure out what they were eating or complain that they hadn’t had normal food forever. They were even complaining that the breakfast at the hotel was toast. But it was just interesting to kind of make friends with these guys that had kids my age. It was also interesting to see that they still had a lot of stereotypes about Japan. Hopefully their children know a little bit more than the parents. It also felt really good to finish the translation and formatting of the manual introduction. It is satisfying to know that it is almost completely finished. The only thing left is to add the drawings and that type of thing. I guess it just feels like I did something useful. Well that is all for now. Hope everyone else is having fun too.

Something New

This week was pretty interesting. It started out pretty slow just working on the same old translating. I finished up the project I was working on right before they needed it. Then I spent the next two days checking the English on one of my co-workers translations. She is pretty good but sometimes you can tell that she still needs some work. But overall I would say she knows way more than I do. She has been doing this a lot longer than me. Then I got to go down to Shiga on Thursday. It was the first time I got to ride the Shinkansen. So that was pretty cool. I translated for the meeting on Friday and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. But it worked out okay.
I finished the required amount of reading this week. I still have a Japanese history book that I plan on reading though. There were a lot of insights in what I have read as to how the Japanese people view themselves and others and why this is so. It is pretty interesting to think about. I want to get a better idea of the history of Japan to maybe put some things into perspective in my head. And also to better understand geographical significances and better appreciate the places I go. I will be translating next week as well for this same group Monday and Tuesday. I am looking forward to that. That is all for now I hope that everybody else is having a good time.