You can't take a picture of a firefly with a keitai

I went to this place where you can see fireflies on Sunday. Everyone was trying to take pictures with their cell phones. It just doesn't work people. At least I got a laugh out of it. Well this week has just been translating sections of manuals. It gets old really quick but is kind of fun because I get to see the final product. It is also fun to learn the programs they use to do this type of work. A lot of it is pretty simple but very useful. Without it formatting these documents would take quite a while. My boss is still looking for a good place to take me to go visit some customers. I am getting pretty tired of the office. I was really glad when I got to leave and get my gaijin card last week. Anyway nothing much else is going on.
I think it is interesting how people react to the world cup. My section was talking about it yesterday. All of the Japanese people agreed that they needed to get up at 4 am and watch the game against Brazil. It was funny because Japan had no chance of defeating Brazil and to wake up that early to watch it is strange to me. Especially since I don’t really even like soccer. Just anything cultural difference I guess. Later.

Keep it up, fellas!

I say "fellas" because only males have posted so far, but Rebecca, Kyoko, and Saori: if you are reading this you keep it up too. It was nice to see that everybody posted last week - everybody has started and is working the summer away now. CONGRATULATIONS to Josh on becoming a father just in time for Father's Day! Excellent use of the webcam.
Reading all of your posts makes me want to get out there myself. I'll be in Japan in August, so anyone that is still out there and close enough to Tokyo, you'll have to come eat dinner at my house.
Dewa, mata raishuu.

Tokyo

Here are a couple of pics to kind of break up the text on this page.

Rainbow Bridge as seen from Tokyo Tower.

The view from our Balcony













My wife and I on a bike-rigshaw at a museum. 

Sorry, I'm finally starting

So, I've finally slowed down a bit. Here goes on my first couple of days. The first day, I got in just a couple of minutes early and talked to a couple of the new interns. The group that was there was very diverse. We had a couple of engineers from BYU, an accounting major from Bucknell, Finance from UCLA, Asian Studies from Princeton, Law at American University, and MBA's from Vanderbilt, Cornell, and Sloan.

The first day and the second day were both full of training. We had heads from nearly all the departments, and a few members of Central managment come and speak. Musha-san, who is the chief economist also gave us an over view of the economic situation in Japan. I asked a question about Post-Office privitization, but he felt it was to broad a topic to discuss in the little time we had. So he gave me his short answer and moved on.

The first day was broken up by a lunch at the Tokyu Excelsior Hotel. There I met my buddy for the summer, Brad Stewart. He is Australian, and a really cool guy. Having been in Japan for 11 years as a student, member of the foreign service, and a professional at Lehman and Deutsche, he knows a lot about the industry and the region. Plus, he is a lot of fun to talk too.

At the end of the first day I found myself on the 27th floor at a resturant with a great view. Nariko, the person who has been helping us with all of the orientation and preparation before the program, said that the dinner would be social time with drinks and fingerfoods, I didn't know that fingerfoods included tons of nigiri sushi, karaage, great fried foods, and cool desserts. This resturant, called shunjuu, was kind of small, but there, over drinks, I met the Chariman of the Bank, Mr. Hashimoto, and other high ranking members of the bank.

The second day was more training. I felt bad, because I didn't know a whole lot about the things people were talking about, and the people that did know a lot weren't really participating in the training. So the presenters didn't really get a lot of great feedback from us. Plus, it was a little weird, but we never clapped for people. I guess I should have started the trend.

That evening was capped off with dinner with Kimi. We got to hang out a little in Shinjuku and had dinner at a fun little Chinese place.

Wednesday morning we went to Bloomberg for a training on their equipment. I have to admit that I didn't get all the nuances of the setup, but it was really effective. That building was fun because they had the Bloomberg news going on right there on the first floor, and had an open resturant on the second floor. Nice place.

Today was my first day of work. Lots more to learn. I've started a couple of projects though, and I think there will be a lot of great things for me to do coming up this next week. I'm really looking forward to it.

Week somenumber

June 12th – 16th, 2006
My daughter Lilia Rachel Keanaaina was born on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 7:34p.m. I participated via Webcam. She was born at 8lbs. 0oz. and 20inches long. That’s 3638 grams and 50.8 cm in the Japanese version. My wife and daughter are both happy and doing fine. Happy Father’s Day!!!
This week I worked on more catalog translations which was major boring crap. (Can we write crap in our reports? If not, just pretend I said stuff.) I was also asked to draft a License Agreement for rights to a German clamp design that My Company is planning to or already using. Basically, the gist of the operation is that, even though in Japan it’s not necessary to worry about patents or copyrights, in order to maintain a desirable business relationship between the two companies, My Company wants to show forth their willingness to pay royalties to the amount of 5% of the gross income of every product (hereinafter referred to as the Licensed Materials) in compliance to German and International Laws which govern the use of said patents and/or copyrights, to accomplish that end.
That is all for now. Although, I noticed that if I tell my company what Jon’s doing at his company my company tries to follow suit, so maybe they’ll be sending me to Tokyo soon too.