Kind of a slow week. We were finally assigned work at AISoft. Ryan is working on image enlargement
software, and I am writing games for cellphones. We have little contact with our bosses, and the little
contact we do have is aggravating due to the language barrier.
Speaking of overcoming language barriers, our Japanese lessons started this week, and let me just say,
we've got a long way to go.
Friday was a holiday in Japan, so Ryan, Moui and Guillaume (those crazy French students) and I took a trip
to Tokyo.
Lots of work to be done at AISoft. Ryan has switched his focus to an email program, and I
am still trying to do the impossible with cellphones. On Tuesday, I had to speak at a meeting, to the
dismay of the managers who can't speak English.
The rest of the week was slow. We tried to save money since we had spent a great deal of it in Tokyo
last weekend. Friday night was our weekly badminton match with our Japanese co-workers, followed by a sushi
dinner. Saturday was basketball, as usual. Ryan did especially well, while I scored my token One Basket.
Saturday night Paul, two Japanese friends and the two of us went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant. A drawing
of the manager was prominently displayed on the coasters, along with his giant Japanese afro.
There we ate octopus (tako) prepared three different ways, one of which was raw with a
wasabi sauce. Delicious! (Really, it was.)
Well, work has been no fun lately, with my weekly meetings, where I struggle to get my meaning
across to a room full of Japanese upper management. Basically any managerial decisions are to be made by
me, and I am solely accountable. Swell.
Monday and Tuesday were spent trying to install Windows 2000 onto my computer because it kept
crashing in Windows 98. Did I mention Windows 2000 was in Japanese? That's why it took two days. On Thursday
I made a request for a hardware upgrade, so on Friday I got a new computer, and had to install Windows all over again.
Needless to say, not much work got done this week. I'm looking forward to the weekend (even though rumour has it
Saturday Basketball has been cancelled).
Have you ever wondered what DSN Notary Status Codes are? Me neither, but I was asked to make a program that filters
those status codes out of email messages. My boss's name is Masayuki: "Call me Massa," he said. I'd rather not.
Anyway, this is a very difficult task, since there are an infinite number of message
formats, but it's easier than my previous assignment, which to create an "image magnification algorithm" that uses
"wavelet-based fractal interpolation." That project is on hold until I learn what those words mean. And until
Massa stops workin' me so hard.
Back at the dorm, I've got a big poster in my room that lists all the Kanji characters taught to
Grade 2 Japanese students. There are about 140 of them; using several dictionaries and a textbook, I've deciphered 6
so far. My goal is to learn how to read well enough to be able to understand a children's comic book I bought last month.
The story seems to involve some sort of robot, and he wears sandals.
Chris and I biked to Murai Thursday night in order to pick up a Japanese version of Monopoly at Toys R Us.
We went along the infamous Route 19 to get there, and I almost became a hood ornament.
Thursday night and Friday night we decided to save some money and play Monopoly. Ryan won on Thursday,
and our Friday game was "saved" using Guillaume's digital camera. Oh Japanese technology, is there anything you can't
do?
On Saturday, Ryan and I went to AISoft to catch up on the work we didn't do during the week. Since I spent
three of the five work days reinstalling Windows, I had an excuse. That night Ryan, Paul, Guillaume and I went over to Moui's
place for another game of Monopoly, which Ryan won. I estimate we will be really sick of Monopoly in about 3 more days.
On Sunday we snuck Paul and Guillaume (co-ops from Epson) into A.I.Soft so they could check their email
without being restricted by Epson's draconian Internet filter. Actually "snuck" isn't the right word; the security guard
saw us, he just didn't care.
Thursday, "Thanks for Working Day" was a holiday in Japan. A large group of us (foreigners, and Japanese)
decided to go to Nagano to skate at the Olympic Ice Rink (Nagano hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics). The rink was huge. We skated
for at least three hours. We returned home that night tired and bruised.
Friday morning I got up as usual and went to work only to find the building closed due to a "secret" holiday
no one had told me about. I phoned Ryan (who usually comes in later than me) instructing him to return to bed immediately, and
he complied. I spent most of the afternoon writing letters and sleeping, and that evening was spent at home since badminton was
cancelled due to lack of interest.
The Monopoly game we bought a couple of weeks ago has already started to lose its appeal, since we've played it
with the other co-ops about 3 trillion times. Too bad the only things on television are game shows where you verbally abuse your
significant other, game shows involving possibly lethal food, and other game shows. I think we should buy a PlayStation 2, since
they're everywhere around here.
Saturday was basketball and I tripled my record for baskets (yes, that means I got 3). That evening I was
tutored in chess by Guillaume, and then we watched a terrible cult horror movie called The Stuff which I bought at a local
video store for about $5.
"Air Ball Burkett" put in an appearance on the basketball court once again this week. Throw hard, throw often,
that's the key.
I thought I'd try my hand at mountaineering this weekend, but even though I walked in the right direction for a
couple of hours, I failed to even reach the base of the mountains. Looking out the windows of the dorm's cafeteria, you'd swear
that it was only about 2 or 3 Km away. This turned out not to be the case; it's more like 20. That's the first rule us
mountaineers learn: always check the map before you leave. At least I got to see some interesting sites during the outing;
I discovered a secret Epson facility being built deep in the woods, and I got to climb over a large concrete dam. Anyway, my
goal is to find out, someday, what's on the other side of that mountain range (my guess is another mountain range.)
Sunday I finished my Japanese homework then met with a Japanese woman interested in a language exchange. Basically
she helps me with my homework and I entertain her with tales of Canadian winters and strange western customs. That night another
large group of us went for Chinese food and then Karaoke. I sang Barry Manilow's Copa Cabana and Ryan sang Under the Sea
in a convincing Carribean accent.
The free Japanese lessons we go to in Matsumoto are bound to get more interesting since this week they asked
us what we wanted to learn, instead of working through a textbook. I said Kanji, since it would be nice to be able to read
a paper or figure out those manga comics I bought last month.
