Correlations to the Stuff White People Like blog

#99 Grammar

#93 Music Piracy

#90 Dinner Parties

#89 St. Patrick’s Day

#83 Bad Memories of High School

#81 Graduate School

#75 Threatening to Move to Canada

#61 Bicycles

#51 Living by the Water

#46 The Sunday New York Times

#40 Apple Products

#36 Breakfast Places

#35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report

#28 Not having a TV

#24 Wine

#23 Microbreweries

#20 Being an expert on YOUR culture

#19 Traveling

#11 Asian Girls

#8 Barack Obama

#2 Religions their parents don’t belong to

#1 Coffee

Only 23 out of 103?! Somehow I expected myself to be whiter. I feel like if I was the specific kind of white person, for example if I was raised in California wine country or a Philadelphian-born transplant to New York City, I would score much higher. Also if I wore a close-trimmed beard or glasses with black plastic frames…

Yo, son.

You Down With That New Death Cab?

It’s Tight!

Put It On Blast!

Where?

On Blast!

Podcast spotlight

I love, repeat love podcasts. I listen to them entirely too much and they are without question leading me to premature hearing loss.

I just finished listening to the entire series of episodes from Skeptoid.com, a website that bills itself as “critical analysis of pop phenomena,” and I wanted to recommend it. Literally every episode has either been golden or almost there. Every podcast has a lot of good information, clearly explained and all in the same place, but even more importantly the host does the research on, say, the Amityville Horror so we don’t have to do it ourselves.

The writer of this show just finished a forty-minute video called Here Be Dragons.

Check it out!

What does it take to succeed in sales?

Not dead

I thought I would use this passing moment of clarity to give ya’ll a quick update. I am, despite strong evidence to the contrary, alive. I am working on two deals that are an order of magnitude larger than anything I have done before, and naturally they require an order of magnitude more effort. My success here will catapult my company into unimaginable heights of success and magnificence, as though launched from a catapult made of pure love. A single question remains: have I the sales virtuosity to pull off this noble endeavor?

Working for a small company with a good product is amazing.

4:20 on a Sunday

Photo dump time! Enjoy.

Spring 2008: ….gyoza!

Spring 2008: Priceless Garlic gyoza making grandma!

Spring 2008: Octopus ball and kimchi cheese gyoza!

Spring 2008: Garlic gyoza!

Spring 2008: Mayonnaise and Habanero gyoza!

Spring 2008: Ginormous gyoza

Spring 2008: Gyoza Stadium!

Taken at Ikebukuro Sunshine City, land of merriment and Turkish icecream.

Not just even Gyoza Stadium, but…Gyoza Battle!!!!

Spring 2008: NOA building…innocence lost.

Next in the long line of supremely unfortunate Tokyo office monstrosities. This building is mortifying. That tall arch in the center? Only entrance into the building. That hammer-like window? Asymmetrically located, oh and also THE ONLY WINDOW FOR FOUR STORIES. That stained red brick? Makes it look like a WWII gas chamber.

Listen, being a salaryman is life-draining enough. Why you would inflict this building on someone’s working life is utterly beyond me. The NOA building is where happiness goes to die, violently.

Spring 2008: The unluckiest building in Tokyo

Would you pay money for that penthouse apartment?

Spring 2008: One of my favorite views in Tokyo

This is taken from the second floor window of a French restaurant I like in Azabu Juuban. I forget the name, but I go there often if I have the time. The middle part of the square is called Patio Juuban, and during the day there’s a fantastic open air market. I took my dad to this restaurant when he came to visit last time, and we had wine, duck, and pasta.

Spring 2008: My first night in the new apartment!

Kooky picture of the Tower at night

Spring 2008: Sakura at Roppongi Itchome Station

Whoops. 3 of 2.

Spring 2008: Sakura at Roppongi Itchome Station

2 of 2.

Spring 2008: Sakura at Roppongi Itchome Station

1 of 2.

Spring 2008: “The Japanese Dionysus”

I really can’t stand the “informational” signs most Japanese monuments, shrines, holy items etc. have to explain their significance to the observer. Usually they give a name, lots of dates, and some quizzically-oversimplified description, with none of the context required to appreciate the object being described.

This is apparently “the Japanese Dionysus,” and since it was a few months ago when I took this picture in Hamamatsucho, I don’t remember exactly what that means. But I do remember that standing there, taking the picture itself, I couldn’t understand what the sign was trying to say. In what sense is this person/god is considered the Japanese Dionysus? Who knows?

Spring 2008: Plum blossoms in Hamamatsucho

This was taken when my parents and sister came to visit a few months ago. They missed the sakura blossoms but the plum ones came early, and they were spectacular. More flower pics to follow!

Why have I not posted for a month?

Well, there’s been a lot of stuff going on lately

It’s clear and bright today in Tokyo, and I’m sitting in my office basking in the palpable warmth of wireless internet to which I actually have the WEP. That’s the problem with my new apartment: lots of wireless networks in range, all encrypted. I don’t have internet at home yet, due to a mixup in which I was supposed to get free ADSL. I haven’t got it yet. Being internetless of course doesn’t really inhibit me from writing, but when you are busy, you tend to focus on your priorities.

The problem is that this blog is a priority for me, I just have trouble recognizing it. Not writing or creating anything for a long time brings out my bad qualities. Creation-dearth deprives me of a sense of fulfillment, slows my introspective faculties, and lowers my intellectual standards to the point where I lose the ability to think and act critically.

For the past three weeks, all the restorative and lively parts of my life have come from work. Business picked up, relationships with partners and mentor figures have deepened, and we hired two new people. For those weeks I felt like I never got back home until 11 or 12 at night, every day. This wasn’t actually true. That probably happened up to 4 times each week. But a rich private life (of which this blog is a part) is important to my total wellbeing, and I didn’t have any time to myself to read, to write, to get out in nature, in short, to quit being a reactionary consumer and get back some energy in my life. I was really tired, most of the time.

My next post will have some pictures from the mountains I climbed this weekend. As JSiu noted in the heading of one of his mercurially-titled stream of consciousness blog posts, it was Golden Week here in Japan, a kind of Spring Break for workers and students. This year’s Golden Week was the oddest I’ve ever heard: it was spread out over two weeks, but we got only one Tuesday of last week and Monday and Tuesday of this week off from work. My Golden Week, short though it was, finally gave me enough space from work so I could concentrate on my own thoughts.

So I’m sitting here, typing and thinking about my May. JSiu’s got finals, MattPatt’s got finals, Josh has probably got some mammoth work project that has kept him at the office until 3, DK’s probably got finals, all the kids still at Rice got finals, Bryce got finals and a new Japan life to consider, and there’s a disturbing dogpile of friends at the back of my mind, made up of people from whom I have no news. Brad, Jing, Jesse, Kathleen, NeelK, Clarence, and the rest of the California crew, shoot me a mail and let me know what’s up.

My May is going to be concentrated on getting my personal life in line with my professional one. I completely fell off the face of the Earth last month and I’m determined not to do so again. I’m not quite sure how I’m going to accomplish this, but I will.

Here’s hoping for a more creative May!

Another view of the balcony: tomato and sunflower plants

My balcony

The balcony is a sort of L-shape, rotated 90 degrees up and mirrored. The “bottom” of the L is pretty fat though, so there’s a lot of room to move around.

A better view of my herbs

View from inside

From here you can see five of the seven pots in my garden. From the left, sunflower, tomato, peppermint, fennel, and orange mint. If you keep going left, there are two more hanging pots with another fennel and common sage.

The best view so far

My closet and my books

I finally have enough closet space…Also, I keep the wine and the whiskey on the top shelf next to the books.

The blue plastic things have a lot of hooks from which I hang my wet laundry.