Japan

There was a little typhoon in the area today. It caused massive train delays and other problems.

I was able to make it work w/o a incident on time, but most of my co-workers live much farther from the office then I do and most of them were about 2 - 3 hours late.

On my way to the data center I snapped this shot of the bamboo trees outside the office. It was pretty windy I guess.

Japanese efficiency When you live in a big city things are typically done in a different manner than they are done in the countryside. Getting your drivers license renewed is no exception. I woke up a little later than I had planned and tried to help with Anna then took off. I got on the train and could not remember the stop. Was it Higashi or Musashi-Sakai? I chose Musashi-Sakai, got off and found the bus to take me the rest of the way pretty easily. I was not sure when to get off but spotted another guy with a card like mine telling him to go to the Drivers License Center and wisely got off when he did. When I got out of the bus there was a woman herding people towards a rather unofficial looking tent. She told me if I paid 600 yen she would get me the paper I needed to get started and I could skip the first queue. I was skeptical since all the people ran straight for the Drivers License Center (DLC). Then I remembered how cheap most Japanese people are when it comes to something like this. They would rather stand in line another hour than pay 6 bucks. My time is worth allot more than 6 dollars so I paid up and when I got into the DLC I saw she was right. The first queue was the longest, must have been at least 1 hour wait. I stepped right into the payment line where I bought some stamps and put them on my paper. The wait was about 10 minutes but I think you might be able to skip this part if you knew exactly what stamps to buy, they are common forms of payment at city halls and ward offices. A savvy Japanese native could circumvent this step as well I would guess. After this the experience pretty much turned into follow the herd as I went from station to station noting the people around me and making sure they where in the line for the next station as well. It was simple and efficient every section was broken down into a series of short questions and that I answered with a yes.

There was a eye test.

Man I have been so busy lately I have some pics that go with some of the stories below but between servers blowing up and the 30 + unread mails in my personal inbox and the 50 or more in my work inbox. PLUS trying to get ready for my dad to come here. I am a little short on time. Sorry if I haven't gotten back to you.... I will. Some of these things posted today are pretty old but I had 10 minutes of time so I blasted them out as quick as I could. E./

Some people I know have been complaining that they are under alot of stress. Co-workers my wife and others. I am wondering if it is just cause they are all associtated with me or it is just a stressful time of the year for them? Either way I think that since most of them are Japanese I was wondering what kinda stress they could feel, cause I think I have a lock on stress and still seem to handle it pretty well. I live in Japan. People here speak/read/write Japanese. They think like Japanese and they are Japanese. I am not. I only understand 1/3 of what people are saying. I can read very little and write even less. I have stress. I can not preform my job as good as I like because of these things and that causes me more stress. Outside of work, I can not depend on family to full fill my simplest requests in a timely manner if at all. My life seems constantly more fucked up then anyone I know because, "if I want something done I have to do it myself". I have no team, no one on my side to help me. More stress.... constant stress.... I know a lot of people in Japan with similar situations to mine, and they feel it too, but do not spend all day complaining about it. Stress is a part of life, if you can not deal with the stress in your life then do something to change it so you can live a bit more STRESS FREE!