Ippoippo

I’ve just been sitting an exam, and it brought back memories of school.

This week, I’m currently in the UK, doing some more training and exams at company HQ.

The exam is still on at the moment (part one was 90 minutes long, and I finished it in 25 minutes, easy-ish multiple choice job). Mind you got another 90 minute one to do do, starting at 11:15.

At the moment, work is pissing me off quite a lot. Despite the Oz 3 month trip, the North AsiaPac team want me to bugger off to China for a while. All short notice stuff. They also expect me to work on something that I have no experience of (with limited support from HQ staff), in an effort it seems to prevent me buggering off to Oz (probably fearing that I may not want to come back).

There’s a lot of shit being flung around between departments, and it I’m stuck in the middle of it. It’s a real pain trying to organise your life outside work when all this is going on.

Never mind, at least I’ll be on the aeroplane tommorrow, Japan bound to get some time with Yuko.

JAL, that is? Once again, they are in trouble because of the lack of safety checks!

Meanwhile, China is making me laugh. Sometimes, China decides it’s just ‘Developing Country’ and ‘Poor’, therefore it shouldn’t have to pay as much towards the UN. Right, this is the same China who has a Space Programme.
Something not right there???

Finally, you’ve gotta laugh at South Park. You may not want to read the story, if you plan on watching the episode, but the BBC reported about 10th Series opening episode. Basically, it relates to Issac Hayes being somewhat hypocritical, as I wrote about in an earlier post.

What a completely lazy weekend we’ve just had!

Videos

Next week, I’m heading off to the UK to visit company HQ. While I’m over there, I’m taking the opportunity to deliver prints of my wedding pictures to my parents, gran and sister.
So, all the printed media is ready, but I’ve been busy trying to put together the DVD as well. At the wedding, we had a couple of camera men, from the wedding organising company, taking video footage. To keep the costs down though, we said no to the ‘special effects and fancy video editing’ option. So, when we got our pictures through, we got a plain DVD with pretty much just the raw footage. (Well, they did provide a lovely 1 minute ‘Harajuku Togo’ introduction… complete with horrible cheesy music, bloody awful looking titles, and pointless scene transitions).

So, I’ve been busy taking that DVD footage, and hacking it up using Adobe Premier Elements 2(JPN Link).
I’ve added some of the photo’s we’ve got., added a smattering of music in some places, bunging in some subtitles for the bits where Japanese is spoken (Luckly, I didn’t need to get all of it translated. For the wedding, we produced some billingual event booklets. So, all the speeches that had been prepared earlier we translated into the other language).

All thats left is a couple more subtitle frames and I’ll be ready to burn those DVDs for the folks back home.

Mind you, I’ve then got the do the Japanese edition!!! (Put subtitles in the unscripted English speeches, make NTSC format DVDs etc etc).

So, anyway, the weekend was pretty much spent doing that (Yuko spent most of her time playing Lumines on my PSP).

The Office

When in Matsudo centre on Saturday, we popped into the local Tsutaya (the DVD/Video and CD rental place). To my suprise, I saw that the BBC have released Series 1 and 2 (though no Xmas Finale) of The Office (UK Version, not US Version). Yuko has (sort of) seen the finale, because we were in the UK at the time it was shown. So, she was wanting to watch Series 1 and 2, with Japanese subtitles to see if she would find it funny.
Not suprisingly, there are parts of it which just don’t translate because the humour is word play. For example the bit when Brent is saying
“I bet every man here as woken up at the crack of Dawn“.
However, some of the humour did translate OK, mainly the characterisation and stupidty of it all. For example, Yuko really likes Keith (reminds her of Andy in Little Britain), and the interaction between Gareth and Tim.
Ohh, and for non-Brits reading this. If you’ve seen the office, but don’t understand the slang… there’s a useful BBC guide on what it all means

Tuesday

Yesterday in Japan was a public holiday. So, we decided that since the weekend was a complete slob-fest, we should go out somewhere. We decided to head out to Ebisu Garden Place. This is where the Yesbisu (now part of Sapporo Beer) Beer factory used to be. Now it’s home to lots of food and drink places, shopping (yes, yet more shopping stuff, mainly for women), the Sapporo Beer Musuem. We went along however to visit the Tokyo Museum of Photography. Once that was done, we headed back via Hiroo, where we stocked up on some wine.

Other News

Although I can’t actually watch it (because of not having access to Satellite TV here), it seems that not many of Brits in Japan will be able to watch the BBC here much longer either.

Meanwhile, in I read a rather gruesome little story about some crazy Nationalist protesting outside the Japanese Govt. buildings. What a nutcase!

Yesterday, saw the official start to Spring. No, not the Spring Equinox, but the Cherry Blossom season started in Tokyo. This year, it was 10 days ahead of ‘schedule’ (last year, it was a little late). Hopefully, the weather will be nice on Saturday. We’ve got a lunch party organised, and maybe afterwards, we can head up to the local park and take part in some ‘Hanami’ (literally means “Flower Watching”, actually means, sitting under the Cherry Blossom getting beer’d/sake’d up). That will be nice, before I head off for UK the next day.

Finally. Sod Peak Oil… a much more serious thing is about to affect the world. Peak Chocolate!!!! That’s it, life is not worth living anymore. I’m going to chuck myself in front of a train
Actually, there were a couple of parts of that story that made me chuckle.

The unstoppable growth of China has aroused fears of future conflicts over natural resources such as oil, gas and water. Now a new and unforeseen catastrophe presents itself: global chocolate wars.

…in Japan anyway.

Can’t say I’m suprised. Mind you, Vodafone service is dreadful in Japan compared to DoCoMo (NTT) and Au (KDDI).
The only reason why I have one (and Yuko too), is because its the only company to have a good choice of 3G phones that work abroad. NTT’s and KDDI’s ‘foreign’ usage phones are just to damn inconvenient in comparison, and since I have to travel it’s great to have a phone I can use easily abroad.

That’s the thing, and it’s summed up nicely in the BBC story.
“Vodafone’s Japanese subsidiary had been losing customers in the face of fierce competition from domestic operators such as NTT DoCoMo and KDDI.

The mobile giant bought the unit with a view to achieving cross-border economies of scale, but found the Japanese market was too different from Vodafone’s operations elsewhere. “

“was just to different”. You here this phrase all the time in Japan. It’s not just the foreigners who promote this idea, the Japanese themselves are very keen to promote this myth of complete uniqueness to the world.
Sure, they are different. We are all different in some ways. But not THAT different.