90 Days in Japan

Day 91 - Going back to America

2007-08-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

Going back to the Airport was a long journey. The bus seemed to get back to Nagoya pretty quick. However, when I got there everyone was on their way to work and many of the stores were not open yet so I waited around while everyone rushed to work.

First I had to go to take the bus to my co-workers place in order to get my luggage and then take the bus back to the train station to go to the airport.

The picture to the left is the plane I took back to the USA.

The above picture is from the airplane. This wasn't my seat but it proves the story true that I talked about a few weeks ago relating to the airlines and Japanese superstition. Apparently newly married couples are never suppose to be put in the HJ seats because it would be like saying there is no I between the two. And the pronunciation of "I" sounds just like "ai" (love) in Japanese. So we wouldn't want there to be no "ai" between the new couple.

This is the place I took back to Sacramento from San Francisco. I sat next to a United Pilot and we talked about becoming a pilot, Japan and religion. It was fun.

This is a picture of the Bay Area from my camera.

The Golden Gate bridge is swallowed up in clouds.

I didn't make a podcast for day 91, so here is a video clip from the train station in Nagoya as I was waiting to go to the airport.

Thanks for listening and reading my blog! Please leave a comment if you have questions or would like to contact me.

Day 91

Days 83 - 90 - Yokohama, Akihabara, Mt Fuji and Hakone

2007-08-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

These are my kanko (sight seeing) and play pictures from my last week in Japan. During Obon I was able to stay with a friend.

Day 84: Seeing Yokohama
Last year a picture of this roller coaster was in our accounting text book so we made a promise that if I ever got to go to Yokohama then we will ride it together. We got to ride it!

The roller coaster is called the Vanish because it dives under ground while a fountain of water flies upward.

Land mark tower building in Yokohama.

Chukagai in Yokhohama, this is China town and very famous.
You have to get a nikuman if you go.

Visited a shrine that had amazing stone carved on the outside.

Day 85: Karaoke
I went to karaoke with my friend's parents in the evening. Her dad and I wore our yukata and geta slippers. It was a lot of fun.

Day 86:

Made a trip to Akihabara. This is the first view of Akihabara after getting out from the eki.

We went to a Maid Cafe called めいどINジャパン(Maid in Japan - nice pun eh?). It was a long wait, about 45 minutes to get in. It was mostly guys that were there but including my friend there were 4 girls. There were a lot rules; like you couldn't take any pictures inside and you couldn't call the maid by her name. You could play a video game against one of the maids for about 400 yen or a little basketball game. You could also pay about the same amount and request a song for one of the maids to sing. We ordered parfaits and just talked. It was kind of a creepy atmosphere and I don't think I would ever want to go back again but it was fun to go once (I wouldn't go without someone).

Since we couldn't take pictures of the maids, I took a picture of the outside banner. They all wear these outfits.

In the evening we went out to kaiten zushi. This is my chawan mushi.

Fireworks during Obon.

Day 87: Going to Mt. Fuji

We went on tour bus to Mt. Fuji. It stopped at several places. The first stop was near the base of Mt. Fuji at a flower garden.

Tour bus ladies told jokes, history and kept us entertained during the trip.

Mt. Fuji from the halfway point, the bus only goes halfway.

Budogariya - all you can eat grapes (for 30 minutes)

Day 89: Going to Hakone
The above picture is a sign for Hakone at the Eki.

Another sign at Hakone showing times.

We took this picture on top of one of the mountains the rope way took us to.

This is a picture of boiled black eggs on top of the mountain. They didn't taste special.

We took one of the above ship across the lake.

Look! I see land!

There was a shrine in the water.

Day 90: Eel for dinner

A close up picture of the eel we all got. It was pretty dang good!

Days 83 - 90

Day 82 - Last day in Aichi Prefecture

2007-08-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

This podcast goes over my last day in Aichi prefecture and leaving to take my journey to Yokohama. This the last recording I made in Komaki.

I talk about the last three days, what happened on Friday, Saturday and today.

The picture to the left is where I spent the last 3 months in the dormitory. It was a really fun place and I enjoyed it. Good food, good times and good buddies.

This picture to the left is at the bus stop right before leaving to take the bus to the kasugai train station.

The above picture is at the kasugai train station.

The above picture is my pita from McDonalds. After I bit into, I found two dark hairs cooked into the pita! It was gross, almost made me lose my appetite! I showed it to the people at the counter and they gave me a new one and the manager apologized.

Day 82

Day 81 - Catching Fish

2007-08-11T00:17:00.000-07:00

Obon has started! One of my co-workers invited me to dinner with her friends. The traffic was crazy, it seemed like everyone from the city has come to the country. We went to this crazy restaurant where you get to catch your own fish.
The picture to the left is one of the fish I caught. The crazy thing is that it was still moving even after they skinned it and served it to us.

The audio where I talk about this place is on day 82.

Inside this restaurant there was a boat surrounded by water. Our room was on the side of the watery area and we could fish directly from the room.

We could choose how we wanted to the fish served. This plate has the sushi I requested. We also got sashimi, friend, boiled and fish in a salad.

This is me posing to catch a fish. I had actually already caught it. Those fish don't go easy, it was moving all of the place and got me nice and wet.

Here is the group of us. (and the poor fish)

Day 80 - Last day of work

2007-08-10T04:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from my last day at Daifuku.

The picture to the left is the team I worked with downstairs. They are a fantastic group!

The audio for this is on Day 82.

We drove the above Prius (a company car) to Gifu. This was actually my first time driving in a Prius.

Went to lunch with with 2 people from the somu department and met my Japanese teacher from BYU. I am standing next to my awesome Japanese sensei from BYU.

Last picture of the building I worked in.

Day 79 - Last day of actual work, the beginnings of tsukemono, shabu shabu

2007-08-09T04:06:00.000-07:00

In the podcast I talk about the place my Japanese boss took me out to dinner, the other kensyuseitachi helping me out with my essay and where tsukemono started.

My Japanese boss took me to a unique restaurant and we had what is called Shabu. I had never had this before. It sort of a yaki niku place but the meat served was very thinly sliced portions which could easily be boiled and eaten immediately.

You can order from this and get your fortune! Of course the fortune telling cost money.

The magical pot I talk about in my podcast which boils.

Last group of kensyuseitachi that I was able to make friends with.

Day 79

Day 78 - Darts Taikai, Sobetsukai, Japanese company stuff

2007-08-08T04:10:00.000-07:00

This podcast like many others was done at 1 AM. I talk about the Darts Taikai and my sobetsukai.

The Darts Taikai was some thing they started doing last year. I talk about the tournament and how I did and my partner.

We used real darts. I talked about

My sobetsukai was a sweet experience for me. I wish I had more time to prepare a speech or some thing. I didn't take any pictures because my camera batteries died during the darts taikai. Almost everyone that had helped with my internship came. In the podcast I talk about what it was like.

Day 78

Day 77 - Why Japanese Babies are called akachan

2007-08-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

I got a haircut today and the barber taught me a lot of things. Among the things I learned is why Japanese babies are called akachan. I have actually wondered this for a long time and know I know. I talk about it in the podcast.

So, a long time ago I posted a riddle on this blog about what is fire on top and water on the bottom. And I don't remember the answer anymore but I think it is 'ofuro'. I think it is the bath because it is water but its really hot when you get in. The only thing is that in Japanese when you say mizu it really means cold water because oyu means warm water but anyway...

The above picture is an ice cream bar I had the other day. It is called the Shiro Kuma "White Bear". I am going to miss Japanese ice cream bars.

One of the ladies at work made me a hanko for my meishi! It is so cool, she etched out my new kanji into an eraser and brought me an ink pad for it. By the way the kanji we picked out for　カール is: 加亜琉

Some Japanese superstitions that I learned is that the number 9 is left off room number. The guy next to me lives in room 110 and I live in room 108. There isn't a room 109. This is because 9 is pronounced like kurushii (pain/suffering). This also goes for the number 4, since 4 can be pronounced shi, like death. Thus it is also left off room numbers.

In Japanese buildings the 42nd floor is not built because it sounds like "shi ni iku", which would mean I am going to die...so if you were going to the 42nd floor it would mean you are going to die.

I talk about a few hand signals that Japanese use to non verbally say things like "rich" and "pregnant".

Day 77

Day 76 - The growing tanbo field

2007-08-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

I have been taking pictures of a tanbo (rice field) field since I got here because I wanted to watch it grow.

Here is the succession of pictures.

Day 75 - Ark of the Covenant in Japan?

2007-08-05T03:59:00.000-07:00

This podcast is about Sunday and things we did and conversations I had with people.

I went to Gifu for dinner.

Look at all the inari we made. :-)

Most of the people that we at dinner.

The genkan and lots of shoes...you can't get pictures like this in the USA.

Day 75

Day 74 - Trip to Kyoto

2007-08-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

I finally made it to Kyoto.

This podcast goes over my trip.

Rode the bus to Kyoto but came back on the Shinkansen.

The left picture is at the kinkakuji. The Golden Palace.

Now that is shaved ice.

Too much kakigori.

This has got to be a fun job.
Left, right, mouth and then the ladle or some thing like that.

kiyomizu dera...looks yummy.

kyoto eki.

My first bullet train ticket.

Can you tell I'm excited?

Day 74

Day 71 - Work Stuff, Bug Bites and DS Software

2007-08-01T23:37:00.000-07:00

This is a podcast of me talking about Day 71, projects at work, things that have been happening and things that will happen. Went to another director's meeting but I didn't understand much of it.

One of my co-workers is helping me to make a meishi. We are going to put some cool kanji on it.

Udon at lunch is messy.

I am excited to go to Kyoto.

Going running in the dark.

Another picture of dinner above. I love コロッケ! Its fried mash potatoes and tastes sooo good. Why don't they make this in the USA?

One of the many types of Daifuku ice cream I like. The company I work for and this daifuku have nothing in common.

There is some thing that keeps biting me every night, I'm wondering if there is a mosquito living in my room or a spider or a bed bug or some thing. I can't find any bugs but I've learned that mosquitoes in Japan are much more sneaky than American mosquitoes. They can often land and bite me without me ever realizing it. I have heard that they can numb your skin before they bite you. American mosquitoes seem to fly around my ears and so I hear them but not these Japanese ones...they hide until I go to sleep and then come out and get me.

I bought the above DS Software for Kanji practice and learning. It is awesome and is a great tool. You can learn kanji from basic to advanced. It will teach you how to write it and will test you on readings, stroke order, and kanji.

I also the above kanji kentei software to test myself but haven't spent much time with it. I don't like it as much as the other one I bought and since my kanji writing skills are still so poor that I do terrible on the tests. I want to take the Japanese Language proficiency exam eventually so this is to help me out with that.

Day 71

Day 68 - Work and 初カラオケ(first karaoke)

2007-07-29T02:31:00.000-07:00

This covers the weekend and things I did. My first time at Japanese karaoke and things I learned while at work. The picture on the left is before we went to karoke. Chinese food.

I also participated in the komaki matsuri.

jan ken po to decide who gets to sing first.

Me and my happi.

Drums and fireworks.

Day 68

Day 61 - BBQ with yellow スイカ(watermelon)

2007-07-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

I got invited to a Japanese BBQ by one of my co-workers in the translation department. I spent Saturday with her friends and their kids. It was a lot fun. This kid on the left is awesome.

Everyone that came.
Yellow Watermelon. :-)

This cat likes octopus.

One of many ways to make chirazushi.

Day 61

Day 55 - Earthquake/Umi no hi

2007-07-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 10 am when my bed started shaking. It lasted about 30 seconds. Today was umi no hi and my one and only holiday day off work. This is why I was still sleeping at 10 am on a Monday. It was the first earthquake I had felt since I got here and figured it must have been pretty strong some where else in the country. So I turned on the TV and all the stations said there was a big quake in Niigata. I am sure everyone has heard about it. It was very light here.

Day 54 - Meiji Mura

2007-07-15T00:31:00.000-07:00

There was a large Typhoon is the area and a lot of rain. There was a storm warning so church got canceled. However the weather turned out to be beautiful. I was talking with another guy that lives here who is a year older than me and we ended up going to a nearby place called Meiji Mura. The signs were all backwards because apparently back in the day they wrote everything backwards. In hiragana the sign on the left says Tokyo Eki.

Aren't stairs neat.
Pretty.
Old school Japanese treats.

Court room from back in the day.
Kabuki theater.

Day 54

Day 51 - Reading in Japanese

2007-07-12T00:29:00.000-07:00

I thought reading one of my stories from my Japanese home work would make a good podcast but I couldn't finish it. I kept messing up and so I kept correcting it. If I ever finish it then I will upload it here.

Day 48 and 49 - Rain rain go away

2007-07-10T00:28:00.000-07:00

Its been raining a lot. The Rainy Season is here. This is an update about work and doing the dictionary and some problems I had doing it.

Day 48 and 49

Day 47 - Curry Rice!

2007-07-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

Went to church and afterwards I was invited to have dinner at the same house I had eaten at last week. We had curry and tsukemono. I talk about making the curry and the tsukemono in the audio. It was a lot of fun. The curry was great. I make really good Japanese curry and this curry was just as good if not better.

Day 47

Day 46 - 山登りと温泉 (mountain climbing and onsen)

2007-07-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

Got up early and got ready to go climbing. The name if the mountain we went to is called Kamagatake. It is partly in Mie ken and partly in Shiga ken. A back back was prepared for me with water and towel. I borrowed some climbing shoes which I could barely fit into. We went to a コンビ (convenience store) and bought lunch and met a co-worker there. From there we drove over 2 huge rivers and into Gifu and Mie Ken. We drove up into the mountains which was a fun drive. It was a roller coaster drive. We met another person from work at a parking location halfway up the mountain and then got ready to climb. We took a picture and headed up the mountain. I went Japanese style and put a towel on my head.

The climbing was steeper then I had expected but it made it a lot more fun. I am glad I was able to borrow the shoes because there were a lot of rocks and mud which would have made it difficult in my tennis shoes. It was extremely cloudy and foggy so it made it feel very Japanese mountain like but we couln't see any thing beyond the mountain area. I hear it would have been a great view. We climbed to the top and had brunch. I was given some instant ramen. Apparently eating it on top of a mountain is special. Going down was fast but going down the steeper portions required a rope or chain.

We found mountain raspberries. He called them yama ichigo but they were not strawberries. He said I could eat them and so I did. They were good. I splashed some cold water on my face from the mountain streams and that felt really good. Getting back to the cars we were hot and sweaty. The fog has intensified. I took a picture by a tunnel which led over to Shiga ken. When a car came through they couldn't see us until right before passing us. It was kind of spooky. Looked like some thing from "Spirited Away".

Afterwards we went to an onsen that was down the hill. This was my first onsen so I was excited. Onsen is heated by naturally. I talk about it in the audio. The onsen we went to is called yunoyama onsen.

After the onsen went back to my co-workers apartment and they ordered pizza from Pizza Hut. Japanese pizza is pretty crazy.

Climbing up on the trail

A little shrine on top of the mountain
Going down a steep place
The foggy tunnel

Final picture

Day 45 and 46

Day 45 - Ferrets and sushi

2007-07-06T05:46:00.000-07:00

The 5 Japanese kensyusei that I had spent the last month with left today. I am sad that I won't get to see them anymore. They were so much fun to talk with and play with. They all taught me so much. I bought them all a little going away present. I missed the bus that we all ride together in the morning and so I was bummed that I didn't get to ride to work with them. I rode the next bus and still made it in time to do radio taiso together . At lunch time I talked with them and took this picture. They said they wanted to see my blog. I got a couple of their email addresses to send them the URL. ganbatte ne!

One of my co-workers invited me to spend the night at his apartment. This is very rare and the very first time I have ever been invited to stay the night at some one's house. This was my first "home stay". His wife is in the picture, she is free lance English translator. Extremely nice and fun to talk with. They have both traveled a lot and have a lot of non Japanese friends so having a foreigner over isn't anything new to them but it was a lot of fun spending the night with them. They took me a kaiten zushi, or rotating sushi parlor and gochisoed me. (paid for my meal, I added the ed onto to the end of gochiso) I had 12 plates including my final cake. On the rotating conveyor belt like thing, various sushi and meat and cakes and chanwan mushi can be had. I had herroing eggs, egg, tuna, horse, trout, cake, eel and others I don't remember.

Any guesses as to what kind of meat this is??? It is raw horse!

This is me going for the challenge, yes I ate raw horse! It didn't seem to have a much of a taste or maybe I was afraid it would have a taste and I swallowed it too quickly.

I had spoken a little bit about the man with ferrets at this house. I got to go and play with them! I was really excited. I have already forgotten the ferret's names. One of them is kuma but they call him pooh from Winnie the Pooh.

The ferret am holding in the picture like to bite people. It shows affection by biting so I didn't hold it very much.

This ferret loves to be held and doesn't bite. Their bodies are extremely flexible!

They have the ferrets potty trained to use a litter box and to ask for their treats. When you shake the container that the snacks are in the ferrets will come running into the kitchen. When you the ferrets snack, you put the "oyatsu" in your and then make a fist and then hold the first upside down in front of the ferret. And then say "chodai" and wait for the ferret to "ask" for it by putting their little claw up against your hand. At that point, you open your and let the ferret take the treat.

This is their massage chair but if the setting is too high, it turns into a torture chair.

Day 44 - Going to Tokyo Part 3

2007-07-05T05:45:00.000-07:00

Getting to Nagoya felt so much better than being in Tokyo. I didn't get to see much in Tokyo but I felt much better being in Nagoya. The city looked a lot prettier also. After getting back to Nagoya I spoke with the receptionist at the bus station and he said it would be faster to take the train and subway back to Komaki. So I hefted my bag down stairs to the subway and took that all the way to Komaki. I was too tired to really focus. After a few hours it was impossible to stay awake. I tried to stay awake by keeping my legs in the air and if I felt them falling then I would force myself to wake up. That wasn't working so well so I started fanning myself with my uchiwa but I kept falling asleep still and then it would drop out of my hands. I was embarrassed that I couldn't stay awake. In order to stay I worked on my database project instead of translating because it was interesting enough to keep me awake. The whole day just felt weird. Everything seemed quieter and I felt out of place.

After coming back to the dorm, I wasn't so tired and took a bicycle ride to enjoy the nice weather. The mood of the city felt so different. I was very happy to be back in the country. I later returned to the dorm and was very happy to have a bed again.

This is the sunset, it was really pretty but my ofcourse my camera lens couldn't take a picture of what it really looked like.

Day 44

Day 43 - Going to Tokyo Part 2

2007-07-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

I arrived at Shinjuku station. The first thing I noticed was there were home less people sleeping all over the place. I shaved in the bathroom and from there I went to the Big Sight Convention Center. I had to check with my map on my pocket PC to know where to go but I made it there fine. Finding where the Career Forum was at within the building took a while but I eventually found it and I was 30 minutes early. The website didn't post the times. Everyone was dressed in business suits and everyone there was bilingual. I spoke with people that had studies in Australia, England and the States. I walked around speaking with different companies and the opportunities at each company. I was initially interested in finding an internship for next year but I realized soon enough that wasn't going to happen. This career forum was obviously directed for Japanese people only. If I was seriously looking for a Japan I could have done interviews with different companies but I am not looking for a job. I learned about training process within different companies, outsourcing and how Japanese internships work. They are usually very short like 1 day or 1 week and maybe 2 weeks. They are unpaid and basically either a lecture or some sort of training. They are not like a job. American internships are very different. American internships are often paid and designed to give the intern some work experiences to use skills he or she learned at school and contribute to the company they are interning at. The way of thinking is very different here. Lay offs are rare in Japan. People will normally stay with a company for their entire career and rotate around in different roles.

I did meet up with my friend from Gifu but we never did anything together. I was dehydrated after the bus trip and drank 2 liters of water for lunch with a few onigiri. After lunch I was dead tired. I was listening to a Kumon presentation and fell asleep and dropped everything in my hands. I decided after that it was time to call the Career forum quits. I did home work until around 7 PM and then went back to Shinjuku. I lost my ticket on the way there but they didn't over charge me because of it.

This is the locker where I kept my stuff while I went to the career forum. I took a picture so I could remember where I put it. I thought I would get lost so I also took a picture of where the bus dropped me off but I never got lost. Everything was pretty clear. I didn't get to meet up with any one else in Tokyo. Before my bus picked me up in Shinjuku I was washing my face in a bathroom and a man asked me what I was doing. I said I was washing my face. He started yelling at me and told me I needed to get a hotel. I ignored him and he left. Then he came back and apologized and said he is a nice man. He said when he was in America somebody helped him and he was determined to help me. I didn't realize it at the time but he was drunk. He insisted on buying me sushi and then McDonalds and walking with me to the bus stop. He also gave me his business card and said to call him when I got to Nagoya. I talk in more detail about him in the audio.

The bus trip was better this time because the person next to me was really interesting. He was a college student studying Middle East history. I had brought a hat to cover my eyes with this time. The light from the road makes it hard to sleep. I got a window seat I was able to sleep against the window. We got to Nagoya about 6 AM and I had to go straight to work.

Day 43

Day 42 - Going to Tokyo Part 1

2007-07-03T05:43:00.000-07:00

After work I came back to the dorm and quickly took a bath. I changed and took my duffel bag and suit with me to the bus stop. From there the bus I thought I was going to ride wasn't running any more. I asked a lady at the bus stop and she told me I could take a different bus to Kasugai and then norikaeru from there to Nagoya.

In Kasugai a Brazilian-Japanese lady directed me and helped me out a little bit.

I took a train from Kasugai to Nagoya. In Nagoya I wandered around trying to find where to ride my bus but couldn't find it. I ended up asking a man that was waiting to cross the street. He was extremely kind and directed me to a hotel lobby and helped me find the bus stop website on the internet. After that he walked with me all the way to the pickup location. He said it was fate that I asked him for help. He gave me his business card and said to email him when I get to Tokyo.

After he left I recored this podcast and then after that I started speaking with the man next to me and he was extremely talkative. We talked about just about everything. He have a spider man key chain that he had one at the game center. I didn't want it but he had two of them and I had to accept it. Then I went to McDonalds and got a McFlurry and some fries. I shared the fries with some some other guy I started talking to also waiting for a bus. The guy was from Hokkaido. In the mean time a beggar came up and I gave her 5oo yen. She said it was to buy a phone card to call Tokyo. She handed me a note in broken English as pretended to be Chinese but her Japanese was fluent like a Japanese grandma.

It was getting close to my bus departure and I still hadn't seen my bus company so I started asking around and it was one of the companies right in front of me. I found the bus and got on. I did home work for about an hour and tried to sleep the rest of the time. We took two breaks, one at 1 AM and another around 3 AM. Got to Tokyo around 5:30 AM. Not much time for sleeping!

Day 42

Day 41 - Getting ready to go to Disco Career Forum

2007-07-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

I received permission to go to Tokyo on Wednesday for a career forum. I had to get the permission from the man in general affairs that set everything up for my internship. The website is at: http://www.careerforum.net/

I booked a nighttime bus. It looks like I will be riding from 11 PM to 6 AM from Nagoya to Tokyo. I hope I can sleep. The website for the bus company was all in Japanese so it was some what annoying to get it all worked out. I rely a lot on rikaichan to help me with the kanji that I don't know. You have to use Firefox but it is an excellent tool. For more information, check out http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/

I have never been to Tokyo so I will put a map on my pocket PC and figure out where to go when I get there.

The picture is of a house/driveway I saw the other day. The car is on a rack that will allow an additional car to park below it. This is how people here with 2 cars manage to get both of them into a driveway that can only fit one car. Interesting huh?

Day 40 - Okonomiyaki and singing

2007-07-01T05:40:00.000-07:00

I was up late doing laundry and doing things I didn’t get done yesterday. Therefore I had a hard time getting up. I rode the bus to the eki but I wasn’t paying attention and the bus didn’t stop! I usually don’t press the button letting the driver know I want to get off because some one else always does. The bus always stops at every single stop, except for today, no one else wanted to get off. So I ended riding the bus all the way to the “shuuten” the end of the route which the main train station in Komaki. I had to pay 50 cents more to take the train from there. That train station is below ground so the train turns into a subway for a few minutes.

Got to church late but I enjoyed the time I was able to spend there. Since today is the first day of the month at church, it is again “Fast and testimony meeting”. The members always talk about funny or interesting things when they share their testimony or feelings about God and how their faith has been strengthened.

The young single adults asked me to participate in a prayer circle and a discussion afterwards that about what we could do to help out some of the other members. I am so impressed by their prayers in Japanese. Ever since my mission I have always said my personal prayers in Japanese, thus I am very accustomed to praying in Japanese but I want to be able to speak more Japanese like in my prayers. I am have been impressed by the warm welcoming I have received from the members, especially the younger members. I will be here for less than 3 months but they have opened their homes to me and invited me to all their activities. If I didn’t speak Japanese and if I hadn’t served my mission in Japan it might be different but because I can connect with them I think they are more ready to accept me. I had been invited to eat dinner at a member’s house so after church I went to their house in Gifu ken. If this all sounds vague it is because I am omitting people’s names intentionally.

Getting to their house was a long drive in the country but it was beautiful and a good time to talk with the church member driving me and the missionaries that we also with me. After getting to their house, we mainly listened to people sing and play instruments. Two of the church members that were present created a band and so they did some recordings while we were there. He had a mixer, two guitars, recording equipment and some other things I had never seen. We starting making okonomiyaki about 4 pm and finally ate around 5 pm. In the okonomiyaki we had two different kinds of flours, eggs, yamaimo (a slimy kind of Japanese potato), some salt, dashi, and a mountain of ground up cabbage. I’m sure they put more ingredients in but I wasn’t watching all of it. For meat, we put bacon strips and beef on the top while we grilled it on the skillet. They had a table we assembled in the front room and stayed in there the entire time. Japanese houses are small (semai) so there isn’t much room to move around. The “fuinki”, atmosphere was really good and I enjoyed being with their family a great deal. We sang several church songs, Christmas songs (a little weird but not to this family because they like to sing) and talked about church stuff. More than half of the people in the room had served missions in Japan. One of the guys present knew several people I had served with in Hokkaido. Small world.

Day 40

Day 39 - Inuyama castle, ramune and fireflies

2007-06-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

Overslept again! Couldn't sleep the previous night, woke up late, missed the bus and the train and so I was late to my translating training meeting.

The translating meeting was fun, we all prepared a 5 speech and practiced translating for eachother. It started at 10 am and I was about 30 minutes late. I wish I could practice doing this everyday. I would get really good and it would be good experience. I impressed myself that I could translate fairly well. However if I was at a hospital or a science museum or some thing with very specific words, I would have an extremely difficult time translating.

After the translating meeting I went with the missionaries, a girl from church and my English speaking friend that wants to become an American. We walked around Inuyama and went to a little restaurant. I had yakisoba, the girl had okonomiyaki and everyone else also had yakisoba. I didn't think the yakisoba or okonomiyaki was very tasty. Afterwards we had a strawberry shaved ice with cream. It was dang good!

Walked about the city, this part of the city used to within the gates of the castle so it’s very “Japanese like”. Very narrow streets, many older houses, lots of banners in the street and cute shops to get souvenirs. The city area was built around the castle so the roads are mostly one way only. We went into a glass making shop and watched them make a bowl. After that went to a shop and watched a lady make cloth, she had a loom that she powered with her feet. She said it can take up to 6 months to make a kimono with that loom.

The guy with us bought us some expensive mochi from a shop but it was frozen so we walked around with it until it thawed. We also got a crepe like creating with soft mochi inside. It was like eating a fluffy crepe with creamy marshmallows inside. It was so good.

Then we found a very Japanese style ryokan hotel-house. There was a wedding ceremony going on upstairs but the man out-front said we could look around outside. There was one of those street cars that you can ride and have some one run and pull you. (The old style taxis.) There was a little fountain with soda in there and money jar next to it. The guy with us bought us all one and we drank them. (see pictures) This soda comes in a glass bottle and is unique to Japan. When you open the top there is a plastic rod type thing you have to force done into the top to release the pressure from the soda. There is a specific way to open it and to drink which I didn’t know before. To release the pressure and drink it you force the opener down into the neck of the bottle with you palm and then you keep your palm over the opening of the container so that the pressure doesn’t explode and go all over the place. The pressure will slowly dissipate and then you can drink the soda. In order to drink, there are two little holes to put your finger and thumb in order to place the marble a spot inside the bottle to keep it from obstructing the soda from coming out of the neck bottle. Does that make sense?

I couldn't remember what it was called while recording this.

Afterwards we talked back to the train station and split up. I wanted to see Inuyama castle so I walked by myself back to the castle area. I asked a lady for directions on the way and she starting speaking to me in English and said she has two daughters living in the States. Nice ladies. Met some more foreigners on the way but I didn’t ask where they were from. I started climbing the mountain which was surrounded by shrines. When I got the gate I paid my 500 yen to get in. They asked me if I would like a free English tour. I said yes and a volunteer tour guide came up and gave ma personal tour. It was great! I was the only one getting a tour. Before entering the castle everyone had to take off their shoes. We were given a bag to put our shoes in and then carried the bag with us. The castle was extremely clean, very old and mostly wooden. The castle has no nails except in the roof.

The stairs are very large and very steep going up. There were many relics within the castle and pictures of previous “Castle Lords”. This castle is a National Treasure because it is an original. The lady didn’t have really good English but she did good explaining things and was very friendly. I found the handwritten kanji dictionaries interesting. I cannot imagine having to hand write a kanji dictionary! Unbelievable. Thank goodness for computers and type set publishing. The top of the castle had a wonderful view and the air felt excellent. After the tour I signed a book the lady had and left her a message.

I took a similar picture like this last week at the komaki castle.

Me out on the balcony. The river was a beautiful view!

These are little wooden plates you can purchase and write your wishes on them.

As I walking out I saw many people purchasing an おみくじ (omikugi) so I got one just for the fun of it. It is kind of like a superstitious kind of thing. It was a box full of little papers and on the paper is written your luck and lots of things. I didn’t understand much of it but the lady with me read it for me. She asked permission to read it and if it was personal to me. The Buddhist guy there was dressed up in a hakama and everything. He said most people don’t even read it, they just check to see if they got a luck one or not. Then you take the paper and you fold it up and then tie it to a tree or the designated places set up for tying them up. For mine it said if I am kind and serve people then my desires will come true.

Afterwards I went to shokuji kai at the church with the young single adults from around several prefectures. There were people from Gifu, Aichi, even one girl from Kyushu and Mie ken. I went shopping first at an underground supermarket near the train station and then brought drinks to the potluck. We first played an ice breaker game which was a way of doing introductions. We wrote what was on our head in a pie graph style and then exchanged them with other people. Everyone else had to guess who was whose.

This picture was practice with keeping my camera lens open on the way to the mountains to see the fireflies.

Dinner was good but the activity purpose was to go see fireflies. I find it kind of funny that a special activity would be based around going to see fireflies. However it is a Japanese thing to do. We drove about 15 minutes out into the country. I experiences with putting my camera on long time exposure on the way their and took some interesting pictures. There were very few fireflies at the first location so we went to a different location further up into the mountains. There were a lot of people there and finding a parking spot was a pain. This said this place was “dai seiko” because there a lot more fireflies but not as many as I was expecting. dai seiko means, great success. I have seen more in the USA when I lived in Alabama. Everyone was extremely fascinated by the fireflies, every time they saw a little light they would say sugoi. One girl was more fond of using kimoi. Sugoi means great or amazing and it is one of the most overly used words by Japanese people. Kimoi isn’t very good Japanese, it means gross or disgusting, often said about people that are nerdy but the girl that saying says there so many bugs in the area that it was kimoi. I tried to take pictures of the fireflies and I captured a few after putting my digital camera lens on a 4 second exposure. (see the dark picture – the little green lines are the fireflies) I really enjoyed the whole experience and being with everyone as we walked along the mountain trails by moonlight only. We were surrounded by (tanbo) rice paddy fields and the air felt great. I just love the air out here in the country. I don’t want to go back to dry California air.

hotaru (fire flies)

This picture is of a few fireflies by keeping my digital camera lens open for a few seconds.

Some time after 10:30 PM my watch just reset itself. It was really weird because the date and time went back to the factory settings. It was an expensive digital watch and I have only had it for a year and half and I am curious what would have made it reset itself.

気持ちはすごく良かった。

Day 39

Day 38 - Random Friday Observations

2007-06-29T14:52:00.000-07:00

In the audio I talk a little about BYU home work I am current doing

Comments on watching cafeteria workers make ramen at work, they are super fast.

The hanko my boss uses is identical to the ones you buy at the store so there is really no point in it but you can make a personal one that has to be registered

Another explanation of wordfast and progrss I have made at work

Explanation of a side project I have been doing at work to make a searchable database for my team to use in translating.

Using wordfast, excel, word and access and a php built program called glossword for web based searchable database.

Day 38

Day 37 - Wringing a lemon with chopsticks

2007-06-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

Time is a flying...in the audio I talk about counting forwards and backwards in Japanese. The 4, 7 and 9 change depending if you are counting forward or backwards. Going forward the 4 is shi, the 7 is shichi, the 9 is ku, going backwards, the 9 is kyu, the 7 is nana, the 4 is yon. Kind of weird huh.

At lunch the guy sitting next to me taught me how to wring on the juice from the lemon that comes with your food using chopsticks.

Day 37

Day 35 and 36 - Random thoughts

2007-06-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

This is a walk home cast covering Tuesday the 26th and Wednesday the 27th. Random comments.

I learned that my company offers a 1 year maternity leave.

kabushikigaisya (株式会社) is a corporation of limited liability company.

Update on my database project.

35 and 36

Day 34 - Monday

2007-06-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

I don't remember what happened this day and I didn't record anything. The guy that sits next to me has this temperature and humidity reader on his desk. I took a picture of it. He said it used to be in his daughters room when she was a baby.

Day 33 - Went to Mie ken

2007-06-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

In the audio I talk about the previous day going to Komaki yama (I had written about this already). This even managed to span 3 posts. Very annoying huh. It is so stinking hot now. I didn't think it would get this hot.

Taught a lesson at church, didn’t get to prepare as much as I would have liked. I played too much.

One of the members people use to say his hairstyle looked like a kappa. I don't know much about what a kappa is but I talk about it in the audio.

Went to Mie ken for another church meeting. It took about an hour to get there by car.

We drove there on the kosoku doro (fast road), the raised highway. Toll roads are extremely Different companies own the roads so you can go on one road and pay 500 yen and then drive five minutes further and have to pay another 500 yen because it is a different company that maintains the road.

Talked with a 16 year on the way there about his school and classes. I was very impressed by the things he is studying at age 16, similar to what I was studying at my community college at age 22. Japan pays for a public education up to middle school so picking a high school in Japan is similar to picking a college and taking tests like in America.

A lot of church words have been changed. I found out that nearly all church responsibility names and have been restructured like kantoku is now bishop, mission president was dendo bucho and now it is dendo kaicho and many others have changed.

Podcasts I have mentioned up to now are:

Finding Japan www.findingjapan.com

Tokyo Calling www.tokyocalling.com

Day 32-33

Day 32 - Going to Komaki Mountain/Castle

2007-06-23T05:34:00.000-07:00

I rode my bicycle to the mountain which was mostly down hill. Nice ride, it took an hour. I needed my map and decided to follow the rail road (above ground one that went out of business) most of the way there. I realized on my way that the "iron rod" was leading me to the mountain which I likened to going to Heaven. At times I was tempted to go towards more interesting looking places like the city (Babylon) but I didn't want to get lost so I stayed next to the railroad and kept me on the straight and narrow. Anyway that a gospel connection for those who understand its meaning.

The top of the mountain wasn't all that interesting. I only had to 20 minutes to be in side the castle looking building on the top of the mountain which was just a history museum with 4 floors. It was so hot but getting up to the top where the wind was felt really good. The view was great.

On the way back to my apartment I found a daiso shop and bought some thing I had been wanting. Daiso is better quality then many of the other 100 yen shops that have sprouted up, but its still one of those 100 yen shops. It also sells items that exceed 100 yen, I bought a mic for 315 yen but I had issues with it leading to its destruction. :(
I bought some more globe CDs using the gift certificate cards I received from winning the jump rope event. I don't care much for these CDs.

I found Jusco on the way back and located their massage chairs on the 3rd floor and had a 20 minute free massage . Have I talked about these chairs yet? If I haven't I really should, I figure anyone that has lived in Japan is familiar with them. If not, they run about $3,000 and are more advanced than any massage chair I have seen in the US. Pretty much any electronic store in Japan will sell them and have several on display that anyone can sit it and use. Whenever I get the opportunity I take a 20 minutes course and relax. They can do feet, arms, heard, back, butt and shoulders.

It was getting late and made it back to the dorm as it was getting dark. I didn't want the cops to yell at me for not having a light on my bicycle. The auto electricity generating light attached to wheel is burned out. I got a bento at Apita and ate that because I was exhausted and hadn’t eaten yet. Tried to prepare for lesson the next day but only got so far when I crashed.

Jinjya on the way up the mountain

Day 31 - Friday and Saturday memories

2007-06-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

Friday I left my umbrella on the bus again but one of the other intern picked it up on his way out. That made me happy, they are looking out for me!

I gave everyone on my team a Twix. They had never had one so they enjoyed it.

Calling Tokyo Calling on Friday evening. I feel so nerdy talking in line to a bunch of other internet nerds about podcasting and Japan. However it was fun.

Saturday morning...Eating my super fat toast for breakfast but I don't have a butter knife to butter it.

Doing laundry, hitting my futon and going out to explore Komaki....

Day 31

Day 30 - A third of the way through

2007-06-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

One of my co-workers came in to the office at about 2 PM and still said good morning to everyone like you do when you first come into the office. I asked him and later one of the Japanese interns if that is normal and he said it is. In Japanese saying phrases is more important than what the phrase actually means. The chef always says the same things in the morning and evening. He says them really well and with a lot of vigor but I feel it is just lip service. He will say itte irasshai in the morning after I say gochisosama deshita. Before dinner he will always say otsukaresama deshita and after dinner he will always says oyasuminasai.

The texture of my "uchiwa" (flat Japanese hand fan) and the keyboard at work is driving me nuts.

In the audio I talk about how a lot of the people at the company are outsourced.

So so tired...

Day 30

Day 29 - 1 hour 15 minute haircut

2007-06-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

I have realized that it is hard to understand some my past pod casts. I will try to remember to speak more clearly.

I have made some progress on the database project and importing data into it. I have learned a lot more about dictionaries in the last month.

A lady at work gave me some Japanese flavor corn sticks. Natto, octopus and other flavors. Still haven't eaten them. I think they are called "umai". They have doraemon on them.

In the picture you can see my ugly greenish-blue uniform top.

Went to the barber. She took over an hour! She mostly only used scissors. To get a shampoo and shave it was nearly 4000 yen so I got a cut only which cost 2000 yen. Talked to the lady that cut my hair the entire time. By the time it ended she knew everything about me. She thought I was Russian at first. But afterwards I felt she was my aunt or some thing because we had talked about so many personal details. Her and her husband invited me to come back whenever just to talk. Barber lady used "nan tokka" an awful lot while talking.

Day 29

Day 28 - Podcast vs Zencast

2007-06-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 6:00 am and realized I still had plenty of time to do some PT. Went running around the neighborhood. It is a lot more fun to run through the houses and seeing the cars and Japanese architecture than it is to run by the larger roads.

At lunch my co-workers shared some experiences they had when ordering in English and the wrong things came.

The other interns asked again to use my chari. I asked them if they were riding 2 on it at a time. They said yes, the other day when both of them were on it together, a police officer told them not to get off. I laughed when I heard that. They said they just got out of sight of the police officer and that got back on.

I played with the other intern that likes Star Trek. He showed me his Nintendo DS English training program. I want to get one for Japanese and Kanji training. One of my friends in the USA sent me an audio file he called a Zen Cast because he hate Macs and anything related to iPod. I like the idea.

Everyday my supervisor has to "sign" my time card with his hanko. Today his supervisor taught me a new word. In English the meaning is blind hanko. The main word is mekura. In the dictionary I found "mekura ban" which means to blindly stamp your hanko.

Another kansai ben word that I commonly here is:
akan - no good or not allowed. Similar to dame.

Day 28

Day 27 - Monday Update

2007-06-18T06:34:00.000-07:00

Translating and staring at Visual Basic code all long gives me a headache. One of my co-workers bought some English books and brought them to work today. He said he got them so that he could talk with me in English. Another lady, a grandma spoke to me in English today. That surprised me. She said she is learning English at the church from the missionaries. I also taught English when I was a missionary so I thought that was cool.

At lunch time there were people selling cheap Japanese chocolate and junk food at work. I bought honey chocolate sticks. They aren't very good.

A guy came up to me after work and starting talking to me. He said I met him the first day of work but I didn't remember him.

The man from general affairs said he can order me a DVD of NHK's radio taisou.

Called my dad for Fathers Day but the connection on Skype wasn't very good. First time I have had a bad Skype Connection on a wired LAN network.

Day 27

Day 26 - Gave a talk at church

2007-06-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

I wish I had more time. I gave a talk during Sacrament meeting on the scriptures. I will post it here later. I hung out with the guy I met in the bath from a few weeks ago. He taught me a なぞなぞ. 下は水、上は大火事、何？ nazonazo is a riddle. In English the riddle goes, it is water on the bottom but fire on the top, what is it? I will give you a day or two to guess and I will post it later on.

I was told that hiyashichuka in the correct name for what I had called hiyashi ramen previously. The hiyashi means cold and the chuka means Chinese food. 冷やし中華 I can't find the picture I took of my dinner so here is one from some one else site.
He showed me around town and we talked about dramas. He likes American dramas and I like Japanese dramas.

Church was great as always, members are wonderful. I love how I can go in anywhere in the world and make friends so easily at church. I was given a ride home and invited to eat dinner at a member's house in a couple of weeks.

My talk in Japanese

Here is a picture of everyone at church.

I have been experimenting with the audio, I tried some background music this time.

Day 26

Day 25 - Sunshine on my shoulders makes me genki

2007-06-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Went exploring. Rode my chari to the neighboring town. I was looking for a cheap barber but never found one. I really enjoyed just riding and seeing the country. Japan is much more friendly for bicyclists than the States. I bought some junk food at the convenience store, it was like a foot long chocolate twinky. I ate it at a park and then accidentally found the Japanese self defense base. It was next to the park but but at first I thought it was a school but it was surrounded by an electric fence. Then I saw the soldiers with uniforms are realized it was the base.

I took a short cut back to the dormitory and got my homework and then rode to a park out in the country. It was a perfect day so I did a short video. The park was about 5 km away so I was hot and sweaty after spending about 3 hours riding around. The park was beautiful, mostly a place for families and playing park gold, baseball catch, Frisbee golf and picnics. I did start my home work but the park kind of closed while I was doing it. I got locked in with my bicycle and had to find a way out. Wasn't that difficult but it surprised me at first.

The peaches/fruit is protected with the paper. I was wondering why the fruit is open at the bottom. Well the bugs come from the top so having the paper cover the fruit from the top keeps the bugs out of the fruit. I also heard that it helps protect it from birds.

Day 25

Day 24 - Translating all day makes my eyes twitch

2007-06-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

Another walk home cast. Tired of translating. It is killing my eyes. Japanese definitions were a major pain today. Too many different ways to say the same thing.

Co-workers had me guess everyones age at lunch. I did really bad. I was off about 10 years each time.

Entertained by the kids at the bus stop.

Correction on the Japanese word I used the other day. The correct way to say it is chuutohanpa 中途半端　ちゅうとはんぱ.

Day 24

Day 23 - Apron mystery solved

2007-06-14T08:16:00.001-07:00

At lunch I time I asked the guys on my team why it is that the women office workers wear aprons. They told me four different reasons.
The reasons are:
1. Protect themselves from electromagnetic waves (main reason)
2. Cover up their belly area if they think they are fat
3. Keep uniform clean during lunch (and smoking maybe)
4. (Preparing food - this is the obvious one)

Everyone one my team had a health check up today. They wanted to know how to say it in English. They said they had to drink barium and soda water. I don't know the purpose of it but it makes your stomach expand. The word they used for stomach was "i". pronounced like "e". I had never heard that word before, one of the workers showed me an anatomy drawing on the computer, so apparently when referring to the stomach as an organ it is "i", when saying your stomach hurts or some thing like that is "onaka", when hungry you can use "hara" or "onaka", I think it is the same hara used in harakiri.

Day 23

Day 22 - Translating VB Code

2007-06-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

The pictures is a rice field "tanbo" right after the rice plants have been put in. They flood the field with irrigation water and then they usually use a machine that neatly puts the plants in rows like this.

On another note, the program I was using to compress and save my files as mp3 format was only a trial version and it ran out so now I need to find another program. I found one but the files are nearly twice as large as what Blaze MP was compressing them at. I can't tell any difference in the quality.

Had Japanese style ice cream today with the Japanese beans.

The manager of the engineering team wants me to speak English to certain people on the team. He wants me to only speak English to them and tell them I don't understand Japanese when they talk to me. Only two of them will speak English to me.

Bought one of those cupcake like treats cooked in an ice cream cone. They are really good here! I recorded the lady at the cash register while buying it.

I have been getting accustomed to living here and need to force myself to utilize my time more efficiency. Fell asleep again after work because of a head ache and sleep for 4 hours. Staring at the computer screen for 8 hours a day really makes my eyes extremely tired. Translating from Japanese into English can be interesting when there are VB variables in the middle of the code. Since Japanese is basically backwards from English, the code often has to be changed because the sentence doesn't make sense unless everything is changed.

After my nap, got up for dinner, ate, talked with people and then read my Japanese history book for 3 hours.

Day 22

Day 21 - Exploring Komaki

2007-06-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

After work I got on the chari and went exploring around the city. It was a lot of fun! First I found a forest area near a park and went through the trails. Then I went through the park and followed the highway out into the country. Found a chicken egg farm which smelt terrible. Kept riding until I found a famous park about 5 km away. It is only open until Saturday but I wanted to know the location. On the way back I found an old automatic egg dispenser machine. I thought that was interesting. Other pictures are scenes from Komaki.

Bicycle Ride

Day 21

Day 19/20 Church and Sleepy Monday

2007-06-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

Into to the audio is from Globe, my favorite Japanese band. They are older, started in the mid 90s so people my age are familiar with them but no one I have talked to really likes them as much as I do. Since they are old I can always find their CDs cheap.

A phrase that my friend from Gifu taught me is "service overtime". "sabisu zangyo". He has to work 2 extra hours most days and does not get paid for it! That is common at Japanese companies. Since I am intern at Daifuku I go home at 5 PM.

Rained cats and dogs yesterday. I found where I can ride the bus to the train station and still use my bus pass that the company gave me. The train ride is lonely becasue there is hardly anyone there. I really enjoyed church, especially singing the hymns in Japanese. I am sure I will miss that when I have to go home.

Took a 4 hour nap which ruined my sleep schedule. When I wanted to sleep I couldn’t, I laid in bed for four hours resting but not sleeping. After it started getting light after 4 am I finally fell asleep. Around 2 AM I started listening to Podcasts including Tokyo Calling. I realized how bad my audio is compare to others that have decent mics. I had a dream that I was Scott, really weird.

I wasn't the only one sleepy at work. One of the people in my department fell asleep in their chair, we let her sleep. By the time she woke up, I was gone. I got moved to a different floor. They put my slow computer on a cart and moved to a programming department because I will be translating the visual basic screen code into English. It is a really neat program that they made, I talk about it in the audio.

Today we had a big jump rope contest at lunch. 8 people in the center and two people swing the rope. One of the ladies on my team was wearing heels and I don't know how she managed to jump. We had three attempts, first we got one, they 27 and then 34. Another team might beat us tomorrow.

I shared my American chocolate candy bars with the other interns today. My older sister had sent to me with my BYU textbooks. They liked the Butter Fingers. Umaii!!!! I told them it Bart Simpson's candy bar. Only one of them knew what the Simpson's were. He said they are the "Yellow People".

Today was the first dinner that I didn't like. We had octopus again but it was different than the first day. I decided to eat it first before I was full so I could get it down but I couldn't even swallow the first bite. I know it is mostly in my head but I couldn't get it down. It was very juicy this time, I'm not sure if it was cooked or not but the flavor was very strong. The part that got me was the suckers and the feel of them against my mouth. I tried to stuff it down with some rice and water but it came up and out. I ended up not eating them. I spoke with one of the Japanese interns and he said most Japanese really like the flavor that comes out of "taco" (octopus) and the way it travels through your nose. I'm sure it is expensive and I felt bad not eating it.

Day 19 and 20

Day 18 - Nagoya and other odd happenings

2007-06-09T04:21:00.000-07:00

Went to Nagoya and played with another intern who is in Gifu. He is also doing translating. We took the subway all the way to Nagoya port and toured a boat that traveled to the Antartic called Fuji. Also went to Osu Kannon a temple.

Short Video of Automatic Vacuum

Day 18

Day 17 - Going to Demo Factory

2007-06-08T04:21:00.000-07:00

Today I went with two members of my team to a demo area of the company. It was an hour drive to Shiga and a great experience. I don't have time to write about it now. I took a lot of pictures but I was told the pictures that I took inside the factory could not be posted on the internet. However, if interested similar pictures are on daifuku's website. The videos are very impressive of all the automatic warehousing machines working.

Day 16 and 17

Day 16 - Japanese office stuff, Ichigo vs Strawberry and toothpaste

2007-06-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

Daifuku is good, up until today I have just been translating a "Standards" manual about a specific conveyor system. It is very stressful and it makes me very tired everyday. There are a lot of Japanese technical terms but what the difficult part it the shortened terms that don't appear in Japanese, Daifuku or internet dictionaries. They will explain everything to me when I don't understand so several times a day we have explaining sessions for me and other members of the team who also don't understand what the machinery/conveyors do. Most of the time I need to understand what the machines do in to be able to translate the manual into English because the Japanese version of the manual can be very confusing. Daifuku has a dictionary for their technical words but it is lacking, therefore my boss would like to me start working on wikipedia style online dictionary with examples that our team could use. I could set some thing up but I don't know how far I could work on it. I would like to at least set up a framework so that team members can add and modify entries to it before I leave. I'm not sure if I will even get a chance to do it at all. Tomorrow my supervisor and two others and I will be driving to a factory to see actual Daifuku machinery in action. Since I have had two weeks to read over some of the manuals and learn a lot of terms, I think it will be extremely helpful to see a real distribution system working.

I eat a lot and spend a lot of money on food. The cafeteria food is great. I also eat at the company cafeteria everyday so I get lots of Japanese style meals. I usually take a picture of the dinner here, yesterday we had hiyashi ramen and it was really good.

Today my Japanese supervisor got a phone call from a customer in Paris. He started speaking in all English. I wanted to laugh because his English was so “cute”. I couldn’t think of any other way to describe it. It was understandable but very unlike the way he speaks in Japanese. He has very “Japanese man like” speech in Japanese but his English tone was quite amusing. He greets me some time in English in the mornings and when I am leaving and he using English words to help me understand his explanations but he doesn’t English to me.

Yesterday and today I noticed that when coming into work many of the other employees were all standing up around their desks. The desks are arranged in rows and the entire team was standing up. Some of the teams were listening to some one at the head speak and some of the others were apparently waiting for some to come. Even though they were waiting no one was sitting. It looked cool, had a profession look to it. My team is very different. We have our own little section were everyone else can’t see us. I would say our team is more like an American office but still Japanese like.

One of the female translators on the team called in sick today so there were only four of us today. After the phone call from Paris my supervisor disappeared for about half an hour. During the time the other two females in the office just talked and I also got into talking with them so we didn’t do much work during that time. One of them lived in Nebraska so we talked about corn and the “cornhuskers”. I have lived in Missouri so we also talked about that and how Kansas City and St. Louis and divided and part of the cities are in different states. They thought that was interesting.

Everyday after I finish my lunch at the cafeteria I have been buying ice cream. Japanese ice cream has so many different kids and most of them are very good so I am splurging. I hardly ever eat this kind of ice cream in the States. Yesterday I had Strawberry Cherrio Crisp, today I had milky cream ichigo. I told my boss that yesterday I had strawberry and today I am having ichigo. That is how it was written on the package, he laughed because they are both the same thing.

In America (at least in California) every four hours you get a 15 minute break. Here the only break we get is 45 minutes for lunch. When I worked full time in America I came in at 8 am, had lunch break from 12-1 and left at 5 with two 15 minute breaks. Here the work day starts at 8:30 am with a 45 min lunch break and the official work day ends at 5 or 5:15 pm but most employees end up staying later, some times much much later like 8 or 9 PM some times. Usually not past 7 PM from what I am told. It varies between companies. I usually get to work a little after 8 am because of the bus schedule and I do the “taiso” (exercises) at 8:20 am. The lights at the other section of the floor are turned off during lunch time and many of the employees rest their head on their desk and sleep. I often want to but my supervisor never does and the lights are always on in my section so I don’t.

Today I wasn’t very tired because due to exhaustion I slept about 9 hours yesterday and 10 hours the day before yesterday.

On the bus ride home I talked a lot with two of the other interns. One of them is looking for a dentist because he has a cavity. We talked about dentists, fluoride and toothpaste. I have never had a cavity so I was explaining that in America most of the toothpaste has fluoride in it and some times the local cities will also put it the city water. Japanese get a filling whenever they have a cavity. I told them Japanese people probably experience more cavities than Americans because we brush our teeth more and we are exposed to more fluoride which is suppose to strengthen teeth. That is what I said but I really don’t know much about it myself. They asked why Japan doesn’t put fluoride in their toothpaste and I said it is probably not good if you ingest too much but I don't know much about it.

I found out that one of them is a Trekkie like me! He has seen all the Star Trek movies and Next Generation, DS9 and Voyager. We had a lot to talk about after I found that out. There are not a lot of people that know what Star Trek is but it used to on TV here and they sell the DVDs at bookstores. However most of the time they dubbed in Japanese so they don’t get to hear the real voices, too bad.

Day 14/15 - Sleeping, exercising and starting BYU class work

2007-06-06T04:13:00.000-07:00

Extremely tired on Tuesday, went to sleep right after work and didn’t wake up.

Wednesday I woke up early (5 am) and went running and worked out. I like the air here, it is easy to breathe and fills good. It must be the humidity, I think it is better for running. I ran around the neighborhood, between houses and on the bicycle path. I said good morning to a lot of people but only a couple replied back to me. I wonder if it is weird or due to say greet people while exercising.

I wasn’t as tired as the previous day but still very tired. After eating dinner I started reading my BYU textbooks and feel asleep reading them. They are very interesting, I read the first chapter in the history book and started working on the stories. On the bus I was reading of the stories and one of the other Japanese interns was helping me with the characters. In the book it explains in English the meanings of the separate radicals and he said himself that he had never though of the some the characters in the way. He studied English for ten years so he understands a lot but since he has never lived outside of Japan his pronunciation is still very Japanese like.

Day 14 and 15

Day 13 - Sleep is a good thing

2007-06-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

finally got in the bath! I met a nice guy afterwards and he invited me to go out to eat. We went to a Italian restaruant but it was all Japanese style Italian. I had cream noodles with shrimp on top. Pretty good. He is from Osaka and talks pretty funny but very friendly and speaks very informally so he is fun to talk to. He told me that Aichi ken it in the Tokai area. Kansai is further to the West.

I wore my new work uniform from the dorm to work but I didn't like wearing it all the day way to work so I am just going to change at work from now on.

I got my BYU textbooks today. My sister sent me the package last week and it got here already. It got here in less than a week. I was surprised how fast it got here.

The following are things I did not talk about in the audio:

I brought a "15 minute battery charger" from the US to charge my "i3" batteries but it isn't working so well with the lower Japanese voltage. After recharging my AA died about twice as fast as usual in my camera. My AAA died even faster. My electronic dictionary wouldn't even turn off with the recharged AAA batteries so I Went to the store and bought some new ones today. Runs about 100/200 Yen per AAA battery. You also have to buy a special trash bag to be able to dispose them (and everything else).

I was talking to my boss today at lunch time about the matsuri I saw yesterday. People that live in Inuyama were complaining how annoying the matsuri was so I asked him if he liked Japanese matsuri. He said he didn't. He said they come out of a tradition when there was no entertainment, before TV, games and modern entertainment. People used to get very excited to see them but now a days it is kids and foreigners that really like them. I asked him kabuki and NOH if it was the same idea, he said that matsuri are for the working poor/commoner (shomin) and kabuki and NOH are/was only for wealthy people. Even today it is the same, I have a seen a NOH performance because they came to BYU a couple of years ago but otherwise I doubt I would have seen one. I have lots of pictures and video from when they came to BYU. Maybe I will post some. :-)

Today at work, I couldn't find a good translation of 「矢視」　It is the measurements of "view" of a drawing, like on a blueprint/drawing where they have the arrows and the measurement at some view point. Besides "view" or "viewpoint" I couldn't find a good English equivalent.

Day 13

Day 12 - Chari, Church and Matsuri

2007-06-03T02:50:00.000-07:00

Woke up a little late. Went to the bus station but the bus I wanted to ride wasn’t running today. I went back to the dorm and took off my coat jacket and decided to ride my chari to the Eki in Komaki. I had looked up the directions yesterday but the roads were not exactly as I expected. I don’t have a little backpack so I stuff what I wanted to bring with me into a grocery bag. It is embarrassing to carry that around but my other bag won’t fit in the basket in my chari and I didn’t bring any other backpack from the US because I had no room. I’ll see about buying a cheap bag. I brought, my Pocket PC because it has my scriptures on it (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price), my camera, planner and dictionary. It was a nice day, good to have the wind through my hair. All down hill. Took the bus to Inuyama, went to church but I was about an hour late. Say behind some kids, I think their parents are Pilipino but the kids speak Japanese. Had fast and testimony today because it the first Sunday of the month at church.

There was a matsuri going in Inuyama so I watched the dances. It was more like a dance compeition with several teams. I enjoyed the music and the dancers. Once you have seen about 10 performances it feels like you have seen them all and they all get dull afterwards but the first few just looked and felt amazing.

Took the train home and rode my chari up the hills back to the dorm. I ate all the bread and junk food I had bought yesterday. I will be ready for the cafeteria again tomorrow. I am really fatigued, must sleep but must study as well. I have realized how much time this blog and podcast is consuming so I will have tone it down because I need to devote more time to study.

Day 12

Click To Play

Day 11 - Taking it easy

2007-06-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

I was up until 2 AM last night. I took the opportunity to call some friends in the USA. It was about 8-9 AM for them. I slept in until noon. Started my laundry and spent a lot of time working on my journal, cleaning my room and modifying pictures for this blog. I hung up my clothes outside on the patio area. I need to buy a clothes hanger because just hanging my stuff on the rack isn't working very well. After several hours of letting my clothes dry outside I decided to dry a different dryer than last time. I located a dryer on the second floor that wasn't on the recall list and stuck my clothes in. However after 45 minutes in the driver they still were not dry. I hung them outside again.

Took a walk outside, explored the mall/department store. Found a barber shop, the post office, wandered through the super market, checked out the mens clothes, the book store, looked at the outside menus of restaurants at the food court, looked at the maps for a more detailed version of the city on the Super Mapple, walked through the medicine store and eventually bought some more Japanese treats and came back to the dorm.

Came back to the dorm around 9 PM and ate dinner. It was a lot of food. I couldn't eat it all. I was the only one in the cafeteria and it was really quiet. I didn't have any one to talk to the entire day so it was a pretty lonely. I listened to the other podcasts from Finding Japan, Tokyo Calling and Guzen Radio.

Dinner was a lot of food!!

Snacks that I bought today to eat over the weekend:

Day 11

Day 10 - Other interns leave, Japanese Movie Theater

2007-06-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

Holding at about 50.8 K every morning. I have almost gained a kilo. I am feeling the fatigue from not exercising. I need to get up and do that.

The other Japanese interns cleaned out their rooms and had all their baggage ready to move out this morning. We took a group picture before we left for the bus.

It has been a long week but it also went by fast. After the taiso today, there was a company meeting. My Japanese boss said I didn't have to go but I wanted to. We all met in the cafeteria and the tables were cleared away so we could stand. There was no sitting. It lasted about 20 minutes. The director spoke but he was hard to understand. I understand most of it. Talked about quality, referred to a recall of several appliances. Said we needed to wear either the company issued shirt or button up shirt. No T-Shirts. It wasn't motivational at all but it was interesting. I wore my company issued shirt for the first time today.

I want to talk more about the translating I am doing at work and focus these blogs more on Japanese. As I get more accustomed to my daily schedule and routine here, I plan on doing that. I am about halfway done with the translation project I was given last week. It is about 70 pages of technical stuff on installing a conveyor system. I have had to re-do several parts of it several times so that has been a pain. Every day the lady that gave me the projects will tell me some thing new like "fork" (fork lift) should be translated as "shuttle-fork" or you don't need to translate this part because it is done automatically. I am using W which works its way into the word document and complicates things. So having to change 50 places of the document that have already been translated can be time consuming.

Work and lunch from all the different days are starting to blur together because it is basically the same thing everyday. At lunch time instead of it being just myself and my boss, the man from general affairs also sat with us. He wanted to know if I had entered the bath yet. Nope. This was the last day the nice man at the front desk is working at the dorm. He gave me his phone number and said I could call any time and we can some thing. I took a picture with him.

After work I met up with "Taka kun" and Ryan from church. Taka is about 30 and Ryan is about 35. Ryan works at a competitor company. Taka likes to speak in all English so it was an all English evening for me. We went to a theater in Komaki, bought tickets for Spider Man 3, I thought it was neat that they reserve your seat when you buy the ticket. The movies after 8 PM go down to 1000 yen. Before 8 PM they were some thing like 1800 yen. I can't imagine paying that much! We had some time to kill so we went to Mos Burger. I got a shake and asked them to mix the strawberry and vanilla. They were hesitant to do it at first but they did it for me. Usually they come in clear cups but they put it in a different colored cup so people wouldn't know it was mixed. It was good!!

The movie theater was much smaller than American size. However I got used to it quickly and liked the feeling because it seemed more cozy. The screen was probably about 40-60% smaller than an average screen in the US. We still had stadium seating with the cup holders and all but no one seemed to be eating. I liked being able to read the Japanese translations. Special effects were over kill but the movie was entertaining. The audience was very mellow and respectful and quiet. After the movie ended, most people stayed until the credits were completely finished and the lights came on. Playing with Taka and Ryan was a lot fun; Good times good buddies (even though I've only know them for 6 days).

Day 10

Day 9 - Riding my ugly chari around town

2007-05-31T05:24:00.000-07:00

Before work everyday the 6 of us meet in the lobby at 7:15 AM and then leave at 7:20 AM. Many of them smoke or read the newspaper while waiting. I paid back Hiroshi kun the 1000 Yen he lent me a fews days ago. I also gave him 1 million dollars. He was pretty amazed by that. It was a fake 1 Million Dollar Bill but he asked me if they really made 1 Million dollar bills in the USA. Several years ago on ebay I receive 100 Million Dollars along with an ebay item and I so give them out when I want to say "Thanks a Million". "Hyaku Man Dollars" should be 1 Million Dollars in Japanese. 100 * 10,000 = 1,000,000

Went to work as normal. The other interns are leaving tomorrow so it is sad because they are my only Japanese friends my own age. They have all graduated from their respective Japanese Colleges and will likely work at Daifuku for a very long time if not their entire career. They are undergoing training at different Daifuku locations. Their internship is totally different than the American idea of an internship. They are actually considered trainnes because they have already entered the company and are doing training at various locations to learn more about the company. This is normal in the USA when entering large companies. They don't know yet where they will be assigned within the company. I work in a totally different building than they do and don't see them until I get off.

The nice grandpa at the front desk told me that he is quitting so that he can study history and make more friends his own age. He is taking class that NHK offers. His job is obviously boring and lonely. He always laughs and smiles and will talk to me about anything. He is always willing to help me find some thing, explain some thing to me or just talk to me. I wish he was my grandpa. He gave me his phone number and said I could call if I ever get lonely and we can do some thing. Well work basically the same as it normally is except I went into super question asking mode today. I got tired of wondering what things meant and trying to figure them out on my own. I've realized that if I don't ask questions and lots of them then I will do the translations wrong, I won't learn what Daifuku does, I won't be able to practice explaining my thoughts and misunderstandings and I won't be able to build better team relations. So about every 10-20 minutes I asked another question. My boss said he was "shindoi" after one lengthy explanation of how a certain conveyor system works.

Lunch was mmmm good. It was curry katsu don. Splurged and had ice cream again but it wasn't half off today. Left work at 5 PM, I was the first one today, they all gave me a hearty "o tsukare sama deshita". It made me smile, especially the way one my newer co-workers said it with a smile. She gives it real meaning, everyone else just says it because it is custom. Came home, had a nice conversation about Mexican food with the other interns on the bus ride and what a burrito is. Most Japanese that haven't been to North America have never had Mexican food. Walking back to the dorm, I taught them some Hokkaido Ben (shakkoi - means really cold to the touch).

After work I cleaned off my ugly new old purple rusted bicycle and took it for a ride. It needed air so I rode it to the local shop and used his pump. I rode around until I didn't know where I was so I could find my way back. It got dark but I found a lot of great paths that between through the suburbs and around the city.

Dinner was nice. We had unagi(eel) and hayashi sauce on top of koroke(sweet breaded mashed potato). Koroke has become one of my favorite things here. I rarely had them when I lived in Hokkaido so they are my new thing here. Watched baseball and then I tried to figure out this blog. oyasumi.

Picture of dinner, the bowl on the bottom right was eel. It was good but there was some vegetable mixed in with it that made me want to hurl. The dish on the bottom left is not meat, it is breaded mash potatoes, extremely good!

We put the actual miso soup into the bowls ourselves but everything else is prepared.

Day 9

Day 8 - Icecream Wednesday and Free Bicycle

2007-05-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Ice cream was only 55 yen today so just about everyone goes and gets some. While talking to one my co workers, I told her that I was planning on getting a used bicycle. She told me that she had an old bicycle at her house that just sits there and she would be glad if we took it away. So, after work my Japanese boss said he would take me to her house and put it in his car and take it to the dorm. My co worker that offered to give me the bicycle rides her bike to work so we gave her a 20 minute lead and then my boss and I drove to her house. When we got there she had already taken it out and put it on the street. It is an old chari style or “mamachari” (slang). It is rusty and purple. I would never be caught dead with it America but for here it is fine and fairly normal. Mountain bicycles are rare here but you can buy them. Most people have newer Japanese style bicycles. They are more comfortable to ride and have a basket in the front which is convenient.

My boss took me back to my dorm and I was tired so after dinner I went to sleep.

Day 8

Day 7 - I bought a DS

2007-05-29T05:23:00.000-07:00

After work while on the bus I was speaking with Hiroshi, one of the other interns and I told him I was interested in getting a Nintendo DS to use as a dictionary. He said he would go to GEO with me and see if they had any. We walked over to GEO which is a used electronic/rental store. In Japan it is very hard to get “good deals” on electronics unless it is broken. Since the Nintendo DS Lite is still new and popular I couldn’t find any good deals and I bought a brand new one with a dictionary program. It was expensive but I justified it to help me the language and writing kanji. The software produced for it will train you to write kanji in the correct order and you can write characters on the screen and it will recognize them for you. The case is extremely shiny!!!! I will buy more software as needed and maybe some games before I go back to the states. See the pictures and the lens fare I got with it.

Day 7

Day 6 - Translations...

2007-05-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

I spent the majority of the day learning to wordfast and learning more daifuku words in order to translate.

Picture of dinner:

This was the first time I had seen clams still attached to the shells in my miso soup.
This is a typical outlet "consento", Japanese plugs are usually two pronged unless it is some thing big like a large fridge. The bottom is my adapter for my laptop because it is three pronged. I bought a universal adapter that can fit any electrical appliance. On the left is the ground, Japanese appliances have a ground wire because there isn't any other grounding built in. It goes to the mini fridge.

Day 6

Day 5 - Going to church and then some

2007-05-27T05:22:00.000-07:00

This was my first day at church. One of the members picked me up and took me there. In the audio I talk about how much he likes America. It felt really good to go to church in Japan again and sing the hymns in Japanese.

Later in the evening I went to an activity with the Young Single Adults and we ate food at a member’s house. That was a great experience and allowed me to talk with a lot of people my age and meet people from Gifu and Aichi prefectures.

In the audio I share these experiences and things we talked about.

Day 5

Day 4 - Going to Nagoya Eki with the nicest Japanese grandpa ever

2007-05-26T05:20:00.000-07:00

In the morning, the man that runs the front desk asked me if I wanted to go to Nagoya station with him and play. He said he would show me how to get there in case I get lonely later on and want to go play. We walked over to the bus station and rode the bus to Nagoya. It was 680 yen to get there. First we went to a bread shop and had some bread, it was so good. It was a nice day but there was a lot of yellow sand in the air that had come in from China. We went to Nagoya Castle and the top of the Toyota Building.

He is the nicest man I have met here. He explained everything to me and treated me like one of his grandkids. He paid for my breakfast, lunch and the entrance fee to go to Nagoya Castle and to the top of the Toyota building. We rode a taxi around to see the city outside of the train station and then went to big camera. It is mostly an electronic store but they sell everything except food. I needed an adapter for my laptop so we found one that would work. I couldn't remember the word for outlet.

After getting back to Komaki he showed me around the supermarket and I bought some items I needed and food for the weekend.

Day 4

Day 3 - Meet Boss and Tabehodai

2007-05-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Woke up early again at 4:30 am. Didn’t want to sleep any longer. It was raining. I didn’t have an umbrella so I asked Shuji if there was some where I could borrow one and he said he had two. The counter for cylinder like items is “hon” or “pon” sound when he said he said he had two the pronunciation is “nihon” (same pronunciation as Japan). Breakfast was bread, some contraption with clam and white sauce on top but it was really good. After brushing my teeth I met up with all the other trainees in the lobby. They all live on the first floor and are my neighbors so I see them every morning in the hallway and in the bathroom. They usually greet me with an “ohayo”, ohayo gozaimasu”. One of them usually greets me with a “wheeeseee” in the hallway. I don’t know the correct way to write it but one of my Japanese tutors in Sacramento had taught it to me. It is very friendly/slang like greet usually only used between friends so I was glad he greeted me with it. The bus stop is a 1-2 minute walk and the bus doesn’t come until 7:34 am or so but we usually leave at about 7:20 because the line gets long and if you are not at the front of the line then you won’t get a seat. I spoke with “Sugimoto” from Osaka and he was very interested in hearing my thoughts on Japanese girls and my experiences with them. He told me to get engaged and that was the last time I spoke with him because he left that evening. I met my American boss; he wasn’t at all what I had imagined when talking to him. He is very friendly and his Japanese is amazing. He has many responsibilities in Europe and America so he won’t be in the office for the next few weeks. Today I was set up with a program called Wordfast to help in translating. I was given a “TM” (Translating Memory’) file that included data from thousands of other translations. Basically every time a translation is done, the sentence or segment that got translated in stored so that the next time a similar sentence or an exact match is found the program will assist in the translation or automatically translate it for you. I spent the entire day learning to use the program and trying to get the TM to work. There were a lot of complications to work out, the program can be downloaded for free from the internet but if you TM memory goes over 500 you have to have a license. The company has a license and so we had to get that worked out because this TM file is extremely large and I think it is too large. It has some 500 thousand translation segments in it. I opened it with MSWord and it was over 19,000 pages long. Because of the length and size of the file, my slow computer has a hard time handling it. The TM file has to be periodically reorganized and because of the size of the file it takes my computer about 10 minutes. After having to go through this process several times I decided to make my own TM because this one wasn’t helping me translate and it kept suggesting un related sentences even when I had the suggested level up to 75%. After starting my own TM I didn’t have any more problems and the program became very useful as I have to translate many similar sentences and the same words show up a lot. I think a separate TM should be used for each project. From what I was told that they combines all their TMs from Trodas and from the intern using Wordfast about twice a year. Thus the file combines everyone’s work and the idea is too make it more effective but I think it is too big and isn’t much help.
After work we met in the lobby and went to a tabehodai. An all you can eat restaurant. We drove in my American boss’s van. The traffic was bad so it took nearly an hour go get there. It was a really nice buffet with a lot of different foods and desserts. The idea of the restaurant was to eat a little bit of everything. The plates we received were divided in a grid shape with 9 sections. One section for each food. Just enough for a very small portion. The team has many different personalities, so it is very interesting. I had three plates with the grid plate and I went to the desert bar twice. I was very stuff but it felt good. Often in America after stuffing yourself you don’t feel very good afterwards. My American boss gave me a ride all the way back to the dorm. He is very talkative; he also served a mission for the church in Hokkaido like I did but in his case it was about 23 years ago so I would have been a different place in his time. He played a game to see if the other people could the missionary made terms for various things. They were really hard, I hadn’t even heard of them before.
In Japan when you get dropped off it is customary to wait for the person that dropped you off to drive away and wave to them as they leave. In America it is customary for the person who dropped you off to wait for you to go into your house/apartment to make sure that you got in safely or to ensure that you were not locked out.
I could feel the jet lag while eating and I got very sleepy. One I let my brain know it was time to sleep I was asleep within minutes.

Day 3

Day 2 - First Day of Work

2007-05-24T06:37:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 4:30 AM, couldn’t sleep any longer. At first I thought I had overslept because I was still out of it. I have both American time and Japanese time on my watch and alarm clock but I had forgotten to change the Japan time to the primary time so I was confused when I woke up. After I checked my computer and found a clock in the building I realized I still had 4 hours until I had to be at work and decided to take a shower. Weighed in at 50.0 K. There is a scale by the shower, so I will see if I start gaining weight. It wasn't even 5 AM yet but it was already very bright outside. It seemed too early for the sunrise. I studied and changed and ate breakfast. Everyone gets ready for work with suit and tie and then goes and eat breakfast. I have the choice of eating a Japanese style breakfast or a Japanese bread creation. I had bread; it was toast and vegetable juice.

I had been introduced to another intern/trainee, the previous night, Shuji. He showed me where the bus stop is and pretty much showed me how to get to work. We rode the bus but I ended up sitting next to another intern/trainee named Hiroshi. Hiroshi was extremely friendly and we talked about family, where I learned Japanese and the basic self introduction.

At work I waited at the general affair department for the same man that I had met with last night. He is a very energetic Japanese man. Went did some paperwork, he gave me my bus passes and my first month’s salary (only one and a half weeks). I think it is really cool that the company is paying for me to take the bus from the dorm everyday. That saves me 600 yen everyday. The dorm is very inexpensive. He showed me every floor of the building and explained their purposes but there were a lot of engineering words that I didn’t know. I was introduced to many people but I don’t remember names or people because there was too much. He took me over to the factory where they produce computer boards “kiban”, they are electric mother board like things that go in certain machines. It wasn’t a “clean room” but still very clean, we took off our shoes and wore slippers when we went through this building. He showed me the cafeteria and I got a pre-paid card to use when paying for my lunches. He took up to my team and “handed me over’ to my Japanese boss. I have an American boss that is the team leader or the “chief”. My American boss will be gone a lot so I go to him whenever my American boss is absent.

Did introductions with my team, every stood up and listened to what my Japanese boss had to say when he introduced me. We were in a semi circle and each person introduced themselves. I was shown my desk and computer. I was given an older computer; it’s a Dell with Pentium III processor and only 512 MB of RAM. It is running the Japanese version of Windows XP. Everyone else on my team has new Dual Core Dell computers and the slowness of my computer has been getting annoying. The laptop I brought with me from America is much faster but I can’t hook it up to the Daifuku network. I ate lunch with my Japanese boss, interesting experience going to the cafeteria with all the other “Salary Men”. Every goes at the same time; one big group of men and women all in suits, white shirts or uniforms migrate to the cafeteria. Had Japanese fried chicken, it was delicious. After lunch I was given about 10 pages of a manual to start translating but I was not given any directions or training or tools. I think they did it like that on purpose so I could just get a feel for what I was going to do. I didn’t know where to start. I ended up installing Mozilla Firefox on my computers and then installed the add on called “rikai chan” and used that to help me translate the kanji I didn’t know. I was given a paper copy and an electronic copy.

Later I was introduced to the online Daifuku Dictionary used to find the standard words and technical words when translating documents. I was also shown another online dictionary to use when translating.

At 5:30 PM I left my team and waited for Shuji so I could go home with him. He showed up at about 6 PM. While waiting for him I talked to a lady in the general affairs department and asked her about a book she was reading. I asked her if it was a novel and she told me is a book about understanding Japanese Kanji (the Chinese characters that make up the Japanese Language). She told me that many Japanese don’t understand the meaning of their own language, including kanji and phrases. The book she was reading was apparently a top seller and she said lately this type of book has gotten very popular. This is because many people, especially younger people are losing their kanji writing/reading ability because of heavy reliance on computers. Also kanji study games for kids has become popular like games for the Nintendo DS.

I went home with Shuji on the bus. I commented that I wanted to get some items for writing and studying, so we went to the department store and I bought a 4 color pen, stationary, and study cards. Changed after getting back to the dorm, had dinner; main course was a curry hamburger. It was very delicious. One of the other interns from Osaka, taught me “Maido”. It is Kansai Ben (words only used in the Kansai area, like Osaka and around here). It can mean many things depending on context. He said it can mean Hello. After dinner I studied, still have jet lag, wrote in journal, fell asleep.

Day 2

Day 1.5 (Made it to my dorm)

2007-05-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

Technically the date changed so this should be day 2 but I lost count later down the road and so I decided to add this as part of day 1. I am using an old voice recorder mp3 player I bought off eBay in 2002 from a Korean company that went out of business. The voice quality is not going to be wonderful and the volume will likely change during different podcasts. I am sure it sounds like trash since I have no special effects like all the veteran podcasts out there. I am learning so maybe I hope to add things and get better recording equipment as I move along.

Since the time changed coming to Japan and the sun never set, it feels like I have been up for 3 days. I didn’t get to see much when landing because the wing was in the way. When coming through Immigration they had a camera to detect body temperature. I thought that was interesting. I watched the screen that the technician was viewing to check people’s temperature. The people show up in different colors. The immigration officers asked me to wait while they took care of some paperwork. I had to wait about 20 minutes, while they located the correct paper they needed for my internship visa. While waiting, one of the officers came up to me and said “Anata wa warukunai, kami ga nai desu”. He told me that you are not bad, we don’t have the needed form. While waiting another airport person came up to me and asked if I just came from San Francisco. I told her yes and she described a bag and asked me if it was mine. I told her that it was and she said my Japanese was good but we had barely talked. She escorted me to my baggage after the immigration paperwork was finished. There was another lady waiting next to my bag, like they were protecting it. I was impressed by their service. They even brought me a cart to my bags on. Then she commented me again and said, “Nihongo wa sugoi jozu desu yo”.

Spoke with the people at the Information desk to find what train would get me to Komaki. They said I could take the train to Nagoya and then take the bus to Komaki but I was tired and didn’t want to have to change 「乗り換える」, “Norikaeru” to a bus. Thus I choose to take a longer way so I wouldn’t get lost in Nagoya and wouldn’t have to lug my luggage from the train to the bus station (even though they are basically in the same place). I took the train all the way from the airport to Inuyama and then I switched trains, which was a simple walk across the platform and took that normal train to Komaki. Normal train means it stops at every single stop. The train I took from the airport only stopped at the big places so it went must faster. When I got to Komaki I found out that that the train on the map didn’t run all the way to dorm anymore (apparently it was too far in debt “akaji”. I had to ride a local bus from the train station to the area where my dorm is. Therefore it would have made more sense to take the bus from Nagoya because it goes all the way to my dorm (however I did just fine with what knowledge I had at the time).

Found the dorm, it wasn’t too far from the bus stop. I introduced myself to the man at the front desk, they were expecting me. He called the guy at Daifuku that I had been in contact via email and phone. I was shown my dorm and told to rest until the guy from Daifuku could come and talk to me. (I am leaving out names of co-workers and people from Daifuku.) The man from general affairs came from Daifuku and met me at the dorm. Before he came, I shaved and gelled me hair because I had really bad hat hair and looked pretty bad. He went over all the rules and general information that I needed to know. I understood most of it and he explained to me the things I didn’t understand. The packet he gave me in Japanese has a lot of kanji I don’t understand so I will be looking them up. He showed me the cafeteria and the bath.

That night I ate my first dinner in the cafeteria, I really miss Japanese food. Fish in Japan is so good. Got settled in my room and sleep took over…

Second Part of Day 1

Day 1 - Flying from Sacramento to Japan

2007-05-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

I had my last final yesterday, moved out of my apartment and got everything I needed ready to go to Japan. Didn’t go to bed, did some laundry at about 2 AM. At 3:30 AM dad and I left to go to the Sacramento Airport. Dad came into the airport with me and then he left after I got in line. I fell asleep on the plane to San Francisco and couldn’t keep ny head out of the aisle. I was so out of it. It was only a 45 minute flight. I was sitting next to a big black college football player so I didn’t have much room.

In San Francisco I took a little bus to the terminal and there were Japanese people on the bus and I talked with them. When I got to my terminal I tried to find comfortable positions and slept for about 4-5 hours. Finally got on the plane, I sat next to a nice guy from Taiwan. I was tired but I wanted to watch movies. There was nothing to see out the window so I watched the movies, ate the food but it wasn’t very good. I watched “The Happy Virtue” and “Letters from Iwo Jima”. My electronic dictionary storage capacity was at its limit so I wrote down on the words I had stored in memory. Took a few naps on the plane.

Day 1

T-20 Days - Applying for VISA

2007-05-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

Today I had to go to San Francisco to "be in person" to apply for my VISA. Since I am not at BYU, things have worked out a little different for me. My BYU instructor and the ISP office at BYU decided to let me apply for my VISA myself because of time constraints. They sent me the certificate of eligibility and I took that to the Japanese Consulate in San Francisco today. I left Sacramento at about 10 AM this morning, picked up my little sister from the Sacramento Airport, waited for her luggage to come in for over and hour and finally left at about noon. We then drove from the airport to the nearest BART station (Bay Area Rapid Transit) which was about a 90 minute drive. Got to the station to find no parking so we had to park at a local grocery store and walk to the station. Get to the station, wait some more and finally get on the BART. Eventually get to San Francisco and by the time I check in at the Consulate go through security and get to talk some one at the counter it was already 4 PM. They close at 4:30 PM! I went up to the 23rd floor and waited for my number and while speaking with the VISA person, I was told I had to have a flight number for my VISA application. I went downstairs to KINKOs to get some needed info off the Internet and at 4:10 PM I got a hold of the travel lady at BYU and she told me the flight number and I purchased the ticket (we had already discussed the details about it the day before). I went back up to the 23rd floor and at 4:20 PM I was told that I had to get a Priority Envelope and a $14.40 stamp and label from the post office for them to send me my passport and visa back to me.

I asked them to stay open so I could run to the Post Office (6 blocks away) and get the items. The Japanese person that was helping me spoke with his supervisor and they said I had until 5 PM. I ran to the post office but couldn't find it because they told me the wrong directions; it was actually only 4.5 blocks away. I got to the post office and there was a line so I asked everyone if I could cut to the front after explaining my situation and they let me. I purchased the items, ran back to the consulate, back up to the 23rd floor and they were patiently waiting for me at 4:50 PM. I gave them all the items and then they had a problem with my permanent address on the VISA form being different then the address I wanted them to send my passport to so I had to put my apartment address on the form which I am moving out of in 20 days. Then he told me that I am only allowed to have one VISA at a time because apparently the VISA I had for my mission was still valid until March 2008. He said they had to cancel it, in order to issue the working VISA. I possibly could have used that VISA but I wanted to make sure everything was done correctly. That older VISA was for "Religious Activities" and this time I am getting a "Working VISA" to receive money. We had started out the first time I gone up to the consulate speaking in English but after my second time up we went to all Japanese which was better with me because he was having a hard time understanding all of my English. I thought he would start saying some government technical words that I didn’t understand but I understand it all so that was good. The consulate was very good to me, very polite and kind and stayed open later for me and I think they are awesome. BYU is awesome and my instructor at BYU is awesome, Watabe Sensei and the travel lady at BYU are awesome and so is everyone else who helped me with this. じゃ、がんばろうね。

Introduction, Purpose and Thanks

2007-05-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

I am a twenty some thing year old college student studying MIS and Japanese. I lived in Hokkaido from April 2003-Febraruy 2005 while serving a mission as an LDS missionary. During that time I learned to speak Japanese and had my first experiences in Japan. From 2005 until now (summer 2007) while working towards my MIS major, I have been studying Japanese and Japanese Kanji at school and on my own. I have taken classes at Brigham Young University, Sierra College (Northern California) and Sacramento State University. I am doing a BYU internship at a Japanese company called Daifuku in Aichi Prefecture from May 23-August 10 near Nagoya Japan. I will be in Japan for approximately 90 days working and traveling (my VISA is only good for 3 months, thus the name of my podcast/blog). I started listening to Japanese related podcasts in 2005. The first podcasts I listened to were “Guzen Radio” and “Josh in

Japan

”. Later I found “Tokyo Calling” and have been listening to him for nearly a year. From Tokyo Calling, I learned about "Finding Japan" and due to all these podcast “role models”, I have decided to also make a podcast/blog to record my experiences during my internship.

Special thanks to Scott Lockman from Tokyo Calling because helped me get some things set up.