Japan day 4
It is now 8:30 pm on Tuesday. Woke up early and got ready for my big talk. I am so loving Japanese breakfast buffet, but I'm sure I'm not gonna wanna see the scale when I get back.
Took cab to office where the class was to be held. The print version of the Japanese translation of the DAMA DMBOK was finally delivered last night, so this morning was the first seminar to go over/through the book.
There were two translators there. I still had to speak in chunks, but this time they had an earphone that I wore so that they could translate questions and comments into my ear. That was new.
The class was told right off the bat that questions would be good. That is not the Japanese way, so most thought there wouldn't be very many questions. I asked a very general but important question, and just sat and waited. It took about a minute before anyone was willing to talk. But once someone did, and the world didn't end, we were off to the races. There were many questions and comments, so I was happy.
There were about 25 people there, and maybe 4 of them female. Similar to yesterday, there were about 5 women in a sea of 90 black suits. Lunch was good. They kept asking me if I was sick of Japanese food. NO WAY. I came all this way, I don't want to eat stuff I can get at home. My family are NOT adventurous eaters so I'm getting to eat all kinds of things that I don't even know what they are and I haven't found anything I didn't like yet. I got asked to speak about a couple of extra topics after lunch that weren't on the program, and so I winged it. But that made us a little late, I think, as well as the questions slowed things down, as the question would be asked, then translated, then I would answer, then my answer was translated. We ran long because of it - I was so afraid of running out of material that I beefed up the middle section maybe a bit much. But they wanted to finish so after lunch and a long discussion, they held up questions until the end so we could finish.
Finally, the session was over, and I sat with some of the publisher people and they gave me commentary on the book itself to use for the next version. Most of it I had heard before, but a few diagrams that were included in the book weren't described in the text, and that hadn't come out in the commentary before. They thoroughly reviewed the book when translating so they did catch a few things that weren't defined, or explained that should have been. They gave me a package of almond cookies and Japanese bookmarks.
Then another woman and I took a cab to the "girl's night". There were 5 all together - 2 Americans and 3 Japanese. We had food in the style of the northern area of Japan that got trashed by the tsunami. Very tasty, including chicken bits on bamboo sticks (white meat, dark meat, heart, liver, and scrambled egg), and a soup that was heated right at the table. Very nice conversation, and they gave us phone decorations (dangles). EVERYONE has them here. Unfortunately my android doesn't have a nice place to hang it from, but I'll see if my personal phone has a loop. I think it does.
When I put my shoe back on after dinner, I think I banged the sore toe again. So when I got back to the hotel I tried to find some aspirin at the convenience store, but they only had cold medicine and sleeping pills. I did get a nail clipper to cut the nail short so it wouldn't catch on anything anymore. Hopefully another night off of it will get it to settle back down.
Tomorrow, breakfast buffet with the others who will be leaving tomorrow, and then on my own. Ichibora will be taking a holiday one day to go see stuff with me so that will be nice. I think tomorrow I'll find the Pokemon center and get some stuff for the kids.
Off to read emails and then to snooze.
Took cab to office where the class was to be held. The print version of the Japanese translation of the DAMA DMBOK was finally delivered last night, so this morning was the first seminar to go over/through the book.
There were two translators there. I still had to speak in chunks, but this time they had an earphone that I wore so that they could translate questions and comments into my ear. That was new.
The class was told right off the bat that questions would be good. That is not the Japanese way, so most thought there wouldn't be very many questions. I asked a very general but important question, and just sat and waited. It took about a minute before anyone was willing to talk. But once someone did, and the world didn't end, we were off to the races. There were many questions and comments, so I was happy.
There were about 25 people there, and maybe 4 of them female. Similar to yesterday, there were about 5 women in a sea of 90 black suits. Lunch was good. They kept asking me if I was sick of Japanese food. NO WAY. I came all this way, I don't want to eat stuff I can get at home. My family are NOT adventurous eaters so I'm getting to eat all kinds of things that I don't even know what they are and I haven't found anything I didn't like yet. I got asked to speak about a couple of extra topics after lunch that weren't on the program, and so I winged it. But that made us a little late, I think, as well as the questions slowed things down, as the question would be asked, then translated, then I would answer, then my answer was translated. We ran long because of it - I was so afraid of running out of material that I beefed up the middle section maybe a bit much. But they wanted to finish so after lunch and a long discussion, they held up questions until the end so we could finish.
Finally, the session was over, and I sat with some of the publisher people and they gave me commentary on the book itself to use for the next version. Most of it I had heard before, but a few diagrams that were included in the book weren't described in the text, and that hadn't come out in the commentary before. They thoroughly reviewed the book when translating so they did catch a few things that weren't defined, or explained that should have been. They gave me a package of almond cookies and Japanese bookmarks.
Then another woman and I took a cab to the "girl's night". There were 5 all together - 2 Americans and 3 Japanese. We had food in the style of the northern area of Japan that got trashed by the tsunami. Very tasty, including chicken bits on bamboo sticks (white meat, dark meat, heart, liver, and scrambled egg), and a soup that was heated right at the table. Very nice conversation, and they gave us phone decorations (dangles). EVERYONE has them here. Unfortunately my android doesn't have a nice place to hang it from, but I'll see if my personal phone has a loop. I think it does.
When I put my shoe back on after dinner, I think I banged the sore toe again. So when I got back to the hotel I tried to find some aspirin at the convenience store, but they only had cold medicine and sleeping pills. I did get a nail clipper to cut the nail short so it wouldn't catch on anything anymore. Hopefully another night off of it will get it to settle back down.
Tomorrow, breakfast buffet with the others who will be leaving tomorrow, and then on my own. Ichibora will be taking a holiday one day to go see stuff with me so that will be nice. I think tomorrow I'll find the Pokemon center and get some stuff for the kids.
Off to read emails and then to snooze.