Daily Life
The last two days have been a lot more normal-ish, so I haven't had as much material to post about. Perhaps today will be different.
Thursday and Friday I went to work at our customer's site. I'll be doing a lot of that, since the point of this trip is for me to get some software working for them.
Traveling there and back continues to have its own little challenges, but I'm starting to get used to this portion of the train run. I've only really got caught once, when Google recommended that I switch from one station to another, but didn't provide directions as to how to make the journey by foot. By the time I'd found the other station, the train I wanted had already left. Only ten minutes lost, though; there are lots of trains here during the day.
Our customer is located on the Toshiba campus near (in?) Yokohama. As one would expect, Toshiba's campus is huge. It has lots of very industrial warehouse buildings, with amenities like a soccer field, store, and a couple of cafeterias. It reminds me of the Martin Marietta campus in Orlando that my father worked at. Except for the soccer field, of course. And I don't think the Toshiba campus has any alligators.
I've gone twice to the cafeteria and eaten something vaguely resembling a hamburger in curry sauce or on a tray with rice. Chris reminded me that Japanese hamburgers may not be all beef, so I'm going to have to be a bit more cautious with my choices going forward. Lunch in the Japanese corporate environment is very quick and efficient. People get their food, sit down, eat it quickly, and head back to work. There seems to be little chatting, and very little lingering.
That being said, I have had some pleasant lunchtime conversations with the people I'm working with, comparing various cultural bits. Their English, while nowhere near as bad as my Japanese, is also missing a few bits. It's fun trying to explain the occasional odd word that misfires. For "ostrich", I had to resort to my translator app. Suganuma-san has been to the Ghibli (pronounced "jibli", apparently) museum three times, and highly recommends it. She even had the ticket purchasing regimen memorized.
Last night, I slept through from 8:30pm to 5am. It's the first time I've slept through, and within striking distance of where I'd like to be locally. Tokyo isn't centered in its time zones and doesn't have daylight savings time, which means the sun is is up from 4:30am to 7pm. I'm hoping to get to bed earlier on a regular basis to help compensate, and so I can get to work at a reasonable hour.
Chris lit Shabbat candles last night, and we had kiddush over a $6 bottle of Chilean chardonnay (okay, but not great) and grape juice. The grape juice out here, even when it claims to be 100% grape juice, tastes like a bad version of grape Kool-Aid.
Hopefully I'll have some story-worthy experiences today exploring Tokyo.
Thursday and Friday I went to work at our customer's site. I'll be doing a lot of that, since the point of this trip is for me to get some software working for them.
Traveling there and back continues to have its own little challenges, but I'm starting to get used to this portion of the train run. I've only really got caught once, when Google recommended that I switch from one station to another, but didn't provide directions as to how to make the journey by foot. By the time I'd found the other station, the train I wanted had already left. Only ten minutes lost, though; there are lots of trains here during the day.
Our customer is located on the Toshiba campus near (in?) Yokohama. As one would expect, Toshiba's campus is huge. It has lots of very industrial warehouse buildings, with amenities like a soccer field, store, and a couple of cafeterias. It reminds me of the Martin Marietta campus in Orlando that my father worked at. Except for the soccer field, of course. And I don't think the Toshiba campus has any alligators.
I've gone twice to the cafeteria and eaten something vaguely resembling a hamburger in curry sauce or on a tray with rice. Chris reminded me that Japanese hamburgers may not be all beef, so I'm going to have to be a bit more cautious with my choices going forward. Lunch in the Japanese corporate environment is very quick and efficient. People get their food, sit down, eat it quickly, and head back to work. There seems to be little chatting, and very little lingering.
That being said, I have had some pleasant lunchtime conversations with the people I'm working with, comparing various cultural bits. Their English, while nowhere near as bad as my Japanese, is also missing a few bits. It's fun trying to explain the occasional odd word that misfires. For "ostrich", I had to resort to my translator app. Suganuma-san has been to the Ghibli (pronounced "jibli", apparently) museum three times, and highly recommends it. She even had the ticket purchasing regimen memorized.
Last night, I slept through from 8:30pm to 5am. It's the first time I've slept through, and within striking distance of where I'd like to be locally. Tokyo isn't centered in its time zones and doesn't have daylight savings time, which means the sun is is up from 4:30am to 7pm. I'm hoping to get to bed earlier on a regular basis to help compensate, and so I can get to work at a reasonable hour.
Chris lit Shabbat candles last night, and we had kiddush over a $6 bottle of Chilean chardonnay (okay, but not great) and grape juice. The grape juice out here, even when it claims to be 100% grape juice, tastes like a bad version of grape Kool-Aid.
Hopefully I'll have some story-worthy experiences today exploring Tokyo.