Hokkaido by Rent-A-Car

Even though I've worked at this cute little game company for almost a year now, I *still* do not have any personal vacation days given to me... since half the time I was a contract employee. But no big deal! There is this great system where the Japanese government keeps making more and more national holidays, trying to keep its workers from overheating.

Not only is there Golden Week (a 5 day stretch in May), Silver Week (a 5 day stretch in September, which I am currently enjoying while writing this), every month has at least one three day weekend. On top of this, we got an extra week off during any time of our choosing in either June July or August. We decided to go to Hokkaido for our week off. No particular reason except that's the one main area we'd never been to that was still inside the country.

Our route took us from Sapporo (the city in the south-west), all the way to Shiretoko, the national park at the very north-east tip of the island, and back again in a sort of oval.
We started our first day in Sapporo: The biggest city in Hokkaido. (And that's about it.)

Sapporo is not that great for sightseeing, as it is just like any neighborhood in Tokyo, completely overrun by office buildings, chain stores and apartment complexes, but there are a couple of places worth seeing, such as the Sapporo Beer Hall (yes, Sapporo is the birthplace of Sapporo beer). That's where we had dinner and consumed large quantities of "Genghis Khan" style barbequed mutton. Or, at least Takeshi had the mutton. I was trying hard to maintain my newly discovered vegetarianism... and failed, as I had one piece. But really, the best food there was the baked potatoes with butter, crusty bread with fresh cheese, the scallops, and the musk melon for desert. Oh and the beer. ;)

The next day we woke up at an early 7:00 (ok, early for *me* anyways) and decided to drive the 300km to Shiretoko in one shot. This was a tricky business, because the only highway stopped about 1/3 of the way, and we were traveling on small back roads where the posted speed limit was around 60 kph. (40 mph!) Of course, I took the liberty of ignoring that, but it still took the entire day to get there.

The main driver for the trip was yours truly . We had rented one of the cheaper car classes which turned out to be a Suzuki Swift, a teeny little hatchback. After Takeshi's love affair with his new suped up Subaru Legacy B4 (Sport edition, natch) , he tried out the rental and wouldn't stop making little exasperated noises any time he tried to accelerate. Finally, sick of the whining, I took over the wheel and found it a perfectly acceptable little car.

We stopped for lunch at a spot on the northern coast which wasn't so much a restaurant, as a whole-sale fish market, with a spot in the back with barbeques open to the public. We picked out some oysters and scallops and started to heat them up, when we got more and more nervous by the lack of other customers, and the cheapness of the oysters, which may or may not give you extreme food poisoning. Also, as we were waiting for them to cook, takeshi leaned over and whispered "I don't like the name of this place, 'wake ga aru'." It literally means "There's a reason". (for what? the cheapness? the lack of customers??)

Indeed, rather ominous.

Luckily we survived our lunch with no apparent ill effects, and took off for the second half of our day's journey . Grumbling, Takeshi took the wheel. We were just trying to kill time by tuning between the two radio stations (kabuki theater live, or some guy droning on about something), when I squeaked "wait!! Go back!!!"

We had passed a huge, no, enormous open pasture filled with hundreds of horses. I could not resist. The only problem was they wouldn't come over to the fence, because what was there to tempt them with? grass that they had plenty of?
"if only I had a carrot", I thought wistfully. But on closer inspection, the orange patch they are standing on in the photo is an enormous patch of carrots.

It's like a little piece of horse heaven. I just really, really hope that they are not being fattened up for eating.

I was finally peeled away so we could get on with the drive. As June through August is the 'high season' of Hokkaido, ie the time when they get the most tourists, everything was at its most expensive. Luckily we got a pretty good deal at a ryokan (japanese style inn), where the fresh-caught seafood dinner, breakfast, and lovely natural outdoor onsen were all included.

As a benefit of having driven all day, we had time for a full day at the national park (aka, 'Bear Country Shiretoko"). There is the habitat of a few hundred Higuma bears, which are about the size of the California black bear. So when we went hiking, we kept to the very well-trodden path around the lakes where the other hundreds of tourists were, so we wouldn't have any unpleasant encounters. The hike itself was nothing challenging, but I'm glad we did it because the next segment was walking up a hot-spring waterfall. This waterfall 'Kamui-wakka taki' or, God's hotspring waterfall, was a wide but shallow path of warm water down a stone surface, laced with quartz. it was breathtaking.

The best part was the bus ride up to the waterfall where the driver stopped to let us take pictures of the foxes and deer that trotted up along the side of the bus.

That afternoon we decided to take a 'bear-seeing' ocean cruise, which involves riding up the coast until you get to a riverbank, cutting the engine and getting as close as you can to try to see the bears hunting for salmon.
By close as you can, I mean, maybe a quarter of a mile away, which is why I have fond memories of my bear seeing experiences, ('oh, is that it? yes! that black spot is moving! I think that spot is definitely possibly a bear!!') but no pictures.

But this was made up by the return trip, where we took a route farther into the open ocean, and were greeted by a pod of dolphins playing in the surf made by the boat.They were graceful, playful, close, and ... impossible to catch on camera. I took about twenty pictures, and none of them contain a dolphin in them. Well one has half a flipper, I think. siiigh.

That night we went scouting for a famous outdoor onsen mentioned in a guidebook, but on the way we drove next to a river, on the bank of which were several excited photographers. Curious, we slowed for a look, and on the opposite bank was a bear! but not just any bear, a momma bear with cub, both looking a little freaked out. We got the heck out of there, and I marked the spot mentally to look for tragically severed body parts on the way back. After what seemed like a half an hour of driving very slowly behind a pair of large-antlered deer ambling up the road in front of us, we arrived at a hotel.

Inquiries made at the front desk pointed us to a dimly lit spot a few hundred feet into the woods, which turned out to be a natural, outdoor hotspring. Getting in and out was cold, but the water was wonderful, and we could hear the gentle rushing of the river closeby, and the screams of photographers getting dismembered by bears in the background.

Alright, I made that last part up. Maybe.

The third day was spent driving through seemingly limitless beautiful, bountiful farmlands. For lunch we stopped by the lake 'Akanko' which is famous for Ainu culture (the native people of Hokkaido, which to my untrained eye looked a lot like native americans).
We had lunch at an Ainu-cuisine restaurant. I ordered the 'ponche pizza', which had its crust made out of a root vegetable... chewy but good. Takeshi had a venison rice bowl which he approved of. But in the background, the restaurant was trying a little to hard to have a sufficiently 'ainu-y' atmosphere, and was playing traditional Ainu music, which sounded like a large spring bouncing around: "sproing sproing SPROING sproooooiiing sproing...." The 15 minutes while we were waiting for our food started to feel like an eternity. All I can say is, thank god music has evolved, even to only slightly better teeny j-pop.

We had to get to Furano by sunset to set up camp, so we booked it, pushing the limits of the little Suzuki Swift's power. As I was rushing over the apex of a slightly hilly overpass, I think I might have been caught by the flash of a speed camera(!!) which catches the license and your face. Unfortuately the car was rented in my name, so they'll have no problem catching me if so. I'm crossing my fingers that it was just my imagination, but also, next time I think I'll try the trick they recommended on Top Gear: bring a mask. ;)

We made it just in time to catch the last of the light and pitch the tent, and then wandered into town to try to find dinner and fuel for the car. Dinner was easy, I had a sushi salad with hokkaido cheese on top. News flash: Cheese and wasabi go really well together!

Anyways, the next day we went to the famous lavender fields of Furano, and sampled cheese at the cheese factory, and bought some famous musk melons (if you buy them in Tokyo, the price suddenly inflates to about $100 per melon!!). The guidebooks all mention Furano as the don't miss spot in Hokkaido, and it didn't dissapoint.
One unfortunate point was that the lavender season ends in mid July, and it was the end of August when we went... no lavender flowers. But there was a field of autumn blossoms to enjoy, and more importantly the lavender had been freshly harvested and pressed into various goods, like bath oils, teas, room freshener, and soft-cream flavors. (lavender soft-serve! yum!)

That was the last day, so we made our way back to the airport, with only one minor fiasco of me trying to drive on the right (ie, wrong) side of the street when exiting a gas station. Oops.

All in all, very worthwhile and full of adventures, a proper vacation. And that was our trip!

She works hard for the money

...So my company better treat me right!

This week on my attempt to update more often, I bring you Kyra's Code Dash, Summer play. Enjoy!

Kyra's Code Dash Did you ever have one of those days at work where someone assumes you have something done that you very much don't? That happened to me this week and damn, was it annoying.

Apparently about 4 months ago we scheduled the site for BlackShot (the online FPS game we bought from the korean company Ntreev, if you've been paying attention)... and the higher ups ordered a code review of the site to be scheduled at a future date. Fast forward to last week, and my team leader looks at a peice of paper with a shocked/bemused expression. 'This here says the entire site is supposed to be finished by 7/27! ... (glances at me, the site coder). "give me that!" I snatch the paper out of his hands. Sure enough, the testing company is going to test 26 pages the following monday. 19 of which do not yet exist. These pages are on my schedule as taking through mid-august. Aaaand the one guy that knew about this date of the test and my schedule is (CONVENIENTLY) on vacation!!

A somewhat heated discussion with the rest of the department concluded:
1. This would cost too much to reschedule.
2. You can get ignore TWO (out of 19) pages.
3. Get them done, kiddo.

AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!

So this past week I have been in a coding frenzy. I have worked my little fingers to the bone, eyes blurring, butt numbing, legs cramping, and leaving at 11 PM every day only so I don't miss the last train. I worked most of saturday, and put finishing touches on sunday. But now, at last, it is done. Done! DONE!! (cue the hallelujah chorus!) And now I get Wednesday off to make up for saturday.
But now they're going to test my pages and probably find some nasty security holes. What can I say, that's what happens when you give someone a week to make a forum, a ranking system, and a site that appears private for every clan. Oh well, at least my work for the next two weeks is pretty much done and now I'll be able to take my sweet time. I'm thinking naptimes are in order.

Summer Play I love Japanese summer. Even though it's hot, and the humidity makes it seem even hotter, it's the season when vitality is literally bursting through the seams of Tokyo. It's this season when you forgive them for making everything out of dreary grey concrete, because if they didn't the weeds and plants would take over the place quicker than you can say 'heat island effect'.

To take advantage of the glory of the season with its deep blue sky and bright white clouds, I've been meeting up with friends and organizing trips. It was a 3 day weekend last week, which was busily and happily spent with Jen, Elaine (and Paul and Mel) from the US going to Kamakura seeing the Great Buddha. Monday was 'Umi no Hi' (Ocean Day), so we went to the beach with some friends we dragged along at the last minute.

Then Sunday, even though I was dead tired and had worked in the morning, I had organized a trip to my neighborhood (one stop by train!) amusement park. Even though it was tiring, we had a great time making fun of each other and getting sick on rides and ... having beers. Yes, beers! in the amusement park!
Japan is a very advanced country.
I've never been a big fan of beer until I had one after that long hot tiring day. I swear that kirin was made of sweet ambrosia.

Next time: Calorie Mate... aka, Ship's Biscuit.

Team Leader = Cheemu Ri-da-

Hey guys! long time no see. I'm going to try a new format, maybe this way I can get myself to update a little more regularly. Instead of one long story, from now on this blog will be divided into tasty magazine-like nuggets. Here goes.

Working at Play work blurb of the week from an online game-hosting company. In japanese companies there are always strict hierarchical systems. You know exactly who is above and below you in the food chain (you'd better because your style of speech depends on it).
These ranks are accompanied by a plethora of titles. The way this traditionaly works is instead of saying 'Yamada-san', you put the title at the end, so the division head becomes 'Yamada-kacho'.
Of course japanese titles are used, but for some reason there is a love of western titles as well, and with the ever complex political system of everyone needing a title, they always need new ones.
So it's not strange here to hear of a Yamada-Team Leader, a Suzuki Project Manager, etc. But this way it's hard to know who's in charge. As of yesterday, one of the managers was promoted to Chief.
Does this rank above Kacho? Who knows? Who cares? But more importantly, do they know how silly 'Yamada-chee-fu' sounds? Deep thoughts.

Projects: For an anniversary present, Takeshi got me an iPod Touch. That thing is so sexy. But it seems a little crippled without the internet connection. There is *very* little free wi-fi available in this most hi-tech of cities.
Anyways, so this limits the gadget to movies, music, and applications. As a developer, I cannot help but drool at the thought of making an app for the ipod. Even with very modest pricing units, if you can just get a few hundred downloads, you just made a month's rent. Plus it just looks fun. I wanna make a 'learn japanese kanji through comics' app... drawn by moi. ;)
I was looking around, but to my dismay I found that you need a mac to develop for it. Waaaaah.

Question of the day... if you could make any ipod app, what would you make?

A typical morning

Hey guys. I have no internet connection at the office this morning, thus plenty of time to sit in front of the computer and type something to try to look busy even though I can't do any work without the internet. So here you go, a typical morning in the life of K. (drumroll please!)

6:30 - T wakes up. He has to get to work early every day, unlike me. My job starts at 10, so I am a lazy bum in the morning. I usually don't even notice his alarm clock.

7 - hubby is dressed and ready to go, but he comes back to bed to snuggle. I am not a snuggler when I sleep. I have a distinct marked territory that I guard with sharp elbows and cold toes, and in the morning, stinky breath. I know I am a terrible person, but somehow this does not make me want to snuggle any more.

Typical 7 am dialogue: T tries to snuggle. I put up with it for about a minute, then slowly roll away.
Then I am chased. This slow persuit usually end with me pinned at the wall, and finally, I groggily complain and/or defend myself with above tactics.
T: don't you LOVE me?
K: I love you... now go away please.
Usually it's not too much longer until he is satisfied that he has bothered me sufficiently and gets up to leave, where we exchange the Japanese 'itekimasu/iterashai' lines. If I'm not already asleep ,that is.

7:15 - 8:15 I have the bed to myself. Well mostly to myself. Cally thinks this is a good opportunity to steal T's pillow, which is orthopedic and has a round impression in the middle for good neck support. This pillow is apparently also manufactured for cats (or should be), beacuse the depression is exactly the size of Cally's body. She approves of it wholeheartedly. In fact, sometimes she waits stealthily even at night for T to roll over and temporarily discard his pillow, at which point she pounces and steals it. T has to wake up and push her away to get his pillow back(at least for the time being). Ah, domestic squabbles.

8:15: my alarm goes off. Of course I ignore it.
8:30 - sometimes 8:40 - once 9:00(!) : Wake up for real. depending on remaining time, do the following things...

Not Optional: Get dressed, feed Cally.
Probably Should Not Be Optional: Wash face and brush teeth and put on deodorant. Put rice in rice cooker so its ready when we get home.Yeah, sometimes I am bad and have no time, so replace with teeth brushing with Good ol listerine and face washing with a wet towel. No wonder I have cavities.
Definitely Optional: makeup. I often put this on in the train. I know I am not supposed to, as there are big manners signs everywhere on the train illustrating improper behavior, and makeup was on at least one of them. what a punk.

It takes 40 odd minutes from station to station, but the office is about 12 minutes walk from the station, so depending on which train I catch determines how fast I have to move.
Best train: 8:59. (can walk at a normal pace. heavenly!)
Not great train: 8:04. (have to power walk).
Bad train: 8:08. Have to run like Flash Gordan, panting and causing little kids to stare and point.

I usually run through the ticket gates, which are made for speed because they have a touch-free system whereby you just place your card near the sensor and it lets you in. (It's the FUTURE!)
Then I get down to the platform, thirsty from my run, and go to the vending machine where I can use my train pass to buy a drink, also via a touch-free system. (Also the FUTUREEE!)

I almost always get the power walk train. Am thinking of joining Olympic competition for speed-walkers. (have you ever seen those guys? creepy snake walk!)
On the way to the office (while power-walking), I am usually guided by about 5 - 10 construction workers pointing out obvious detour routes from various construction sites. Since I see them every morning, I should probably say hello, but instead I take the typical Tokyo attitude of pointedly looking away and pretending they do not exist. Hm, this was the attitude in New York, too. Something about big cities makes you really want to ignore the 30,000 people you see every day. Too much stimulation.

Anyways, as long as I get to my computer by 9:58, am Ok. We use time card software, but since we have to turn off our computers every night, 8:57 - 10:00 is usually a stressful time where I tap my fingers and wait what seems an eternity for my computer to boot up. (And no, changing the system time on my computer does not change the timecard software time. I did try this. ;) )

10:00 : "chou rei".Literally, First Bow. hee. Yes, we do bow. And also greet each other in unison. Japanese meetings like having you say stuff in unison. Like 'Good morning!' and 'Good work!'
Anyways, this is the morning standup meeting. Team leaders announce what they do for the day, but more importantly, individual tardinesses are announced. Even if you are going to be one minute late, you have to email in the office, so they know what to announce about you during the chou-rei.
Is this tre lame, or non? We didn't even do stuff like this in college. Le sigh.

10:10~ : The work itself is not bad. I make web pages for the official sites of our supported games, but more the calculations/db connections,data display parts.. ie, the parts that require programming as opposed to the layout and design. While sometimes I am jealous of the creative nature of the design teams job, I am quickly comforted by the fact that they work until midnight every day, where I get out a semireasonable hour. Ha-ha!

Lunch: usually bring lunch from home. Or more often, realize that I left my lunch in the refrigerator of our apartment, curse to myself, and buy food from the 7-11 on the first floor.

7-11s in japan are the same as 7-11s in america, except that they are about 1000 times cleaner, in convenient locations, packed to the gills with japanese snacks like octopus tentacles and rice balls, have a big section of those phonebook size mangas (businessmen often read them standing up without purchasing), and contain everything else you might possibly need like a surcharge free ATM, a cpoy machine, dvds, household supplies, stamps, anything. So really, nothing at all like American 7-11s.

Lunch time is the time I gab to my other systems team co-workers. They are mostly non-japanese (chinese and korean), so often the one or two japanese guys will end up trying to correct us, or say something slangy to each other and end up being forced to explain what they mean. This must be tiring to them, but is a nice japanese lesson time for us. For instance, one of my co-workers hates veggies. He picks tomatoes out of his lunch, shudders at the thought of vegetable juice. From him I learned 'kyouteki na piman', which means "My arch-enemy, the bellpepper." Now if that's not something you can use in daily conversation, I don't know what is.

Next time... an afternoon in the life.. (or not. Mostly it's just the morning in reverse, except for less rush and includes making dinner and squabbling over who gets to play their video game at home. Ahh domestic squabbles.)

Seoul Trip

One of the benefits of being in Japan (if you are originally from a western country) is the proximity of *other* new and interesting places. Considering the flight time from America, most Asian countries require at least a formidable week off to see. But if your base is Japan, suddenly the entire orient opens its arms to the curious traveler. With only a $300 ticket (round-trip, including taxes and fuel surcharges and whatnot) I was able to see my friend in Korea... only 2 hours away by plane.

My itinerary was kind of crazy, because in order to get the cheap (I know, not that cheap) priced ticket, I was to land Saturday night at 10 pm, and leave Monday morning at 8:30. So the airline Asianic was pretty awesome. Maybe it's just that they had all the things you got used to back in the carefree days of air travel- like complementary meals, and metal silverware.

But arriving at 10PM in a foreign country is nothing to sneeze at. Luckily Gimpo is connected to central Seoul via subway. And the subway system is pretty similar to Japan... except of course that everything is written in Korean. One ticket ranges from 1000 to 3000 won, which is cheap! but on the weekends they don't bother to power on the ticket vending machines, you have to buy them from the guy at the booth, so it's best to have a map handy to point at in case you can't pronounce the station names.

Having printed out a subway map before I left, I managed to get to the place where I had to change trains, but just missed the transfer, which happened to be the last train. Thank god I had rented a cell phone. I was able to find a taxi without much trouble, but the taxi driver didn't speak English. I tried speaking to him in Japanese, but no luck. So I called MJ, who came to my rescue and told the driver where to go over the phone. phew!

It was really really cold in Seoul, only a few degrees above freezing. For some reason my geographical sense was a little confused and I thought that since Korea was closer to southern japan, Seoul would be warmer... but of course Seoul is in the northern part of the country, north of Tokyo in fact. Oops. My thin coat was enough, but just barely.

Luckily MJ found me with help of cell phones, and guided me to her and her brother's apartment. Both of them are very sweet people, and fluent in English. In Korea they don't use kotatsu (the Japanese low table covered with a blanket and heated inside)... they have heating in the floors, which kept the entire apartment very warm and made me want to roll around on the floor like a cat. (which is probably not acceptable behavior for a guest).

It was great staying with friends, because we stayed up chatting and gossipping, and watching Korean TV shows and talking about the differences between japan and korea, and the korea-china-japan relationship. MJ: "So Japan hates Korea, right? Koreans don't like japan because of the colonization in WW2." me... "hm... maybe, but mostly they hate China more. whenever China does something bad, it's on the news for weeks." MJ: "oh yeah, Korea doesn't like China either, but we think of Chinese as underneath us." Me: "It seems weird for this kind of squabbling between neighbors. it's like... sibling rivalry or something." North Korea wasn't even mentioned, even though we were both a bit worried about that missile launch test. I mean... "satellite launch test"... right. But at my company, there are plenty of koreans and chinese and japanese working (plus the one american) and we all like each other. So it's not as bad as it sounds. But of course, it's probably like this everywhere, like in Europe where I can't even remember half of my history classes because there's always some war going on somewhere for most of the last millennium. le sigh.

Anyways. We also watched the figure skating championships, and Kim Yu-Na kicked some serious ass, getting 10 points more than any other competitor and making a new world record. We stayed up gabbing and munching on snacks and watching TV and planning my day, which was going to have a very tough schedule.

I ended up waking up at 8, and taking a train into the city. The plan was to go to one part, take a cab, go to another part of the city, take another cab, and so forth, but the downtown area where most of the tourist attractions were was not that big, and I wanted to see everything, so I ended up walking everywhere.

First stop: Geyoungbuk palace. This palace really reminded me of the forbidden city in Beijing. The same barren courtyard filled with cobblestones, the same hundreds of small rooms making up the courtyard walls, the same style of animal statues on the eaves of the roofs. The interesting part was the changing of the guards, where about fifty men wearing silks did an elaborate ritual of salutes, music playing and marching to show that the new guards were not impostors. Next was the folk museum, which was free this year for some reason or the other. It had some nice exhibits on what life in Seoul was like for the past few thousand years. It has always been a big city, and the overall layout hasn't changed that much. but by far the most interesting exhibit was their kimchee one. For those who don't know, kimchee is a name for a style of pickling... any kind of vegetable pickled with hot peppers and garlic falls under this category. And this style of food is a huge staple in Korea... so much so that when I had lunch and dinner, both meals came with four kinds of kimchee as an appetizer, like a bread basket in France.

After the folk museum I studied my map for a good five minutes, scratching my head and trying to figure out where to go. I tried asking for directions, but no one I asked knew English. finally I found an information booth, where the lady there gave me a free map and helped me out. So I walked to *** , which was a very touristy little area lined with small shops selling touristy trinkets. Wedged between the souvenir shops were little art galleries, some stores selling paintings and some selling handmade silk embroidered wall hangings. I wanted to get one, but they were priced like art, so I made do with the cheap trinkets.

After that I was tired and hungry, so I found a restaurant where they served chicken dumpling soup (with Kimchee of course), which is what I was told to try. It also satisfied my other requirements, namely 1) picture menus 2) not too pricey 3) clean interior 4) lots of locals eating there. I made sure to order the *non spicy* chicken dumpling soup, seeing as how my definition of spicy and that of the average korean is vastly different. ;) Sorry, I don't remember the name of the restaurant ... but there were a lot on the alleys around the main street, so you probably can't go too wrong eating around there.

Next stop was the Lotte department store. Lotte, while mainly just a snack manufacturer in Japan, is a huge conglomerate in Korea, selling everything you can imagine. They even have a "Lotte World" amusement park, apparently. But this department store was very expensive even by Japanese standards, and is probably for only the rich in Korea. I spent a long time there trying to find 'cheap brand name goods', but gave up. Plenty of brand name goods were there for the having, but none of them cheap.

While walking further on my self-guided tour, I had to cross many streets that don't have crosswalks. What they do have are underground arcades leading across the street, lined with small stores. A lot of these stores are sad looking affairs selling things like calculators from the '80s and watch-bands.. but a few were chain stores capitalizing on the cheap real estate. One of these chain stores was an amusing outfit called "THE FACE SHOP". (Not in any way affiliated with THE BODY SHOP). It had about a million pictures of the Korean drama star the Japanese middle age ladies reverently call "Yun-sama", who apparently endorses all of the facial cleansers, pore minimizers, mud packs that the chain had to sell. Intrigued by the concept and the inexpensiveness of the goods, I bought a few things, and the lady at the counter threw in at least four free samples. Definitely a recommended stop if you're into facial products.. and/or Yun-sama.

As my day was limited, the next place I went was the cable car up to Seoul tower. (7000 won round trip.) It was a nice view on the way up, but the line for the cable car took easily half an hour each way. I'm not sure if it was the best use of my limited time... if I had to do it over again, I'd probably get a one-way ticket and ride the very cheap bus back down the hill. But definitely don't skip out on the hill of the tower, it has a breathtaking view of the city. I didn't go up the tower because they wanted another 7000 won (rip off!) but was perfectly satisfied with the view from the base, as it's on a tall hill overlooking the city anyway. And surrounding the hill is a chain link fence with thousands of locks, put there by lovers to 'lock in' their love. They were decorated and very cute. After I got down the hill I walked through Myong-dong (a shopping district) and enjoyed the foreign looking signs lighting up as the sun was setting. Somehow, even though korea is so much like japan in many ways, not being able to read the signs made it seem so much more foreign and exciting. Heh. There's something about seeing a pretty lantern at a festival and reading "McDonalds" on it that takes away a lot of the enchantment. ;)

It was time to get back as my friends were going to be back from work/class soon, so I hopped on the subway... and proceeded to get very lost. I scrutinized my map, and the map on the train, and realized I had got on the wrong line. After changing trains three more times, I finally made my way back to the apartment, but this turned out to be rather serendipitous? is that a word? because I found a lot of tiny shops in the subway stations that sold cute clothes/shoes/snacks for much cheaper than any of the stores I had seen in downtown seoul, and was able to supplement my rather meagre shopping.

Dinner was traditional korean BBQ, of course delicious, and of course came with kimchee. ;) It's definitely better to visit a country where you have people to recommend restaurants and take you there!

After dinner I went to the neighborhood public bath, where they had four kinds of saunas and six different kinds of baths. Event bath, jacuzzi, scented, massage... super hot and ice cold. Not too different from japanese sento, but maybe more selection. I have to admit that the japanese sento are a little cleaner.

The next morning I took a taxi to the airport. "Gimpo e-ru-po-ru-to!" I said to the driver, as I had been instructed by my friend. The taxi driver copied it back to me as a question, and when I said mm hmm! he drove a bit. Then stopped. "Gimpo ee-ru-po-ru-to?" he said, just to really confirm that , that was in fact where I wanted to go. This time I said 'yes!'. This seemed to satisfy him, and he got me to the airport in a timely fashion, for a mere 20,000 won (less than $20).

All in all, a great trip. Thanks again so much MJ and Luka! Next time I will come when I have more than one day to hang out. :)

Being unneccesarily guided

Trying to thing of something to blog about, I decided to continue the good ol' whats different about Japan series. Some may say it's too easy, but hey. It's a three day weekend and I'm feeling lazy.

After the vending machines, cuteness, everything being small, and no greenery anywhere except for public parks, another thing that you start to notice after living here are the people whose sole job is to guide you.

I'm not talking about people guiding you through the wilderness, or on a tour of a foreign country or other places where you would actually need a guide. What I am talking about are those unfortunate men and women whose day of drudgery involves guiding you
*up an escalator
*into an elevator
*into a parking garage
* on a clearly marked pedestrian path when there is construction.

Yes, they do exist. On my route to work in the morning, due to the hopeful investors building hotels in case Tokyo wins the bid for 2016 Olympics(the proposed stadium site would be really close to my office), there is a frenzy of construction. Due to some law or another, they have to make a pedestrian route around the construction zone (fine with me), but they also have to dedicate a worker to guide you onto the *clearly marked* path.

Also, for some reason... my station has an over-enthusiastic elderly worker who takes it upon himself to say "ohayou gozaimasu" to every single person, and gesture you onto the escalator. Every time. Just in case you forgot where the escalator was since yesterday.
So between him and the three construction sites on my route, I can't help feeling a little... okay, a lot like a cow, being very politely herded to the office. もおおおお！ (this means both "moo" and "jeez, enough already" ;))

blog to book project

disclaimer: this entry is about programming. (sorry! but I get the feeling most of my blog readers are probably not too scared of technical things anyway...)

Although I've mainly been a Java programmer until this point, my company's needed some help making campaigns and such for its game websites, and these are all done with PHP. Note: if you know Java, besides the inevitable syntax mix ups for the first few days, php is pretty much a piece of cake. (ok, except for debugging which can be quite painful, forcing even... (gasp) medieval print statements to see what your darn variables are, if you don't have the right setup. which I do not.

So anyways, as a happy side effect I have been getting downright comfortable with PHP. And this opens a lot of doors for the hobbyist programmer, as many APIs (including Google, and probably Facebook...) are interfacable wih PHP. Which means, in a word... Apps! With sufficient time and energy, you can probably make something pretty neat and hook it up to your favorite Web2.0 site.

Which is why I want to do one! Ok... I don't have that much time or energy as it is mostly going to reading every single English book in the hikarigaoka public library. ;) But I can dream....

Ladies and gentlemen, here is my idea and how to do it. (drumroll please): Blog to PDF! I really want an application that will make my blog into a book. I think the best way to do i would be to make a PDF, and then send it to Lulu or some other such self-publishing site.

1. to slurp in all of a person's blog info, help them choose entries, and store, you need this: http://code.google.com/apis/blogger/docs/1.0/developers_guide_php.html

2. To write the book out to pdf format you need this: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/generate-pdfs-php/

So now, dear reader, you know how (in theory) to make the application I want. Please let me know when you're done, as I will be much to busy to write it myself, seeing as how the King of Torts is due back in a few days. ;)