Java in Japanese

I've been working at my new job for about a week now, it's very exciting to have a reason to get out of the house every day. The company is located in Shinjuku, which is possibly the most bustling part of Tokyo. And of course, its nice to have an excuse to wear nice clothes and makeup and feel important. (Actually, I'm still not a fan of makeup.. oh well).

Anyways, I'm a Java programmer. Actually, I'm being trained at the moment on the finer points of programming. In Japanese.
My advisor is (luckily) a very smart guy who has lived in the US for 12 years and speaks english fluently. (Yay!) but the book he told me to study from is... in Japanese. *sigh*. At least my vocabulary is improving...^^ I'm creating a list of programming words I ran across in my textbook that have been translated as a kind of cheat-sheet. If anyone's interested, I'll post a link to it in my next entry.

I naturally had a couple of questions for my advisor.
"So, words like 'for, if, else, new', etc. are obviously written in English because they're reserved words. But variables and method names are written in Japanese, right?"

"Actually, we try to write everything in english. Even with methods... (think of methods as the verbs of the program, like "calculateCost") we try to write the english verb... it doens't always come out the way it should, though."

Hehe, I don't know whether that's good or bad. It just reinforces the fact that you really don't need know Japanese to program, even in Japan. If you have to do some assignments at the end of a chapter in a textbook, however, that's a different story... *cry*

This week my boss has sending me to the JavaOne conference that's being held here in Tokyo. There are a lot of lectures in English (Sun sent over some of their top Engineers to give talks), "yay English!" I thought. "I can finally understand what the heck they're talking about!" Turns out two of the four lectures I attended yesterday discussed new technology I've never heard of before, so my comprehension level would have been the same even if it were in Japanese.
*sigh*
but anyways! today the exhibit hall opens, so it's time to get some really geeky souveniers!! hee hee. Come one, you know you want a pen that says 'Java' in Japanese on it ^^ Time to send some things to LMU professors.

When at the bookstore, searching for the text my instructor told me to buy, I saw this book. Yeah, that's a random anime character on the cover. Throughout the book, there are little pictures of her marking advice, warnings, etc. I can't decide whether its to be cute and friendly, or to market to really geeky lonely boys. Only in Japan!! *^_^*	JavaOne registration. If you look really closely, there's a sign that says "The power of Java rotates the planet". and here I always thought it was gravity ^^

Sorry, I know this was a really boring entry. Blame my dad. Here's the gist of what he emailed me last night:
'write a blog now! now now now!...if you have time.'
~_~ See ya next time.

PS my friend Julia is coming this week! How exciting!