Jérôme Sadou

CMWC TOKYO 2009

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:48:49 GMT

Tokyo will host this year the Cycle Messenger World Championships, it will take place on 19-23,26th of September.

Already many riders registered but there's still lots of room!

I found this really cool promo video by Eli Tokyo Jitensha-Jin :

CMWC 2009 Tokyo Promo Video Part 1 from Eli Tokyo Jitensha-Jin on Vimeo.

(There's a also a HD version).

I invite you also to check the official site of the event :

http://www.cmwc2009.com/.

Come on! Japan is waiting for you!

Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - Part 3

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:06:13 GMT

Oops, I completely forgot to post this last article about my short trip in Ho Chin Minh City a.k.a Saigon, Viet Nam. Here we go :

(Taken in the Reunification Palace)

First a few words about my packing. As the trip was only 4 days (plus the flights), I decided to travel "light".

I wanted to have only one small back pack to carry. It was not so difficult. Apart from the clothes I was wearing, I just took with me few t-shirts and underwear.

Everything else was some electronics stuff : DSLR, Powerbook 15", iPhone (plus cables and adapters). With a compact camera and a netbook it would have been even much lighter. Two useful items I brought : a white Mizuno t-shirt + underwear anti-bacteria, UV protector and that can dry quickly and also a small towel that can dry extremely fast.

The hotel : the New World Hotel, comfortable, nothing really special; filled mainly with business men on trip.

Good point : I always like the choice for breakfast in this kind of hotels, a good start for the day.

Bad point : 18 dollars to surf the net during 24 hours and if you want the wifi in the main hall it costs 18 dollars more!

This last 2 days were dedicated to some historical places visit and shopping.

First we went to the old presidential palace now converted as a museum. This building became famous when a north Vietnamese army tank destroyed the gate, ending the war.

The presidential office, I don't know why often leaders like to have dead animals around... weird imho.

A more traditional room as opposed to the rest of the building (it as been destroyed and rebuilt so I guess these items were from the previous palace).

Presidential garden, nice place to escape the heat.

The underground : with the communication tools, "server room" of this time.

Quite creepy place actually (underground, narrow corridors ...).

Then we went to the war museum, I did not shot too many pictures over there. It is quite an emotional place, I've seen an American woman in tears visiting it. Of course they exposed many shocking photos, especially the ones of victims of chemical stuff...

One corner interested me : about Robert Capa, legend of the photojournalism (he was the only photographer at the D Day in Normandy...). He died in Vietnam (still named Indochina at the time) in 1954 (during the first part of the war, against French). We can see his last photo, few minutes before he walked on a mine that killed him. He is maybe the most famous war photographer.

Life magazine, reporters were more free on the battlefield at that time. Many died to inform the world though.

But sometime with some luck a camera can save your life! I am not sure my Nikon D5000 would be that resistant...

Time to get out for "fresh" air (it was damn hot actually).

A Buddhist temple, to rest the mind :

First time I see this : cigarettes as gift! ...

An other spiritual place, the cathedral built by the French.

The post office which looks like a train station. It's huge and inside of course there's a portrait of our "friend" Ho Chi Minh.

(I've read something interesting about the beginning of the war against French : Ho Chi Minh sent a telegram to the American President asking for help and support in the purpose to become a free country (as the United Nation of the time supported the movement : ending colonialism). Well the least we can say is that he did not get the wished answer : 30 years of war...).

Back to more prosaic thing : some rest at a café.

The best places to surf the web. Each café offers wifi for free, so you can see many people with their laptop.

The most famous market of Ho Chi Minh City : Ben Thanh...

Mmm, how can I say, I checked testimonies on the web before to go : most of people agreed : "best place to find cheap stuff and fun to visit". Well, I did not like it at all!

First prices are not good and even after painful negotiations and the quality is often low... It doesn't worth the shopping in my opinion. And also sellers are quite aggressive, grabbing your arm to stop you and begging at you... I know that as a western guy, I am supposed to be "rich" but the way they try to force me to buy was very unpleasant. So instead to look around and maybe buy some stuff, I quickly wanted to get out of the place. They lose some dollars...

Time to relax and have some good food.

Night show, I recommend this one : the traditional water puppets show, short stories with live singing and music.

Saigon - Traditionnal Water Puppets Show from Jérôme Sadou on Vimeo.

Even if we can't understand the words it is real fun. (and they gave us a pamphlet with basic explanations)

Some more street's photography:

In this street sea lion can't ride bicycle :

(sorry for that)

Last night shots from the bus to the airport, trying different settings on the D5000.

How I came to live in Japan

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:57:48 GMT

I receive from time to time e-mails from readers who want to know how I happened to live in Japan etc...
So here are answers to the most common questions.

[Comrade trecker during Daisen climbing. Tottori 07/2005]

I first visited Japan in 2005, during 6 weeks in July and August. I landed at Osaka Airport.This trip took place after my first year of Japanese studies at the University of Le Havre (Normandy, France). I was at that time employed by a Junior High School so I had time for some study. Having an interest in Japanese culture for a while, I thought it would be fun to learn the language.
Of course after about 9 months of study my level was rather low but I decided to take a plane and confront the country for a six weeks trip.

[my bedroom closet in Osaka : 2.5m2...]

[Rehearsal for the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto]

To make it short, I spent one week in Osaka (with a jump in Nara and Kyoto), then about 5 weeks in Tottori Ken and Okayama as a WWOOFer and then few days again in Osaka.

[Nakayama, Tottori Ken 07/2005]

[In the rice field(田んぼ＝tanbo) wearing long to protect from the sun and sweating a lot... at 6:30AM]

It was a great experience and was confident I'd go back, especially as I met a cute girl (I know it's a total cliché :).

As a matter of a fact, the second trip was to meet again this cute girl and I spent 2 weeks in March 2006 with her family.

[Chizu, Tottori Ken 03/2006 old traditional house, now museum]

[Kurayoshi, Tottori Ken 03/2006]

Then she came for 2 weeks in France during summer 2006.

A big decision had to be taken : third trip to Japan! :D

This time I arrived in Tokyo in September with the goal to find a job. Being older than 30 y.o I couldn't have a working holiday visa, so I just came with a tourist visa which meant I had only 3 months to find a job (plus I did not renewed my contract with the Junior High School in France, meaning that if I'd had failed to find a job I'd be back unemployed in France...).

Even with a low level of Japanese I found a job quite quickly! Actually two companies agreed to support me for the working visa! I won't go into details now but I started to work at Samurai Factory on December, the 18th of 2006. And I am still working with them! Oh, and by the way, the cute girl I met in 2006 became my wife in February 2009 :)

If you have more questions you can first try a search in the blue top bar and if you don't find any answer with this search, you can still drop me a mail at : jeromesadou (AT) gmail (DOT) com or ask in the comments.

And by the way this is the first anniversary of this blog today! I would like to thank you as you are more and more to stop by here everyday.

Tokyo CGM Night #5

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:28:48 GMT

A short note about the Tokyo CGM Night 5 (What?! 5 already!？早い！) organized by Danny and Andrew.

Lot's of stuff on the net already of course as it took places last Monday in a KDDI office. Just check the Danny's article for millions of links directing to billions of photos! (This event is becoming a DSLR contest :)

These photos by Jonny Li.

Usual suspects were here as new faces which is all good. This night was clearly more OO (Otaku Oriented) with some cos players and idols, mixed with IT people, photographers and more. Well perfectly at the image of Danny.

Actually I spent most of the evening in the little next room listening to A.Havill with some few others.
It was really an interesting and informative talk.

From left to right in a meishi exchange process :
A.Havill (working for a biG Cie :), Ken Lee (blogger at KenLeeWrites and iPhone App Developer among other things), Serkan Toto (who do many things also like finishing a PHD and writing for Techcrunch) and da man, Danny :D

I took only few shots myself...

Red eyes idol (for once red eyes are not caused by the camera...).

A crazy dance : I have no idea what it was, but was fun to look at.

Who says Otaku are not sporty? Look at that synchronized jump!

A cute Samurai Girl!

Promoting her moe photo book.

And people networking : even Son Goku was here! He wrote the Otaku Encyclopedia in which of course Danny Choo is represented at the C letter.

A nice evening again, a funky mix that turns out quite well I must say. And I finally caught up with some twitter people, (@Oren_the_red, @MartinTokyo , @JonnyLi, @gbboy and @papadimitriou). See you next time guys!

Google Developer Day 09 - Yokohama

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:20:40 GMT

For the second year in a row I could enjoy this event with my co-workers from Samurai Factory. First I enjoy it because it takes place only 12mn from home by bicycle ^_^ and then of course because of the information we can gather during the day.

You may say that looking at the video from the IO event you can get quite the same info, that's partly true. But attending the event you got also information specifically related to the Japanese market and you got goodies! *_* and this year was quite awesome for that!

As always Japanese prove they are the world champs at queuing!

The main amphitheater, packed.

And then it can start! I won't describe the sessions in details, if you have interest in web development, check the videos taken at the IO Developer Conference 09 just 2 weeks ago in San Francisco.

But the keywords of the day were HTML 5 :

All the open source browser will support it, I really hope IE8 will do also. Here and there on the web we can already see what we are able to do with it, it's really promising.

Android : the "google" operating system for mobile phone, claiming already impressive numbers for America. (I'd like to compare to the iPhone ones)

OpenSocial, here presented by David Glazer (I think :/), I like a lot this project.

And then Wave, which will change our way to communicate on the web for sure! I would say "Bye bye Gmail, Hello Wave!"

And then Android, yes again! Cause besides the cute goodies that we got at the entrance (green towel, stickers, android comic book, a mask anti H1N1 - really - :) This year every attendant got a developer version of the HTC Android phone, labeled with a Google Developer Day logo. That's quite amazing! If a good part of the attendant had an iPhone getting inside the Pacifico Hotel, 100% got out with an Android phone ! Good move to attract developers.

After lunch each choose what session he 's going to attend.

Even there I found a bike, he he! Connected to google earth.

I went to the OpenSocial presentation. We don't use OpenSocial at work but we use the OpenID for our latest project : Ninjalyzer.com, available in English, our first step outside of Japan!

Other session, some useful Javascript.

Making graph easier to do.

A French Googler on the right, Patrick Chanezon, I listened to him about the way to optimize code and OpenSocial stuff. He is also working on HTML5.

And back to the main hall for a last presentation, about Wave and it's API. This one is going to be huge.

And that was it. This is the Pacifico Hotel.

It is just near the Landmark Tower in Yokohama Minato Mirai.

Then back home to play with the Android phone! :) I will write an article to present and compare it to the iPhone. Well, nothing really new but in Japan it's still not sold (Docomo will soon).

Everyday Life in Japan - 3

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:00:27 GMT

Let's have a break from the Ho Chi Minh City - Saigon series and let's go back to some Japan shots!

This is part 3 of the "Everyday life in Japan" series.

On my way to the office, getting out of Shin Minami Deguchi (New South Exit = 新南出口) at Shibuya, a give away of some kind of energy drink.

Got to love the Japanese uniforms!

Few streets later, this guy was really sleeping!

This is a "4L" an old French car by Renault, I really wonder how it reached Japan! A friend of mine had one, we had a good fun with it.

This is how the Yokohama station looks like usually around 9AM.

And this how it looks like when the weather is really bad the night before : no train... Thankfully it does not happen often.

A good sushi restaurant near Yokohama Station.

Quite cheap and good.

What is you favorite sushi? I like the simple maguro (tuna) ones, but also the Kani Salada (カニサラダ = crab salad) ones; even if it is not really a sushi...

Last month, we received this letter from the government : they give 12000 yens to all the residents of Japan... Not sure about the efficiency of this move, but I take it!

It's even "written" in Braille, first time I see that.

Random street shot,

This "plant" is in DaikanYama one station from Shibuya, a fashion place.

Back to Yokohama, the division of taxi waiting in front of the station.

With the good weather, many street performers around the station.

Always surprised by how these street groups play already like professional (even if I am not a fan of J-Pop).

Trying some night shots with the Nikon D5000.

Some tests in A or M mode.

The thing is to find something around you to put the camera on.

For this bike shots I just used the automatic mode without flash.

Flash shots always look terrible (I mean using the default unit one).

My Fuji Feather fixed gear and wifeys bike together : "A" mode, trying not too move and waiting for a car coming in the back!

And from our street, Landmark tower in the back, 10mn by bicycle.

Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - Part 2

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:38:34 GMT

Second day, the purpose was to learn about the web in Vietnam from 2 companies and a visit to the University of Technology.

But first I can't resist to show few shots of street life!

Below the poor guy in the middle was carrying some ice that slipped from the bike...

We first visited the office of an outsourcing company (I hope I won't lose my job o_O). I am not sure I can tell its name so I'll ask confirmation tomorrow...
And then we visited the biggest portal site in Vietnam : Zing.vn produced by a company called VinaGame. The web is exploding over there with a 18% growth for each year (which is normal coming from nothing...).

The Cie's goal is 41 Millions users in 2014. They have lots of services on Zing portal and they also produce popular on line games. On the wall of the conference room is written their key phrases.

Then in the afternoon, we visited the University of Technology.

Tropical mood!

Some good old maths! (I forgot almost of it all...)

Happy students!

Japan is a main partner for Vietnam, so not surprising to find Honda as a sponsor here.

Cool student project : let's make an iPhone!

Well, not exactly... In fact, he is programming in C++ to control the touch screen. As he is an iPhone fan but don't own one yet he is using a screen shot of it as an illustration! Good for motivation I guess :)

In the IT department, each student has its own PC (mainly notebooks and in a 25 students class, only one lucky guy had a mac).

Waiting for class, they study outside.

An other project, this one is a portable Karaoke!

They have really cool projects... When I was in Le Havre University we used to program in Pascal or Fortran 77 on Goupil or Bull machine (whatever it was...French stuff...).
I remember the project was a "game" called the "8 queens". As it was every year the same project, students tended to copy what the others did the previous year...
It was around 1995, I think. At that time, I received my first e-mail address and the main search engine was Altavista...

Yep it was rainy. Let's share the rain coat :)

After the uni we did a brief stop at a game center where teenagers played in an incredible noise, mix of different games sounds...

Games like these - produced by VinaGame actually. Then it was time for dinner : some kind of Yakiniku (焼き肉：grilled　meat)! (Japanese stuff but the Vietnamese way... good!)

Of course we couldn't miss to drink the local beers :

Quite light, easy to drink!

End of part 2, a part 3 will come ...

Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - Part 1

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:26:35 GMT

Each year, we have a 4/5 days "field trip" at Samurai Factory. Two years ago we visited Las Vegas and a jump to the Grand Canyon; last year we visited London with a jump in Paris, and this year we went to Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) as known as Saigon (or Sai Gon). I won't copy and paste the wiki page, but it can be a good idea to check it.

Included in the trip, besides usual sightseeing, this time was also an opportunity to visit 2 web companies as well as the University of Technology (and its IT department). I'll develop that a bit in an other article, but for now here are my first impressions of the city, mainly street/traffic shots.

Adults have to wear helmet, but not the kids...eh?

Saigon is the world capital of motorbike.

View from my room at the New World Hotel :

Kid playing :

One of the numerous repair garage :

Morning traffic :

I like this dog, never seen like this before :

Many streets look like this, constructions are all around in the city (there's a lot to do...):

Usual triporteur?

Street life :

I thought cabling/wire system was crazy in Japan. Well, Vietnam does good also!

Man at work :

Ba ba ba (Three three three) :

Traffic is crazy, but a little bit more under the rain...

It seems traffic was even crazier not so long ago, with few regulation lights and nobody wearing helmet... I don't know the official stats about accidents but our guide told us there was (not surprisingly) a lot...

End of part 1 !

PS : All shots done with the Nikon D5000.

Keirin in Yokohama

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Tue, 19 May 2009 23:25:38 GMT

Last Saturday, for the first time I saw some "live" Keirin ( = Cycling Race). I remember I went one time to the velodrome of Le Havre when I was a kid but it was nothing like this place.

This stadium is called Kagetsu Keirin Jô (花月競輪場　= Cycling Race Stadium of Kagetsu ), it is near the Kagetsuen-Mae station, 15mn from Yokohama. Getting out of the station, a shuttle bus was waiting for people to go to the Keirin Jô, so I jumped in, the bus started and then about 20 sec after, it stopped... because we arrived ! 0_0 It's definitely the shortest bus shuttle I ever used! Anyway...

These afternoon races were part of the 150th anniversary of Yokohama's "opening to the world" events. I could hear from some usual Ojisans something like : "There is lots of people today, it reminds me the old days of Keirin". The mood was quite similar to what it is in an hippodrome : first of all, Keirin is about money. It's one of the rare gambling game allowed in Japan. The average user is an 50 y.o Ojisan but we can see any kind of people.

Inside the stadium, Obasans prepare some "home style" curry and you can eat sushi in a standing bar (立ち食い寿司　＝　tachiguizushi) which I did :)

Then it's time for the races. Riders warm up...

Oops not these ones : judges take place and check the track using mama chari (= Mama's bicycle)

Here are the riders, imagine American footballers on bikes!

Well not exactly but it is the image that first came to me (or the movie Rollerball). The average rider is about 85/100Kg nothing compare with the 60 kg climbers of the Tour de France... It's a totally different sport. In the last lap of each race, they reach some incredible speed.

It's really impressive, as much as there legs. For more about the rules etc, you can check the keirin wiki page.

First race I saw, 2 guys testing each other, the audience loved it!

Photo finish to check who's the winner :

Cool down lap to eliminate lactic acid :

And then, one of the Ojisans came to me, asked me if I could speak Japanese... and explained me that it was forbidden to take pictures of the race and of the audience, privacy matters it seems ...

So all I can show you from the gamblers is this :

(The avatar comes from this Keirin site : keiokaku.com)

I stopped taking pictures as Ojisan told me and felt quite frustrated... For the next time I will try to get a license to shoot from the field with these guys.

(Thanks to cyclist, @KankiKnight ( from twitter ) who told me it was possible).

To finish with, here is a commercial for Keirin :

It's the 2007 version, the 2009 is quite similar. There's a lot of them on youtube.

Nikon D5000

jerome@jeromesadou.com (Jérôme Sadou) — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:39:22 GMT

Second article of the week-end!

I bought my first DSLR 4 days ago, it's a Nikon D5000.

As I don't have the skill to make a technical critic of the beast, I simply show what I could do with it.

I mainly used the scene selection. You can choose from 11 different pre-selected settings.

I never used a DSLR before and I was little bit worried, but what I have here makes me quite happy for now.

I am sure the DSLR veterans will notice some horrible mistakes though...

I set-up to 500px the width of each photos for the blog, but you can find the 1024px photos on my Zooomr.
I am afraid that the pictures are also over compressed from the originals, we lose a lot. I have to think how to fix this.

Maybe I have to give more space to the photos in the articles also... 500px is really too small to appreciate the DSLR shots.

For now I have only one lens, as I bought the basic kit with the 18mm-55mm lens.

It costs about 100000 yens at Yodobashi Camera, but having 20000 points on my card, I paid "only" 80000 yens which was kind of a limit I imposed to myself.

For the Keirin (cycling race) shot, I was too far so I did the zoom after in iPhoto, that's why the quality is so-so on this one.

(it's not my house if you wonder ... ^_^;)

With the camera I also received some software to install but still did not check them...

Do people use the software provided by the camera makers? Or use only Adobe or Mac softwares?

There's also a video mode on the camera but I did not try it too much, so nothing "interesting" to show for now. It seems to be the weak point of this camera if I trust all the critics, but I think it will be more than enough for my "needs".