Tokyo Spinning

Air Show

2006-07-27T06:36:00.000+09:00

Every year in Farnborough, the fast and the furious gather to show off the latest in aeronautic wizardry, and good ol' fashioned hotdogging. I paid £44 plus another £12 for the train (the traffic into that rather small town, with quite narrow roads, which are horrendous during the show, so even though it is only 10 miles away, we took the train). I am including a picture of the Airbus A380, the double-decker mammoth that will go into service some time next year, and will haul up to 800 people at a go.
Unfortunately, my normal digital camera with a 10x optical zoom lens gave up after a very few pictures, the battery running out. Pshaw! The image above was from my cell phone a Nokia N70, which isn't bad at all.
Unfortunately, after only about an hours worth of viewing pleasure, it started to rain and thunder, and we had to give up and go home, since we had no shelter, that only given to guests of the pavillions of various manufacturers. I actually have a guy working for me who used to build aircraft simulators, but forgot to ask him if he could get me tickets for one of the pavillions. One more thing on the list to do next time, in addition to taking folding chairs, waterproof wear, and earplugs. Oh yeah, and charging the batteries of my digital camera first.

Seat of My Pants

2006-07-21T08:38:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I had lunch with a colleague that I had known since Japan. We had both worked at the same company, but didn't really work together, since he had worked in finance, and I worked in IT. We met at the Tokyo English Lifeline (TELL) 'marathon' (only 5 kilometres). Our company had a large contingent organised that year (2003). He is from Singapore, but married to a Japanese woman, and had just bought a house in Saitama. Since I lived in Tochigi, we had a little bit to talk about, there, and both being foreigners, in a company where that was not the most common thing, was something else. We would occasionally talk in the hall, or have lunch.
On Monday he e-mailed me asking if I wanted to have lunch. We talked about his new life here, and life here in general, and moving and relocation agents, and some of the hassles I have had. And then the talk turned to work. I had noticed that he now had a 'PMP' after his name on his e-mail signature. That, in case you have missed it, stands for 'Project Management Professional', and is a professional accreditation from the Project Management Institute. It is somewhat the rage in Japan at the moment, which is hardly a surprise: Great! A set of rules to govern the ungovernable! Yeah!
I should say that I have been involved in managing large and small projects for the last 5+ years, and flirted at different points with becoming a PMP. But the thing is this: On the small projects that I managed, it added way too much overhead, and would have meant unacceptably high costs or delays. I played the game, with project plans that looked fine, and documentation like risk analyses, and so on and such, but I was not particularly impressed with how well PMBOK was for managing smaller projects.
And then I got involved, as the leader of a vendor managment team, and concurrently the leader of a change management team, with the mother of all projects. 600 people working on it. The thing is, what I saw many, far too many, really, of these 600 people doing was working on the project, not on achieving what the project had been meant to achieve, the new billing system. When the project was brought to a halt, I remember sitting dejected at my desk, surrounded by reams of documents that I had to shred, and others that needed to be archived, and thinking 'my God! We weren't working on a billing system at all, we were working on a project.'
I had actually hired a PMP, U, an Indian guy, to be on my team, and introduce PMBOK and project managment as a dicipline, to the IT department. He did really well on this project, though he quit before it was completely finished, and went to work for Cisco. He and I are friends, but he was one of the worst: Rather than worrying about actually producing something that would help the project come to completion, he spent hours a day worrying about and creating worry among others about, documentation.
And that is what we had when the project was cancelled; lots of documentation. Absolute shitloads of use cases. Oodles of defect reports, most of which were only defects in the documentation of test cases. Tons of bright red powerpoints.
Sitting there, feeling like a real failure, the absolute feeling of having participated in a real sham, an absolute crock of shit that had nothing to do with building a billing system, and did not, in fact, end up building the system, I took some of it to heart, thinking that perhaps it was partially down to me.
Having a year and a half to think about it, and of course to spin it a little, has given me a more textured perspective. A lot of what I was doing on the project was bringing the additional costs of the inevitable changes to light. It was actually that which led to the cancellation of the project. From that perspective, I was successful in my own area of the project. But it is absolutely difficult to feel that way when the project is such a collossal failure.
I am managing about five concurrent small projects at the moment. I got an absolute bollocking for not having documentation that was very good. Guilty. Depending on the project, some are more or less date driven, have many or fewer dependencies on other departments, require more or less bureaucratic process sign-off, and so on. I just can't be bothered to create the sort of documentation which at it's heart tries to hide the ever-changing complexity that exists in even a small project, in order that upper-management are reassured that everything is ok. That same sick feeling came upon me.
My comment today, to an English colleague was "to those who see these projects from afar, this seems like seat of the pants management, and it scares some of them awfully. To me, this is both the fun, and the only real way to manage. Life, and business as practised by our company, is seat of the pants, and there is no reason that projects wouldn't be. Now what I need to learn to do is to make this a little less scary for my boss." I can manage by GANTT chart with the best of them, create GANTT charts in Project, Visio, Excel, or PowerPoint, and quote the processes needed in PMBOK. I can talk about PRINCE gates, and I can manage lists of issues, take meeting minutes, analyze an SLA, and exhort one and all to "just follow the process," as well as anyone. But I am really not convinced that will help me in the end to achieve what the project was created to achieve in the first place. Projects are about results, and results are about performance. And, in the end, that is more important to me than the letters after my name.

Crybabies?

2006-05-26T06:48:00.000+09:00

Last night, while I was putting my son to sleep, he said something interesting. I should mention, by the way, that he is 8 years old, and had been used to sleeping with his parents in Japan. We needed to put a stop to that when we came here (much to my relief), but I still have to lay next to his bed until he is asleep.
Anyway, he said 'papa, English boys are really weak.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'They are just weak?'
'How are they weak? What do they do that is weak?' I asked.
'They cry at anything,' he said.
The fact that my son who demanded to be put to bed still at 8 years old was calling English boys weak for crying in no way seemed ironic to him.
Japanese children in general are called crybabies, even by their parents, if they cry about silly things. Actually, the Japanese word is 'cry bug' or 'naki mushi', and is pretty negative. W, his friend, though, seems to have no problem or stigma in shedding tears, which is what prompted my son to mention his thoughts. I told him that just because someone cried, it didn't make them weak, but he has 8 years of socialisation to overcome, and I don't think this swayed him. Children are wonderful mirrors of the things that are taught without even thinking about it. Japanese assumptions of correctness are so absolute, that they rarely think about them. While I was there, neither did I, very much. Hearing my son talk this way, I wish I had...

Island Hopping

2006-05-25T04:09:00.000+09:00

It has been a number of very busy months since I last blogged. A lot has happened:

I have now moved to England and am living in Hamphsire
My wife and son joined me last month
My son has started school at the local school, and is struggling with English
The company I worked for in Japan was sold off, and so I don't really have a return path (which I actually expected, to tell the truth)
The company I work for in England hasn't been sold off, but I now report to Germany, and that could be sold off at some point.
I have a new phone
My cat has died, only a few days after my wife left her in the care of a family friend. She didn't deal very well with change, and was rather sick, with kidney failure and diabetes. My wife blames me.

I guess those are the headlines, but if I am to continue to blog on this site (which I probably will, as I am rather busy, and not inclined at the moment to build a new blog site), it will need to be about what I am experiencing in England as a longtime resident of Japan, a citizen of the U.S., and a guy with a reasonable curiosity and intellect at work when viewing the world.

There is a lot to make up for, but I don't want to spend the next five months telling you about the last five months, so I will get it out of the way in this one post. Or at least most of it. Other things will probably occur to me as soon as I post this.

So, from the start. I came over here at the end of last year. I did that rather than enjoying the New Year holiday with my family in order to avoid paying one year's worth of residence tax in Japan. If you are in a certain location at New Years, you are expected to pay residence tax in that location. Actually, if you are registered in a certain location. In my case, this was a real issue. If I de-registered, I would have to give my alien registration card back, and would lose my permanent resident status, which took a long time to get, and which I really value. Luckily, I spoke with the local tax authority, explained the situation, and got them to agree to make a note on my record that I was no longer in the country, and not liable for residence tax (after confirming my story with my former employer). So, I get to be a permanent resident, and not pay residence tax! Not bad. I don't know if I will be returning to Japan, but if I do, I don't want to wait another five years for residence.
I rented a car, which was a little tricky, since I had always only kept my company credit card, which debited my own account, and was actually a charge card, which I had to pay back every month (which is why I liked it: It kept me out of debt). But I had handed it back. Renting a car without a credit card is a bit of a challenge. The thing is, actually driving the thing got me in trouble: About a week or two after I arrived, I had to make a trip to Dusseldorf, and the flight was a 7:30 flight. I was quite tired, I admit, but Heathrow has a lot of construction going on, and I could not, for the life of me, find the long-term parking lot. (I have since learned that there is no single long-term parking lot, but a bunch of private lots scattered around. This is nearly exactly the situation at Narita, but I had assumed somewhat more organisation in the UK. Silly me.) I accidentally drove into an employees parking lot. The only way to get out was in the bus lane, so I was in that lane, probably going a bit too fast for a parking lot (car park), but had right of way, when this older Indian woman came barrelling out of one of the rows, going the wrong direction, and ignoring the stop sign (because it was backwards maybe, since she was going the wrong direction). I smashed my almost-new Benz E280 right into her Golf. I totalled her car, did not have 'Super CDR' coverage on my own, and so had to pay 750 pounds deductible, even though it was certainly mostly her fault. (ok, ok, I was in a bus lane, and I was, probably illegally, in a secure airport employee car park, but her driving was definitely at fault). I also missed my appointments. Oh, and argued with the HR woman about insurance. In Japan, travel from home to work is always covered and is always liable by the employer. That is probably one reason that most employers highly discourage commuting by car: The liability is too high.
I also had some adventures just getting a bank account, but those are more of the absurdist sort. I had thought that only Japanese bureaucracy had this surreal fixation on checking everything four times, and sending things back as a matter of course. Wherever HSBC have their back office operations center, somewhere in South Asia, I think, the people seem to have a somewhat similar approach. I finally ended up going in to Barclays, and setting up an account on the same day, just using my U.S. driver's license.
Which reminds me of the other bit of stuff I had to do: Get my license changed. What a pain! U.S. license holders have to take the test, which I didn't really want to do, while Japanese license holders could 'simply' exchange their license for a U.K. one. I guess simplicity is relative. I had to first send in both my license and passport in to the Japanese embassy to get my license translated, paying 35 pounds for the privelege. I then had to take the translation, my license, my passport, two photos, and the application, and, oh don't forget (!), another 35 pounds, to the DVLA (don't ask, because I don't know). I was told that if I did this in Wimbledon, because I was a Japanese license holder, I could get my passport back on the same day. This turns out to not be the case if you happen to be a Japanese license holder who is American. And in any case, I found, when I got to Wimbledon, that I had forgotten to bring my Japanese license with me.
The reason this mattered is that I actually travel a fair bit for my job, and the DVLA said to expect not having your passport for two weeks. So, I had to time it just right. Again, I forgot something rather important, but luckily, they came through a little early. One thing, if you have a Japanese license, is that I actually only had an automatic license in Japan, and that was translated correctly by the embassy, but I still got a full license in the U.K. I don't know if this was just a fortuitous mistake by the DVLA, or whether everyone gets one. But I am happy!
Actually, if I would have known that beforehand, I might not have bought my wife an automatic. Finding a decent automatic car that is cheap in the UK is quite difficult. Mostly only higher end models seem to be automatic. Since my wife only has an automatic license, I looked hard for one. I finally ended up buying one on eBay for 880 pounds. It is a 1994 Vauxhall Corsa, otherwise known as an Opel Corsa, otherwise known as a Chevy Nova. I can't really say it was the best deal, but it runs. I did spend a lot to get it up to spec, though, which is not really a happy thing. Hopefully it passes it's MOT (Ministry of Transport) test in October. One thing I can say about Japan, is that you have lots of choices when buying a used car, most of them very cheap, and with plenty of automatics. In fact, some of the automatics that I found here were imports from Japan. The problem with that is that the insurance on imports is really high.
Well, I have sort of wandered around the last five months, and definitely not covered everything, but I have to go for now.

Tokyo Spin Off

2005-12-02T07:26:00.000+09:00

I write this from Newbury, England. It has been a busy couple of weeks since my last post. I have turned in my resignation to my company in Tokyo and signed a contract with my new company, actually the same company, just the global version.
It has been busy, a little scary, and a challenging three weeks. I spent Monday and Tuesday in Dusseldorf, because I had to be out of the UK on the day they applied for my visa. Newbury is not a metropolis, and without a car you end up depending on very slow-to-respond taxis. On Saturday I walked all around Newbury, and met a guy I had worked with in Tokyo in the bookstore on the Newbury highstreet. Newbury is a sort of company town, so it isn't a huge surprise that I met him. I have seen tons of people in the last two weeks that I only knew before at conferences or meetings I had been to in Dusseldorf, Barcelona, Lisbon, Karlskrona, or Budapest.
On Saturday a couple of guys that I have had a lot to do with in the past, them at global and me in Japan, and a bunch of other people, Americans, English, a German, and a Greek, had a Thanksgiving party at one of their house in Reading. It was really good, a great pumpkin pie, turkey, cranberry sauce, the works.
Work has been interesting. The guy that I am replacing had some real challenges socially: He seems to have pissed a lot of people off. I am fully capable of doing that myself, but seem to have started alright so far. I spent yesterday with a consultant who works for me, but has tons more experience in this area than I have. I learned a lot by talking to him, and I think it is going to work out well.
I haven't had any recurrences of Meniere's despite two flights, and a day when I felt it starting to come on. Sleep is the key. If I can get enough sleep, I won't get it. If I can't and there are other factors, like flying, I will get it.
I will need to think of a new name for my blog, after I move to Newbury in January. How about Tokyo Spin Off...?

Lucky number...

2005-11-11T00:53:00.000+09:00

Have I mentioned that 11 is my lucky number? Have you noticed the day? Yes! I got the job in the U.K.! My wife is less than thrilled, but I guess that is just how it will have to be for the moment. I owe my current boss a lot. She really pushed hard to have me get this job. I am thrilled! I can be a full member of the species again! My son can learn English!

I will most likely leave next week for a couple of weeks, come back and hand my job here over to someone, and then go to the U.K. at the end of the year or beginning of next year, for good. My wife and son will follow in April. There are lots of things to sort. Time to get started. Happy 11/11, and goodnight!

Don't Speak to Soon...

2005-11-06T22:57:00.000+09:00

No matter how much I may have wanted to be over my Meniere's episode, I wasn't, it turns out. I should have known that, as this is also part of the pattern. Having insomnia really didn't help at all. I was a bit of a zombie on Monday, a worse one on Tuesday, and on Wednesday I would have stayed home just to try and get some sleep, if it hadn't been that I had my last interview. Yes, that one--the one for the job in the U.K.
I was really serious about it, scripting answers for the kinds of questions I thought they might ask, which I was told would be based on the 'performance drivers' used by global HR to identify the right people for the job. The problem was that I was nauseous, dizzy, had a raging headache, etc.
I discovered a very unexpected thing, in my desperation: Our company has a bed that you can use if you don't feel well. If there was ever a time I needed to use it, last Wednesday was definitely it. I wasn't actually able to sleep (I was so tired that I couldn't sleep), but laying horizontal for a couple of hours did me good, I think.
The interview was by videophone. That is appropriate, actually, as the job is the global manager for videoconferencing. One of my interviewers (herr Doktor A) was in Dusseldorf, and the other in England. I was quite happy with how well I answered their questions, actually, especially one of these 'I am going to give you 3 minutes to think of the 7 steps you would need to perform in this case,' variety of questions. At the end, Herr Doktor A told me what was good (most of my abilities were a good fit), as well as what he had questions about (my passion for this particular position). I assured him that I was very interested in this job indeed.
Thursday was a national holiday, which we have off. I sent a thank you letter to my two interviewers thanking them for their time, and assuring them that I was very interested in this job. Friday I took a paid day off, and slept in. It is now Sunday, and I feel like I have finally caught up on sleep.
Tomorrow I was told that there will be an answer as regards the position, which I am happy about: I hate waiting around for these things. My wife still is opposed. The thing is, I have really thought this through, and I think it would be the best thing, by far: For my son, it would be great to expose him to enough English that he is able to speak fluently; for me, it would be a great career move, as there is much more opportunity for me in our global organisation than there is in Japan; for my wife, actually, she needs to broaden her outlook if she is to not drive me nuts, and this is a good opportunity for her to see that the world does not revolve around Utsunomiya, Japan, and that her ways of doing things are not necessarily universal, nor are her ways of viewing things, though they may be very orthodox in a Japanese context.
I will probably be leaving nearly immediately if I do get the job, though I am guessing it would initially be for a couple of weeks, to take over from the guy currently in the role, and then come back here and take care of some things, and then back to the U.K. for me, while my wife and son stayed in Japan until he finished his school year, after which they would join me.
Which is all very nice to think about, but just as I started this blog with don't speak too soon, so shall I end it...

Who you gonna call?

2005-10-29T19:36:00.000+09:00

I can’t even remember exactly how I came across the page, but I found this page for a legal firm that specializes in military law. Digging slightly on the site, I found another page that gives examples of all the good work they do. It is a weird page for someone who is not a thief, a rapist, a sodomist, a pedophile, a drug user, a drunk, or a murderer to read. I guess with the number of people in the military there would be some bad apples, but my god! How many pedophiles can there be even among a million-person army? These guys got a least 10 of them off.
I guess that the page wasn’t aimed at me, but at the guys (and I think most of their clients are male) who are guilty as sin and want to get off or get a lighter sentence. Not the stuff of J.A.G. Makes me very slightly more sympathetic to the people of Okinawa, who want our military the hell off their island…

It's official!

2005-10-27T18:36:00.000+09:00

Yes, I got to talk to the 'dizziness specialist' today, and he concluded that I have Menier's disease. If you saw my previous post, you will know that is what I had concluded on my own. It is a relief to have my own diagnosis confirmed. Doctors speak, sometimes sneeringly, of 'self-diagnosis' as a problem with patients who have too much information and not enough knowledge. That is even more the case in Japan, where a patient daring to tell a doctor what he thinks is wrong with himself is treated like an alien. I would say that the biggest problem with Meniere's is that it is idiopathic, meaning that they have to eliminate absolutely everything else before doctors are willing to go out on a limb and diagnose it. So they tell patients 'yes, you have a problem, but we are not willing to put a name to it.' That causes stress, which is actually one of the triggers of Meniere's. A bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So, now that I know what is wrong with me, what is the next course of action? According to Dr. Dizzy, there is none: No medicine will cure it, and there is nothing to really be done about it. He said something like 'you just got born with the wrong body.' There is actually a $3,000 machine being sold in the U.S. (sorry, being prescribed by licensed physicians). It sends 500 Hz pulsewaves into the inner ear, which somehow help the problem. It is not too bad right now, so maybe I won't consider that, but it is nice to know that some doctors somewhere--definitely not here!--are not content to say 'being dizzy is your destiny'. I hope they find a treatment before my next bout...

Ninja in New York...

2005-10-27T08:40:00.000+09:00

A couple of years ago my friend J introduced me to a restaurant called Ninja, in the Akasaka Tokyu Plaza hotel. He didn't actually take me there, though, so it wasn't that easy to find, and was rather unobtrusively designed. I went there twice, both times with my son, and he liked it. In fact, last year we went there for his birthday. I didn't have such a good memory of that, as there was a massive earthquake that levelled big parts of Niigata, and shook the hell out of Tokyo. The restaurant is supposed to resemble the dark caves Ninja were rumoured to live in, and being in that atmosphere in an earthquake caused some claustrophobia even in a non-claustrophobic such as myself.
Apparently the restaurant has opened a New York branch. They got reviewed in the New York Times, and I read with some interest the review. Admittedly it was a hokey thing, with a bunch of young wannabe actors playing Ninja roles for diners. The location in Tokyo, however, actually means that a fair number of people in the entertainment world actually patronise the place, and an outstanding Ninja could get noticed, I guess...
Theme restaurants are basically unknown in Japan: No Farrells Ice Cream (do they even have those in the U.S. anymore?), no Chuck E. Cheese, no Rainforest Cafe. So the kind of places that you can take a kid for a birthday party and that are actually fun are rather limited. I will actually say that in our town, the McDonald playland is as good as it gets.
The Ninja restaurant was slightly expensive by Tokyo standards, but not overwhelmingly so. The Ninja were not world class magicians, but they weren't bad. The food was not superlative but it was pretty good, and they did some fun things with dry ice and smoke. Most of all, my son had a good time, which is want you want for a kid's birthday. Even my wife was happy, no mean feat. It is probably not the sort of place that I would take a restaurant critic to, because I would worry that they are too cranky to appreciate the fun parts. And, in comparison to some of the themed resaturants in the U.S., Ninja is a little immature. I think that was the case with the NYT critic. For my part, I give the Tokyo restaurant three smilies out of five. ☻☻☻☺☺

Tick that one off...

2005-10-26T23:16:00.000+09:00

And another one bites the dust. Having interviews in the middle of not being able to stand straight turns out to not be the best idea. The small company that gave me that weird sense of déjà vu sent me an e-mail today saying that they didn’t have anything in my field, and that they would keep me in mind if anything came up. Fine. The issue was that with them I was interested in a field that I am not specifically in right now, that I make a quite good salary, and that they generally don’t like to hire people, but have them work on contract. All fine and dandy, but what they would probably be able to offer me on contract probably wouldn’t be that much more than my current salary. Except I would have no security, fewer benefits than I have right now, and why should I even think about it? Vice versa, why should they think about making an offer? I have slightly more respect for them now.
Like sand in the hourglass, so go the days of our lives…

Standing...

2005-10-23T01:15:00.000+09:00

One of the good things, and there aren’t many, about being sick, is that when you get better, you appreciate things all that much more. I definitely appreciate being able to be a fully functioning human again, without too much worry of being toppled by the honk of a fire engine.
I worked out on Wednesday, and meant to yesterday, but instead met up with my friend Pierre (not, of course, his real name). We had dinner at an izakaya, a kind of Japanese pub (there are many kinds). He had beer, and I didn’t. Despite feeling better, I’m not taking any chances. Actually, in my past experience, beer wasn’t much of a trigger. The absolute worst thing is coffee. And it isn’t simply the caffeine, since I can drink tea and have no problems. So, no coffee or beer, two things that this pub was actually well-known for.
I did not get an offer for one of the jobs, in fact probably the second best of the lot, after the one at my company’s U.K. office. The manager I spoke to wants someone who can write Japanese contracts. While my Japanese is o.k., it isn’t that good. C’est la vie. I don’t feel that bad about it, actually. I am getting busier at my current job, and I would like to work harder on really getting the projects and programs I am responsible for really right.
One of the other jobs, I don’t think I would be interested even if there was an offer: There is too much déjà vu to my last company, the one with the sociopathic boss. It would actually be fun work, I think, but I don’t think I want to be working for that particular company. They are ISO 9001 certified, so they aren’t quite as bad as my last company, but on the other hand, I guess the lack of security is a bit of a turnoff.
So, for the short term, it looks like I stay put, which is fine. My back garden is beautiful, the lawn really coming in well. If I need to dash off to England for a new job, that would be fine, too.
My son turned eight today (technically today, but I still need to sleep and wake up for it to be Sunday for me). It was a very quick eight years. Speaking with Pierre last night, he said something that I have thought—I have made some very big changes in my life in a very short time, and have also been pretty lucky in how things have gone for me. He thinks that I have probably gone as far as I can in Japan career-wise, and that the country as a whole is crazy, and so really my only option to be sane and have a good career, oh, and by the way, to insure that my son grows up sane, is to get out of Japan. He may be right.
I think my sanity is pretty safe, by sheer cussedness: I refuse to do what I am told, or feel how I am supposed to. But I do worry about my son. My wife is a lost cause, and is often the one telling me what to do or how to feel.
It is easy to get, after 12 ½ years here, comfortable in the way things are done here, and uncomfortable with change. I have occasional bouts of that, but generally have gained my sense before long. My mother would disagree, and can’t understand why I am still here. I think, that, at this point, it is clear to me why: I intend to make the most of the opportunities I have here, and then move on, and away.
Every time I travel to Europe, I come back feeling like there is a big lifestyle deficit here in Japan: Holidays are about half those in Europe; Europeans tend to be a lot more active than Japanese in their free time, and there are a lot of activities going on; work is less of an all-encompassing thing in Europe than in Japan; there is a much more family-friendly environment, in terms of education, work, community, and social services.
Oh, and did I mention that my company’s car allowance would allow me to buy a Mini Cooper S?

Back...

2005-10-19T12:39:00.000+09:00

My one-week hiatus from blogging was mostly because I didn't have much to talk about: I was doing all I could to get it together enough to get to work and home every day. With the help of earplugs, to block out any loud noises, which made me nauseous and dizzy, an eye mask to keep me from seeing out the windows of the Shinkansen, and fairly slow movements overall, I was able to get to work, plant myself in my chair, which I didn't move from very much, and then pack myself home, mostly.
Though I had been invited to after-work eating and drinking every single day of last week, I didn't attend any, since drinking, especially, is out of the question. As the day progressed, and I got more tired, too, I got dizzier. A night out didn't seem like a good idea.
I spent all day Tuesday at my favorite hospital, Jikkei University Hospital, undergoing a variety of tests. The doctor who first examined me said something like 'hmm...I'm not really sure what the problem is, but if you get a lot of rest for the next week or two, you should be alright.' I told him that wasn't good enough, that I wanted a clear diagnosis. Thus the tests. The diagnosis, however, has to wait until next Thursday, when I get to see a 'dizziness expert'. It is good that I had the tests when I did, though, since I am now feeling better, though not totally recovered.
I spoke with my sister, and she has had similar bouts, though never the can't-stand-up, full-on vertigo.
So, I am back to same old tricks. I am plugging along at work, a little more willing than I have been in awhile to fight with co-workers, if that is what it takes to get progress. Had a good fight last night, in fact. I never would have dreamed this was necessary, but where I work now there is nothing close to a 'can-do' attitude, in terms of achieving shared goals. I am working to change that, but giving someone a good bolloxing is sometimes necessary.
As for the promise-of-a-better-life vultures circling, two sets are still circling, and one other set will probably be in contact with me soon. One are completely lame in their communication, and I have pretty much given up on them.
I will try to be a better blogger, though blogging, in it's personal nature, is by definition when you have something you want to say. When things are spinning, though, and concentration is required just to function, it is not a first priority.

Tokyo Spinning...

2005-10-10T01:16:00.000+09:00

I have had attacks of vertigo since I was a kid. They kind of make me feel as if everything is all of the sudden spinning, and I want it to stop, but it doesn’t, and then comes the nausea, and then the wretchedness and vomiting, which continues, sometimes for days.
It has started again. The fact that I can write this is an indication that it isn’t too bad: I can sit upright. But the fear of what it will be is nearly as bad as anything. I have been through this before, and there is no solution, no simple way that this will end tomorrow, all a bad dream. At minimum, I will be dizzy for a week or two, have a hard time riding trains because I will easily get motion sick, and generally be incapacitated. At worst, I will have multiple bouts of completely incapacitating vertigo lasting from six to thirty six hours. Nothing is set in stone, and I suppose that I should be open to the possibility that this time will be different. But why, in my experience as a sufferer of a chronic ailment that has always followed the same patterns, should I believe that?
There is not a name for my ailment. At least not one that boneheaded doctors are willing to give it. Menieres disease is the one I give it. And, to tell the truth, my diagnosis is probably at least as close to the mark as any that doctors have ever made. Which is to say that doctors have never been willing to go out on any kind of limb, except to say ‘gee, you seem really dizzy.’
My last bout was in 2002. It was really bad, with multiple bouts of completely debilitating vertigo. I went in to an ENT between the bouts, and he gave me all kinds of tests, and then concluded ‘there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you.’ I told him that there most certainly was, and that not being able to stand and puking for a whole day was not a normal way of life. ‘Well, right now, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you,’ he corrected, ‘come back when the symptoms return.’ Getting in a car is the last thing one does when the world is spinning around. I did, though, driven by my wife. I was such a mess, that this time the doctor said ‘we can do this at some other time, if you want.’ I told him that I wanted answers, and if I had to come in the state I was to get the answers, he would just have to deal with it if I threw up.
I still didn’t get a clear diagnosis. He sent me off to a neurologist, who did a CT scan, bless his heart, which was more than any of the ENT jerks have ever bothered with. He said that there was nothing that he could see that pointed to it being a brain problem, or a physical problem with my ear canals. I went back to the ENT, with the CT scans in hand, and he then had the temerity, to say ‘what is it that you want from me?’ My god! Is anyone that stupid? I didn’t care even a little about him. I wanted to know what was wrong with me. At university, too, the ENT was an asshole. He seemed to think that there was some reason why I would fake complete hearing loss in my left ear, which had actually returned by that point, but which I wanted an answer for. Did I mention that hearing loss is another symptom of Meniere’s disease? I mentioned it to this ENT, and he pompously said ‘it is not possible to diagnose Meniere’s disease, so I can’t say that’s what you have.’
What he meant was that, medically, when they can’t figure out what is going on, and they have exhausted every other test, then they call it Meniere’s disease. Guess what, though? All of those tests mean squat when you know what it is you are experiencing, and just want it to stop. The reality is that it won’t stop, though. Movement, loud sounds, and stuff of that ilk make it worse, so the only thing I can do is lock myself in my room and hope that I feel better tomorrow than I do today, and especially that everything doesn’t start to spin out of control. For now, I just want Tokyo to stop spinning…

Ori Yori Midori

2005-10-04T23:36:00.000+09:00

...means that you have your pick, generally used with good-looking boys or girls, who have their pick of mates. I am not so good looking, and I do not know at this point whether I have my pick of anything except nice platitudes for rejection.
By far the most interesting for me has been a possible job opening up within the global arm of my company, in the U.K. I broached the possibility of this position with my wife this weekend, and we frankly couldn't keep our passions in check and the consequent fireworks flew.
Besides my obvious proclivity for digging in when someone tells me I can't do something, and my wife's equally obvious proclivity for telling me I can't do something, the thought of a big move out of the country is reason to pause and consider. Mostly it was me sitting in my back yard, looking at the beautiful little paradise that I had created. A year ago it was just dirt and weeds. Now it is a little paradise, with a beautiful lawn, lush flower beds and trees, a beautiful marble patio, a wooden deck, all courtesy of my hard work. When I started, one of my wife's friends asked 'why are you working so hard on your back yard? No one can see it.' This is a pretty Japanese thing. I told her that it was not for other people, it was purely for our own enjoyment.
My wife doesn't share this with me, and that is hard. I love to barbecue, and I bought a Weber grill about six months ago, which I try to use every weekend. My son is into it, too, but my wife is not, and invents reasons not to barbecue. See, for her it is not the beauty of our home, or it's mini paradise in the back that is important, but the idea of a steady, stable home.
I have thought this over, and come up with the following: My ancestors, only two generations back, were pioneers, giving up the comfort of the midwest and going to Oregon. Ok, maybe not comfort, but the point is that for them that movement was important. And their ancestors came from the east, and before that from Germany, Scotland, and Ireland. The inevitable push to the west is the common thread I have with previous generations, and one of the reasons I ended up in Japan, my sister, father, and mother in Alaska, and the most rebellious one, my brother, ironically, in California. The drive to keep moving is strong in me. Rolling stones gather no moss. Smoothe am I.
My wife has never lived outside of the city she grew up in, save our sojourn to what amounts to the northern suburbs. Movement is not a part of her psyche. Grasping for whatever security she can find, whenever and wherever she can find it is in her psyche, a pretty common thing here, especially in her parents' generation, growing up in the post-war poverty and deprivation. They passed that on to their children, and it has stuck. As a culture it is risk-averse, and change-averse in the extreme. Security, knowing where you will be in 10 years, these are the important things. Or so my wife says. My response is that there is no security in life, that we can't know where we will be in 10 years, unless we are psychotic and only focus on staying in exactly the same place we are now. This type of psychosis seems pretty attractive to her, and not very attractive to me.
I have another interview Thursday, the fifth this week, and another on Friday. It shall be apparent by next week exactly how good looking I am to these guys. Should be fun. But, like the garden that is not visible to others, the beauty that I see is more important.

When it rains, it pours...

2005-09-27T23:51:00.000+09:00

Back at work this week, I am finally, after several months of not being, busy. Meetings, presentations created, phone calls made, people and projects tracked, all kinds of things.
And, with that as the background, the situation outside of my current position, vis a vis employement, is beginning to heat up: I previously mentioned speaking to two different people at my friend's company about a position, and now I also have an internal possibility in the U.K., and another request to come in for an interview with a large U.S. web merchant, based here in Japan. Interestingly, none of these things were solicited in any way, shape, or form. This is cool!
Also cool was how I spent yesterday: Working in one of my company's shops. It was called 'meet the customer', and I met not only one, but a whole bunch of them. The shop was in Roppongi, so about half the customers were non-Japanese. I sold some of our products, and felt like I contributed something to our important company goals, which is a good feeling. I.T. is sometimes a little too abstract, and it is a really great feeling to get to meet the people who we need to please in order to be successful. I would actually like to spend a few months doing that, not just a day.
My whirlwind tour of Monday culminated with a too-short trip to the gym, in which I did 21 sets of weight training in 30 minutes. It's gotta be a record.
And I realised tonight on the train home that the report that my boss will be taking into the GM meeting at 9:30 am is missing some data, so I actually need to get in there and make sure I get her the right one. (hint-that means I need to go to sleep right now in order to wake up on time)

The man of leisure...

2005-09-23T01:19:00.000+09:00

...would be me, and so full of leisure am I that I haven't posted for five days! Shame!
In my abundance of leisure time, provided by national holidays this Monday and Friday, and paid holidays in-between, I have done the following:

Watched lots of DVDs of films captured by my TiVo-like device (which has a built-in DVD burner). I collected over 100 from NHK BS1 (no, not that sort of BS--it stands for 'Broadcast Satellite'), but had watched very few of them. My picks? There's Only One Jimmy Grimble, and The Wedding Singer. I am conflicted about Lulu on the Bridge: I like Paul Auster's work generally, and that includes this film, but think it was a somewhat amateurish effort by someone who has not mastered the medium. That having been said, the texture, the music, and the acting were excellent. I still want to know why an entire one minute of the film was dedicated to Celia unwrapping a CD.
Saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my son. Great flick! My kid was weirdly uncommunicative for a couple of days, I think owing to the effects of some cough medicine that he was taking, but he was watching, and as soon as he was off the cough medicine he wanted to talk all about it, and to know what the English word 'violet' meant.
Worked out. I joined a gym located in front of Utsunomiya station, and have been working out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My membership is a night-time membership that only allows me to use the facilities on weekdays between 8 pm and 11 pm. That is inconvenient for a man of leisure, especially on holidays, so I am considering changing my membership type. In the mean-time, I have been there three days straight, since I couldn't go in on Monday or tomorrow, Friday.
Planted Kentucky bluegrass. Actually, bought it, too: I was in Joyful Honda, probably the greatest home center anywhere, and I was looking at lawn care supplies, and there was a video going, and on the video they showed how to plant a lawn. They showed rolled sod, which I have been looking for, and kindly told me that it was available from Nasu Nursery, which is about 60 km north of here. So, today I drove up there, and picked up my sod. They had just cut it, and I picked it up in the middle of the field. Very fresh. I planted half the lawn, and will finish up tomorrow.
Created a new resume, at the request of a friend of mine who is trying to recruit me into the company he works for. Ironically, after we had finished drinking last Friday, we met the guy who hired him into the company. I spoke to him after my friend had taken his train, which was going the opposite direction. He called me yesterday, and wanted to talk to me about job possibilities at the company. So, I have two different people from the same company trying to get to me. A reasonably happy situation, since it is a very well-known and reputable company with lots of opportunity.

That's about it. Not much to tell.

Queen's Classroom...

2005-09-18T01:05:00.000+09:00

Japanese television is in general an even worse wasteland than television in many parts of the world. The variety shows seem to dominate, with very little differentiating one from another. Japanese television in general does not have any long-run dramas and very few comedies, short or long-run. Most dramas last less than a year, even highly rated ones.
A fairly unusual show has been airing for about 6 months now, called JoOu No Kyoushitsu, which translates to Queen's Classroom. The drama stars Amami Yuki as Maya Akutsu, a sixth-grade homeroom teacher in a primary school. And it attacks just about every problem that the writers had with the current state of Japanese education. I don't know that I agree with the analysis of what all of those problems are 100%, but I respect the hell out of the producers and writers for coming up with a really gutsy effort to address some real issues in an entertaining way. The show, unusual for a drama, aired on Saturday night, which allowed parents and kids to watch the show together. It has had good ratings, but sponsors are apparently loathe to be associated with the program.
Maya, not Maya-san, is what the students call their teacher, and this absence of an honorific is indicative of the ambivalence with which they hold her--calling someone by their first name is a casual thing in Japan, especially towards a teacher, and calling her that without an honorific is worse. Of course, they don't call her that to her face. Her demeanor is what gives the show it's name: That of a queen. She challenges students by saying incredibly arrogant things like "only three out the forty of you will be successes in life," pointing to real statistics that show that is the number who end up in first-class schools and first-class companies. At first we don't know that this is a stretegic way to get the kids to open their eyes, it is just her being a bitch. As it goes on, we see the method in her adopted personae. For there is more than one: The queen, the bully, the guardian angel, the devil. The above photo asks the question well, which is she an angel or a devil. She is good at everything, from dancing, singing, fighting, drawing, whatever. One of the hallmarks of her queen persona is what she says--"Iikagen ni mezamenasai", which I would translate as "open your eyes to mediocrity", but which might also legitimately be translated as "stop being so stupid." It is said in an extremely haughty and arrogant way that is hard to love. And yet love is what we, and Kanda, finally have for her.
Tonight's special last episode lasted for 90 minutes, was where we discovered this, and from my point of view, the weakest episode in the series in some ways, owing to it's overly sentimental parting of students and teachers at graduation time. It was, however, very necessary, and even in it's formulaic sappiness was able to make a point that needs to get made.
It is hard to explain the whole series in one posting, and I hope for any of you that are interested in Japan, that it gets subtitled and shown outside of Japan. You might try this site, as I heard rumours that from here you might find independently subtitled versions on Bit Torrent.
Some of the topics covered during the run of the program were:

Bullying. This theme actually came up in different forms in different episodes, but Maya makes it clear that it is up to both the person being bullied to stand up for themselves, and for those people around to stand with them. It is not her role as a teacher, she seems to be clearly saying, to save anyone. That is up to the students to do for themselves (though actually she does save them).
Forgiveness. Even after being bullied, the main female student character, Kanda, forgives her tormenters. And she convinces other students to forgive a girl who stole from a classmate.
Setting an example. One of the other female teachers tries too hard to be friends with all of the students, forgetting what her role was--a teacher--and making her less effective.
Excellence. Maya stands for nothing less than perfection when students train to do something. Interestingly, she also teaches the lesson that it is up to those who are better at something to help those who aren't as good, through encouragement, teaching, or whatever. Excellence is not about someone else's standard, but about everyone working together to be as good as they possibly can.
Consistency. Even at the sappy ending, Maya could only say 'cut out your nonsense blubbering.' For her to have broken down and joined the students in their crying would not have been consistent. Students need to have teachers who don't get caught up in the moment, but who are consistent. They learned to trust Maya because she was totally consistent.

As a former junior high school teacher here in Japan, I can say that it is a mess. The way that teachers are trained, mentored, evaluated, promoted, and paid is a farce. The way that those teachers then teach, mentor, caution, scold, dicipline, coach, console, and prod is, as one would expect, also a mess. The public education system is definitely broken in some fundamental ways. I have a world of frustration that built up in my few years in that system, and some hurt to go with that.
This show made a strong statement, which is heard because of the medium--a fairly entertaining TV drama--in a way that I couldn't, especially as an outsider. This is important stuff, and I hope that this drama gets people talking, as it has, I believe.
I will end with my own observation, one that I made several times in my career as a teacher, both of junior high students, trade school students, and university students: With no possibility of failure, there is no possible way to measure and reward success. Students are not allowed to fail tests. If they get 0 points, that is just a hiccup. Because of the risk-averse, failure-averse, nature of the Japanese society that I have previously mentioned, they take great care to prevent their young from ever experiencing risk or failure, for fear that it would scar them, or brand them as failures. What this drama pointed out is that it is necessary to accept and learn from failure. Pretending that it isn't failure is not only not helpful, it precludes those kids from being real successes.
I hope there are more shows like this, as it made for some enjoyable and important conversations in our family.

T-shirt English

2005-09-12T23:20:00.000+09:00

One of the things that visitors to Tokyo laugh themselves silly about are some of the English that appears on t-shirts in Tokyo. As a high school student here in 1984 on a short 3-week trip, I recall a young woman in Asakusa wearing a white t-shirt, apparently oblivious, that said in huge letters "Fuck Me!" A horny (read 'male') 16 year-old, I would have been more than happy to take her up on the invitation, which was, however, apparently made unknowingly. This was a case where the English was actually correct, which is definitely not the norm for t-shirt English.
There are various theories on the origin of some of these t-shirts, but my favorite is the secret English conspiracy one: Such blatantly cynical t-shirts were actually designed by jaded native speakers, sick of the idiocy of their companies, and of the idiocy of consumers who actually purchased such inane products. There might even be money paid to them by the English school owners, who have a stake in furthering the poor English so prevalent here.
On the Marunouchi subway line this morning, I stood strap-hanging next to a guy with a t-shirt, yellow letters on a green shirt, which said "Advanced corn grown to order". He also wore a meshball cap with a foam front that would not have been out of place on a mid-western farmer, probably driving a John-Deere tractor. I was impressed with the consistency of the look: Inane English and his cap were certainly a set.
This evening, in Tokyo station, I spotted a t-shirt on a young woman that read: "Fuck juice gotten on this side". Hmm...I don't know exactly what the cynical native was thinking on this one...I think they must be working in groups, and that they are actually inside jokes for a group of sick minds.
When I become the jaded, bitter company employee that last week's fun leads me to fear, at least I know where I can turn for a second (third?) career...

Movie Review: Fight Club...Six Years On

2005-09-10T00:56:00.000+09:00

When it came out in 1999, Fight Club was a weird kind of cult hit, making far more money in DVD sales than it probably ever did at the box office. It was one of those guy films that struck a chord in 20-40 year old males. I didn't see it until a couple of years after it came out, and I think I was drunk at the time, because I didn't get it's central premise, that the film's main character, Tyler Durden, has a split personality.
It was on one of the free movie channels tonight, and even though I had one beer, I was hardly drunk, and I did get it this time. And I finally understood why guys of my Gen X age group, with their insecurities, their fears, and their hemmed in feeling, really liked the film. It really wasn't about fighting, except the metaphorical conflict that takes place in ourselves, and the equally metaphoric desire to destroy that which we identify as keeping us from being truly free. I say metaphorical, because there are a very few number of Gen Xers who blow up credit card companies.
Which brings me to my other observation of the film, which is that it couldn't be made now. Terrorism as a metaphor for rebellion no longer works in the same way as it did in 1999. A line in the film from Tyler--"This is it - ground zero. Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?"--just doesn't work for people now. The glib destruction of the current world order to allow everyone to start back at zero has consequences. In the film, the split-personality alter-ego Tyler says that "you have to break some eggs to make an omlette." These words are eerily reminiscent of some of the things Osama bin Laden said.
Seeing this film, I was reminded of the pre-9/11 innocence that allowed slacking Gen Xers to ponder the metaphysical in terms of revolution and violence. It is a great film, no doubt about it, thought provoking, with great acting, and an intelligent script that only becomes more interesting the more you watch it.
Four smilies for this winner. ☻☻☻☻☺

Low Moral Character

2005-09-07T23:38:00.000+09:00

I sat in my bosses place today for the General Managers meeting of the IT division. Our CIO always has some whoppers, at least at this one, and the last one I attended in my bosses place. At that one, he said that employees who were five minutes early leaving for lunch should be fired, for having low morals. He has, it should be noted, also unilaterally decided that flex time doesn't apply to IT, (who is he kidding? IT is who flex time was meant for!) and that those who used it at their own discretion should also be fired.
Today it was concerning working from home. The discussion was around encrypting employee PCs, and he brought up the example of an employee who worked from home and (shame!) dared to declare it on his time sheet. He used the phrase 'low moral character,' for that behavior. Telecommuting, it should be noted, is a behavior that our company is attempting to encourage in our customers. As my direct boss always says, we need to eat our own dog food.
I should note that I occasionally take off early for lunch--it is the only way to get a seat in either of the decent restaurants in our building--and I have, twice in the last 2 1/2 years, worked from home and declared it on my timesheet. I and my boss agreed that my starting time would be 10 at latest, because dealing with Europe leaves a very narrow window if I worked 9 to 6, the 'moral' work hours. The fact that I commute 1 1/2 hours each way every day, and often work on the train notwithstanding, it seems odd as a manager, who doesn't get paid overtime, that I would even think about needing to justify my working hours. I always put in an 8+ hour day at the office, generally logging between 9 and 10 hours, and on a project sometimes as many as 18 hours, for several weeks at a time.
I bit my tongue at the comment, but this sort of BS thinking does wear one down. I generally like and respect the CIO, but in some ways he is bass ackwards.

Hiding the Vision

2005-09-06T22:13:00.000+09:00

I wrote a book a few years ago, directly related to DoCoMo, the largest mobile phone company in the country. I remember calling their PR office to request help in getting interviews with the people who could best answer my questions. I had a publishing contract in-hand at the time, so it was a pretty-near certainty that the book was going to get written with or without their help. It turns out that it was written without their help. It was a lot more work for me to do it that way, but I didn't have any other choice: I had a book to write, and only three months to do it. I simply didn't have time for them to sort out their BS issues.
Fast forward to the present. We received an internal memo yesterday from our head of corporate communications, saying that there had been a leak to the media, and, it was strongly implied, whoever was responsible would be punished. Fine. Whatever. The irony, though, is that what was leaked was a clear, numeric, vision expressed by the president of the company, of where he thinks we should be headed. In the same way that the head of the Japan Football League set out a vision of Japan hosting the 2050 World Cup and winning it, this vision was clear, unambiguous, and, with a helluva lot of work, achievable.
The PR head's issue seems to be the leak, but that is absolutely insane: How are you supposed to have a vision if you cannot share it? The president must have known, should have known, that if people got really excited about what he was talking about, that they would share that with their spouses or talk about it with their co-workers. The news organisation that reported on this has their offices just up the street from us. In fact, on the same day that the story was reported last week, I bumped into a former colleague who now works in the IT department of this news organisation at the tonkatsu restaurant in our building. I also bumped into him on the train on the way over to the place where the president originally announced his vision. Add that proximity to people talking, like the visiting global IT chief, who mentioned the vision in a speech he gave, and to e-mails addressed to employees and non-employee (contractors) that make reference to it, and I don't see how you can keep this secret. Going on a witch hunt for the person responsible for the leak is probably a waste of energy.
But it highlights something that I really noticed about DoCoMo, too, when I was writing the book: Good communications and PR people would be wise to adopt the attitude of a very good friend, and the HR director at my last company: "Anything you write, you should do it as though everyone will read it. Maker sure that you won't be sorry when they do." That includes e-mails, blog posts, stories, and yes, even statements of vision. If you assume, correctly, that anything that is known by more than 10 people in the company is therefore public information, the trick then becomes to manage the communication of that information in the most advantageous way for the company. 'No comment,' and threats to employees simply means that you screwed up on that job.
I remember, writing my book, when the vice president of a company with close connections to DoCoMo, and who was acting as the technical editor, just about blew a fuse because of some technical information about NTT DoCoMo's network architecture that I had included. "Where did you get this information," he demanded, "this is covered by an NDA." Actually, I had gotten it off of their R&D web site, and didn't have and NDA with DoCoMo, one of the bright spots about them not giving me the time of day. This guy was so concerned that I was somehow illicitly using information, that he quit as technical editor, and I ended up with a somewhat silly French guy who didn't know much about the technical aspects, or about editing. c'est la vie. I had a book to write, and information to find.
I finished the book with my opinion of DoCoMo somewhat less than when I started, and that was reflected in the book. DoCoMo's PR department, and the paranoia that their corporate culture engendered in both their own people and their vendors hurt them. I have to be honest about that: I was under incredible pressure, internal and external, to finish the book on the schedule that we had set. I did. But when you work from 8 am to 10 pm every day, without break, through 9/11, through weekends, through everything, George Bush's phrase "if you aren't with me, you are against me," holds especially true. And DoCoMo was against me. Certainly it was passive, but by not giving even a minimal amount of help they impeded me. Having people know and admire their wonderful technology, a seemingly desirable thing to a company looking to achieve a worldwide customer base, did not happen nearly as effectively as if they had provided me the information I needed.
The reporter who wrote the story, my guess is, is a female reporter whose coverage in the past has hardly been flattering. This was actually our chance to talk about our vision, on our terms, and possibly get positive PR for a change. Instead, the vision was hidden, and when inevitably revealed, framed in someone else's words. A shame, and a missed opportunity.

Katrina vs. 11

2005-09-04T23:36:00.000+09:00

I mentioned the typhoon that hit the main island of Japan about 10 days ago, typhoon number 11. I think that it might be interesting to compare how disasters are dealt with in Japan and the U.S. I will admit that until last week my money was fully on the ability of the U.S. to deal with disasters. The shameful, slow, un-coordinated, and fully inadequate response to the Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, where thousands died in the earthquake, and at least hundreds died afterwards because of the poor response, made me happy to be from a country where they took things a little more seriously. Even in 9/11, horrific though it was, both citizens and emergency workers from a variety of organisations worked together in a way that made me proud.
First off--The preparations made beforehand:
In Japan, way more money than it seems prudent to spend is spent on fortifying the coastline with large concrete jacks called tetrapods, which mean that when a storm hits it is rarely slamming directly into houses or communities. Even if a ship is unlucky and gets thrown into the air and inland, it probably won't kill anyone (except perhaps any poor sailor who happens to be on it). I have, in the past, commented to friends that I wondered if there were any part of the Japanese coast line that wasn't fortified in this way. It is not a leisure-friendly approach to use of the coast.
In the U.S., even in places like Florida, you don't tend to see much fortification of coastlines, nor even zoning regulations that prohibit beachfront property from being used residentially. The coastline is obviously quite long, but actually so is the Japanese one. Considering the proclivity of hurricanes to hit Florida, it is surprising that more work is not done there. Louisiana may be another matter, I don't know. There is clear evidence that work on the levees that would have prevented this disaster, however, was neglected.
There are obviously a lot of factors at work, and a direct comparison isn't really possible, but in the case of disaster prevention, I think Japan clearly does a better job.
We next go to the time when people knew that there was a storm coming.
In Japan, for typhoon number 11, for example, there was extensive coverage for the couple of days prior to it hitting, and people were warned to stay indoors. Flood warnings were issued for Kyushu, which tends to flood when typhoons hit. On the day that it hit Tokyo, people were asked to go home early, and most major companies let workers go around two or three, prior to the worst of the storm. The train schedules were disrupted after that, but because the news of when the storm would hit and how strong it was, people had time to prepare, and get home prior to it hitting. Most people don't use cars to commute in Tokyo, and so getting home is not always easy in a disaster.
In New Orleans, from what I understand, there was also prior warning. The problem appears to be that the unexpected--a levee bursting--happened. People were expecting a very bad storm to hit, which it did, though it appears that the worst didn't hit New Orleans directly. While they may have had experience with bad storms, and covered windows with boards, etc., there aren't a lot of people who thought to prepare for a levee breaking. It was not expected. In this way, the storm actually served to take peoples attention from the much quieter, but as it turns out much more lethal, danger of flooding. Why FEMA would have been fooled is another question.
Again, the circumstances are not really comparable. But it should be noted that flood warnings were issued, along with specific instructions on what to do, in Japan. In New Orleans there wasn't someone, it seems, putting two and two together and saying to people that there was this other danger besides being blown away. I don't know who this should have been, but that fact alone means that I have to score this one for Japan.
During the onslaught of the disaster. People were given warnings in both places to get out of those places expected to most be affected. In the case of typhoon 11, this was Izu, and in the case of Katrina the gulf coast. The ability of people to do that turns out to have been a major factor in the real devastation Katrina wrought: New Orleans has a lot of people, many black, living at poverty level, and without a lot of means to pick up and go. Japan does not have a large poverty problem. There is a problem, however with an aging population, and older folks have a harder time getting up and going. In Japan almost everyone knows exactly where they should go in case of an emergency. Mostly it is elementary schools, though in my neighbourhood we are asked to stay in our own homes. So, in Izu many older folks made their way to the local elementary school. The resident of New Orleans didn't apparently have any sort of disaster plans or instructions on where they needed to go. I think I need to score this one, too, for Japan.
Then there is the emergency response:
In Japan there are unlikely to be rumours of gunfire and lawlessness that prevent rescue workers, who may fear for their lives, to go quickly to areas where they are needed. Sure, in the Kobe earthquake the response was far from adequate. The situation, however, even in the city with the highest concentration of yakuza gang members, did not devolve into lawlessness: People had enough faith in their leaders ability to pull through before it was too late, and did not, for the most part, take the law into their own hands, or panic. I would say that you saw this in New York after 9/11, too. You did not see this in New Orleans last week. I don't know that this is an issue of disaster relief so much as the poverty of the people hardest hit, and the level of trust they put in their leaders. As the week wore on, it was clear why that trust was at such a low level: A callous disregard for the poor was nothing if not self-evident. Nearby and wealthy Jefferson parish refused to act as a staging area for evacuation and relief efforts. The classist, racist, when-are-you-ever-going-to-learn-to-live-together-South. Shame! Hotel guests were evacuated quickly by bus, while those too poor to have their own transportation, or whose transportation was underwater, were left to sit on a highway for 4 days. Shame!
Though much more could have been done leading up to the disaster, none of that is any guarantee the severity of the disaster would not have been just as bad as it was. But once that disaster hit, the inability of government and the community to work together in a trusting way to attempt to meet the needs of all residents is apalling. The continuing failure of government to do it's job is criminal.
Maureen Dowd has a good opinion piece in today's New York Times. I think that she is right on.
No matter how much I might bitch about Japan, I trust the government to do whatever it can in a disaster. It is a horrible thing to not be able to say the same about the U.S., but that is what one takes away from the experience of Katrina: If you live in the right place, you will be o.k., but if you don't, well, sorry, that's your problem. When people are suffering, it is all of our problem. Please think about contributing to the Red Cross.

Book Review: Ten Big Ones

2005-09-04T01:20:00.000+09:00

I was in Tokyo station on Tuesday, flush with a little cash in my pocket, and wanted something to read. I stopped in at the Book Garden, which is right in the station. Their selection sucks! Unlike the book store in the Kamiyacho station, this one had only one spinning rack, and most of the books on it were 1.) Harry Potter, which I have read all of already; or 2.) Books about Japan and why things are the way they are here. I don't need books for that. At the very bottom of the rack, which I had to bend over and stick my big butt into someone to actually get at, was a book by Janet Evanovich called Ten Big Ones. It was, no doubt about it, the only real choice I had, and probably wouldn't have been my first choice. I am not that picky, though, and just wanted something to read that entertained me. Ten Big Ones certainly did that.
I have never heard of Ms. Evanovich, but she is apparently writing bestsellers at a fair clip. This book is in the Stephanie Plumb series, and the number in the title is an indicator that it is the tenth in the series. Each book title contains it's number in the series.
Stephanie Plumb is a bond enforcement agent (BEA), otherwise known as a bounty hunter. She is a smartass from Trenton, New Joisey, and tells the story in first-person, New Jersey accent and all coming through on the page. The book is half comic and half crime novel, and thoroughly entertaining. In many ways the female protagonist's fairly funny exploits, remind me of a sort of Bridget Jones character: She is able to make fun of herself, clearly define wants and needs, and tell the story in a way that let's us laugh both with her and at her. The originality of the voice that Helen Fielding brought to Bridget Jones derives at least partially from the novelty of female characters talking without inhibition about sex, food, and men. While the novelty may have worn off, Evanovich still makes it funny.
The other thing about this novel is the characters: The transvestite bus driver cum wedding planner; the sassy grandmother who is like a little kid the way that she tags along and picks up lingo that she then dishes out only partially correctly; the former 'ho' sidekick to Stephanie who carries a gun but disables two bad guys by sitting on them; and a host of characters who Stephanie comes into contact with as she picks people up who missed court dates and need to be 're-bonded'.
It is true, as one reader commented on amazon.com, that the bad guys arn't as well defined as characters. In one way this helps blunt the impact of when the bus driver runs over a bunch of them and then uses his Uzi to gun down a whole host more: There is no one that you care about or even really understand as a character well enough to be sorry in the least. But this is forgiveable for a book written in first person: We end up caring about the people that the narrator cares about, and not so much about a bunch of drug-dealing gang members who plan to first gang-rape her and then murder her.
I thoroughly enjoyed the telling of the story and the characters, and would probably have been reasonably happy to have read it for those two things alone. And that is good: The plot was reasonably thin, and really had only one conclusion if Stephanie Plumb were to stay in Trenton and continue on to book 12. In this, too, this book reminds me slightly of Bridget Jones: Do you remember the plot? I don't, but I do remember the characters. There definitely is a plot, it is just not what keeps you reading: That is achieved by the pure entertainment value of the telling of the story and of the descriptions of the characters.
I give this book three smilies. It is entertaining, and worth reading if you want to be entertained. It is not great literature nor is it a particularly finely-honed piece of narrative fiction. There are flaws in the character development and in the plot. It is definitely not at the bottom of my list of books I would reccomend, somewhere closer to the middle. ☻☻☻☺☺

Company Man

2005-09-02T22:29:00.000+09:00

Today on the shinkansen home, I started, with the help of someone who annoyed me considerably, to think about life, work, and loyalty. This annoying person was a 45-55 year old man. He got on the train, dragging about three bags, none actually held in the way they were meant, this guy sort of dragging them on the floor. He got on just as the train left, so, ok, I thought, he had maybe been in a rush. He then spent all the way to Omiya--about 18 minutes--fussing with his damned bags, putting them on the luggage rack, and then taking them down and messing with them, and then putting them back, on and on, all the while standing in the aisle and not sitting down, which I realised is rather annoying to those around the person doing this. He, unfortunately, did not seem to realise this.
I had passed the same guy on the escalator, because he was so damned slow. He was still, even after getting on the train, exactly that slow. I noticed that his hands shook slightly, and that he had frizzy hair sticking out from his normal salaryman hairstyle, indicating that he might have been through chemo therapy or something, which made me feel slightly guilty about my annoyance: I was just being petty. He finally sat down.
About 15 minutes later, as a conductor was passing through the carriage, the geezer flagged him. I couldn't hear what was being said, except that the geezer stood up and rushed to the end of the car, while the conductor stood in front of his seat, glancing every 30 seconds at his watch, and looking annoyed. I was annoyed just looking at the conductor.
When the geezer came back, he said "thanks alot. I used to be a kokutetsu man myself, for 20-odd years," and then went on to have a whispered conversation with the conductor, who looked happy to move on.
And I thought to myself, 'aha! A kokutetsu man! That explains it!' Explains what, you may ask, and I will explain precisely what it did explain: This relatively (45-55 year-old) youn man acted like he was 90; he was obviously coherent, saying some apologies to the over whose head he kept putting up and taking down his bag; and he was grey and his spirit apparently dead. Add that to the eccentricity of not trusting the guy in the seat next to him to watch his bag (or actively distrusting him enough to ask the conductor to watch his bags), and you have a kokutetsu man through and through. They are a bunch of intelligent people working at a mind-numbing bureaucracy, whose lives revolve around rules. They are salarymen.
Salaryman. A self defined by one's earning power. Horrible.
Today I got into it again with one of my least favorite people in the company. He started it, sending a mail to me and everyone else in his own department including his boss, that had an offensive tone and content.
One of the things he complained about was that I hadn't shown him a pamphlet that I had had translated and which involved his department. I had tried to meet him two or three times, and he had blown me off, and since his input was not required, I said to myself 'whatever--if he wants to blow me off, fine.' To tell the truth I hate the man. I used to think that I just didn't like him, or that we were different and there was something I just wasn't getting.
I went to his desk to apologise for any misunderstanding--I still need to work with him after all--and give him copies of the pamphlets. I had a couple of other things I needed to speak to him about, and addressed those things, and went back to my desk. About 30 minutes later, he came to my desk and threw pamphlets on my desk, and said 'what do I need these for.'
I was flustered, and stuttered a bit in Japanese, and said 'you said in your e-mail that your people hadn't heard of some of the applications in the pamphlets, so I..."
"I don't understand what you are saying, is that supposed to be Japanese," he said, turning his back on me.
Luckily my co-worker who sits next to me rescued the situation, since it would have definitely devolved. After talking to me through her for 10 minutes or so, he comes out with 'I don't need the pamphlets, I already received them before.' As*hole! Bakayaro!
I sat there, though, a plastic smile on my face, and nodded, thinking to myself I wish you a slow and painful death, but revealing nothing in my face. This is the Japanese way. It is also, one should note, the Japanese way to blow up occasionally, and if I have to deal with this joker again, it will definitely happen. I hate to deal with this guy so much, and I hate dealing with one of his subordinates even more, so that I avoid them when possible. This avoidance makes me feel weak, and when I do go to him, he somehow manages to render me invisible, small. This total lack of respect--turning his back on me--is the thing that really gets me about both him and his rabid subordinate. Sure, there is history. No doubt. Sure, there have been problems. But I have never gone out of my way to hurt him or her.
Sitting on the shinkansen tonight, at the end of a long day, when I did some really good work, but also felt the full might of a frustration and an anger building in me, I wondered to myself what I would be after 20 years. Would I be like the man annoying me so much, feeble, grey, slow, all the life sucked out of him by who knows what job? Would I be a beaten man? I am getting there. If I had seen him on the train tonight, my rage would have pushed me almost to the point of garroting him. But what about in five years? Will I just be a maké inu, a beaten dog? What about in 20 years? Like the annoying geezer?
This is, as my wife tells me after one of these days, and which is very little comfort, the life of a company man...