Tokyo on Rails
on February 14, 2007This post will be a personal life update (with pics).
Today was my first working day as a RubyOnRails Developer in Shibuya . The company I work at does normal Japanese hours (from 10 till 10), but fortunately, they have a laid back international atmosphere. On a normal working day I communicate in Japanese, English and Flemish-Dutch with my colleagues. My co-developers are pretty cool and like-minded. The core Rails guy lives in Honolulu and flies in every few weeks. Also most of them have read the book that just got delivered to me: Getting Real
Another core activity next to my job is studying Japanese. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening I go to Japanese Kaiwa (conversation) class. It’s kind of interesting how slowly – but gradually – all that noise starts having a melody.
Also, I will try to make some more time for art. This weekend I visited an Australian Contemporary Art Exhibition and the Dutch movie ‘Phileine zegt Sorry’
Also I came up with my own idea of a cool art project: Yamanote Clock (This link is a writeboard, password is empty, feel free to edit!)
Short walk to the nearest Convenience store
on February 06, 2007This weekend I moved to Tokyo to live together with my girlfriend for the time being. I decided to study some Kanji ‘at home’ this afternoon, since I have a long time gap between the job interview this morning and the Japanese conversation course tonight.
After studying for a short while I felt like eating some caramel candy, so I left for the nearest convenience store, the Family Mart. The store is only one block away and open 24/7, hence the name convenient. The last time I visited during the night, I think that’s why I didn’t notice the five-floor high giant red ‘strawberry house’ next to it, they sell hello kitty items there.
Just like last time, I observed many Mercedes cars and luxurious domestic Toyota models. This is kind of strange, everyone should be working at this hour right? Well, they are, but they go there by train (Can’t blame them, this morning the train took me through 10 kilometers of metropolis in 11 minutes!). So the cars are just for showing off to the neighbors (that you don’t talk to in Tokyo). I have no problem with that, it’s good for the environment and pretty cars are nice to see (Yes, I admit it, I like watching Top Gear, which I guess makes me a stereotype male).
Apart from many fish and chocolate candy, there was no caramel in the Family Mart. There was something called ‘karamerry’ but it had the picture of an apple on it. Chocolate it is than.
