OWARINAKI TABIBITO – No Make Girl’s Endless Journey

Work

Today, I have signed, or rather, stamped my soul over to my new work place. They’ve invited me to their monthly company meeting, tomorrow (or rather, today) at 1pm. I also found out that the CEO is younger than me. That’s a strange feeling. Plus, the fact that the company really has to start paying people more if it doesn’t want to implode.

In other news, I really like my new place, temporary as it may be. Moving is going to be a pain, what with all the crap I’ve accumulated since I got here. I wonder if I can bum transport off someone…

Also doing design for a friend’s site. It’s fun…

When I have some time, I may write a thesis on Shizuru.

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Honesty in Japan

Most people have heard the stories about how people in Japan are so honest that wallets picked up in taxicabs and streets get returned completely intact. Sounds like fairy tales, right, especially if they are repeated so often.

Last night, as I was walking down a major street at night, I found a wallet lying on the road. My first thought was, “Cool, now I get to be another story of returned wallets!” Heh! I dropped it off at the nearest police box, where they confirmed the contents to be about 17,000yen, some point cards, and no identification.

Apparently, if the owner doesn’t turn up within six months, the finder gets the wallet. But, the paperwork for that takes 20mins, and I had an appointment. Eh, so I willed it to charity :P

I wonder if it counts as karma, even if I considered it more of way to experience something unique (filling out forms at a police box!) than out of pure generous honesty.

Still, I can now see why wallets do get returned. I’m pretty typical as far as Japanese go, behaviour and thinking-wise, and at no point did I even consider just keeping the wallet/money. Sounds kinda wierd, but, dude, even if you found it, it belongs to someone who’ll come looking for it. If I dropped my wallet, I’d be pissed if someone stole my money and credit cards from it.

Along similar lines, when I told my brother that I had found housing from a friend and resisted the urge to squeeze the rent down to bare bones (because it’s not worth ripping off friends), he said, “Well, if you want to be paid what you think you are worth, you should pay others what you believe they are worth.”

Well said.

And on the other side of the world, in one evening our party lost a $450 camera and a $300 phone, stolen from under our noses. And people ask me why I prefer Japan to the US…

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White Day

Today is White Day in Japan. You know Valentine’s Day? Well, in Japan it’s been perverted into a “girls send guys chocolate” mass orgy of consumerism, one which differentiates between “real feelings” chocolate gifts and “giri (duty) choco” where you send a male friend or colleague a 300yen box because, well, you’re obligated by status.

Of course, not satisfied with having set up the perfect system to sell 5 elephants’ worth of chocolate for one day, the powers-that-be decided that one month after would be just about right to set up a parallel reverse gift system. Guys that got chocolate should give something back. Not only does it serve to get rid of excess inventory, you can even tailor special packages of other gifts that signify how much you care for your givee.

It’s simply quite amazing. This is when you realize that Japan is one hell of a rich country. Over in Shanghai, the expats party it up but the locals live on $200 a month. Here, even kids and unemployed youths think nothing of blowing $50 on god knows what.

I shall be living on the equivalent of $2,500 a month. This is a somewhat unhappy situation. Luckily, I have managed, with unbelievable luck, to snag a place to stay from a friend who’s going to be based in Moscow (we talked on Saturday, I saw the place yesterday, she flies to Moscow today). At 38m sq it’s very big (for Japan), about a 30min or so walk from work (good because I don’t get no transport allowance), and rent is cheap because she’s leaving her stuff there and will be coming back every month or so. The best thing is that moving in and out is hassle-free. This give me time and flexibility to find a better place (or job?!) down the road.

So, I’m in. I have a job. I have a place. Now to get a visa.

Life is a’ rollin’ again.

BTW, Saturday was Hekiru’s birthday. Did I ever imagine I would see her to her 31st birthday? That’s kinda scary…

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Making a decision about life

How do you decide which way you should take your life? The high road? The low road? The back alley, or the expressway? Perhaps you’d like to head into the country, or you might want to ride in to the big city.

I travel along the Road of Life, and I see branches stretching out as I pass by. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what scenery I want to gaze upon, I don’t even know if I should swap my bicycle for a car or a train.

But what I feel, very strongly now, is weight of the Path Taken, or Not Taken. I feel as if the road I choose now will commit me to a certain direction, will have a grave impact. Even though it’s theoretically possible to bail out a couple months down, hike back and try something else.

I’m just about ready to sign an offer with a venture company. I got to know them through an INSEAD friend. They are made of Tokyo University grads who have fled systems/management consulting and finance, to start their own hip and quirky IT company patterned after Silicon Valley startups. In case you are not familiar, most Japan startups (if they exist) are pretty staid, boring creatures who are more like subs of bigger companies.

The pay is really bad though, about the same as when I joined my first company. I had a much better offer from another company to join their new bizdev division for marketing in-house tech, software and user interface, but I liked the people at the venture more.

Still, I dunno if I’m making a mistake. At this venture I’d be working with young, smart and cool people who have the freedom to pull in or start up any project they want, as long as they can show it could make a return. They do everything from running online wedding planning sites, to digital art exhibits, to music exchange communities… Basically, they are a bunch of geeks who decided the only work worth doing is stuff they like. It’s amazing but they are actually in the black. Probably because they pay their people peanuts!

At the other company, which is about 13 years old and a veteran video game and mobile content creator, I’d be no.2 in the new business division, basically doing strategy, marketing, running through ideas and turning the most promising ones into something marketable. Sounds really awesome, but I keep getting the nagging sense that these guys aren’t going to get far. They are too small, the ideas I saw are close to vaporware, and most tellingly, the boss with whom I would be working closely, doesn’t really talk to me. Having a conversation is like pulling teeth.

Aside from that, I’ve spoken to (don’t laugh) Pokem** Corp, which does marketing and branding for all *ahem* Pikapika products. They talked about sending me to England to help start up their new office there, doing localization, marketing and events. Again, coool as hell. But… I would prefer to be in Tokyo. I wonder if I’m a fool for dismissing this one based solely on location.

Also had an interview with Insurance Company H as a QA Designer for Variable Annuity Applications. Yeah, I had no freakin’ idea what that meant either! Surprisingly though, for a 200 year old insurance company the Japan side, or at least the QA team, is pretty sprightly and dynamic. The Japan branch was established just 5 years ago, and the QA team 3 years ago, with a grand total of 1 and a half people! Now they have 8, but they are really understaffed because the business is growing like mad. At first I thought they were a Real Proper QA Division, and me without any formal QA training would be considered underqualified. But it seems that they are winging it as they go, and so when they heard that I also ran my own QA division alone and blind, instead of frowning at my half-assed experience, they actually seemed to respect me!

Anyway, waiting to hear back on their thoughts.

But… it’s a bit too late. I’m due to give my answer to the venture company’s offer on Monday. There’s no way I’d hear back from H by then… the interview was just a feeler for me anyway. Next week Tuesday I also have an interview with a Big Consulting Firm. Again, no real interest, just sniffing the grass on the other side ^_^

So, to wrap up, I’m sitting here, in practical terms I really have only one choice, which would be to take the venture offer. I’m running out of time on the visa, so it make sense to grab this one, secure my work visa. I tell myself I could try it for 3 months, and if I think it’s not worth it, I’d be in a better position to hunt for a new job.

So my reservations are, what kind of work would I be doing? Cool web projects are fine, but wouldn’t it be cooler to start new business lines or help run fledgling divisions? How much do I value the people component of a company over the pay? Where does this decision leave me in terms of career progression? Can I go back to living in a shoebox? Heh…

I keep thinking I should do like a SWOT analysis and whatever on this… I mean, how does one figure out what to do with your life? Usually I know what I want, and boom I go for it, but this time I have doubts and uncertainties galore. Masa says I’m hesitating because this time I don’t really know the answer to, “What do I want”. Me and most of INSEAD!

I guess I should sit down and draw up a chart. I think I already know the components of my ideal job:-

Team
A great team who are geeks who really like me, but who are damn smart. They know how to manage people and projects, they can teach me stuff. We can work hard but have a good time hanging.

Work
A variety of stuff, from project management, to heading teams, to developing new business ideas and products. No grunt work! Or rather, minimum amount. More B2C – B2B systems work is bleh – with a chance to touch on marketing and strategy. Cool industry that fits with my interests, such as gaming, anime/manga, music, internet, tech, events. However, knowing that many of these industries are actually very traditional and uptight, so you don’t want to be directly involved, you just want to be able to touch it, in a sense. Bonus points for the opportunity to read, write and discuss stuff that I’m passionate about.

Take Aways
Still working on this. For now, when I go into my next job, I want to be able to say, “Dude, I can manage any project or team, I can help you start a business from scratch, I can deliver you a refined idea based on your needs, I can analyse your situation and determine a strategy, I can separate the wheat from the chaff and know what’s the most efficient allocation of resources.” This sounds like a consultant, who also executes :P I also want to have the confidence to start my own business.

Pay
Enough so that I can live in a nice big place in a good location! That means spending about 100,000yen on rent. Other than that, I’m not fussy. Of course, more is always better.

Location
Tokyo, Tokyo, TOKYO! At this point, I don’t think there’s any other choice. Perhaps in a couple years, or if Hekiru retires, my feelings will change. But, for now, I desperately want to put down roots and reconnect with people, and this is the city in which I want to do that.

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Inadequate

While I am sitting here in a small room in Nihonbashi, spending pointless hours surfing community sites and blogs on the net and moe’ing like a newborn fan over anime girls, an INSEADmate of mine – 3 years younger, equivalently less work experience, absolutely frivolous but also a significantly more intelligent than yours truly – is cleaning up shop as a marketing manager in a major corp’s Shanghai branch. She’s doing it alone, and with little more than a shakey grasp of Mandarin. Kinda puts your current aspirations into perspective, eh.

I have never been a competitive person, perhaps because I feel only the need to excel to my own, self-defined, standards. However, when I go over the jobs and the companies I have spoken to over the last several weeks, I can’t help but feel that I’m just not that good.

I have an MBA. I am reasonably smart. I do have pretty decent EQ. My experience could be better, but my qualifications overall don’t look half bad. This begs the question… so what is my potential? Somehow, I think it’s more than what I could find at web project venture shops that pay minimal foreigner’s wage.

Then again, if you were to suggest something like, say, “Brand Management for a Major Computer Company Obssessed with Making the Numbers”, I’d have to say it’s not for me, either. I might be able to do the work, or I might not… but I’d definitely be unhappy. And so I aim for smaller companies, which do not pay as well, do not have grand-slam projects worth billions of potential future earnings, do not require you to Show the Results in Stark, Unmistakeable, Undeniable, Bottomline Figures.

I think I am psychologically allergic to the requirement to deliver defined measureable output based upon manipulating indirectly effective inputs against a huge amount of uncontrollable variables. Ie get out into the real world, fight other massive corps with other really smart managers, and make the target. This could be because I am afraid of failure, that a stark failure here is a reflection of my own inadequacy.

I like to be able to feel the result of everything I do, more or less directly, more or less immediately. This is easier with a small company. The results are no doubt much smaller in scale too, but that means it’s easier to wrap my head around the whole thing.

Safety. Security. Responsibility. Power. Risk. Reward.

I am torn… Big fish in a small pond? Small fish in a big pond? Ah, but never small fish in a small pond, no matter how interesting and warm that pond is. I think my pride won’t let me do that.

No, not when you have friends making waves over in the big pool. Perhaps I am competitive, just a little bit. After all, gotta feel good about yourself too, in five years time.

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Community sites

Got myself signed up on Mixi, a Japanese community site. I’m also on GREE. Then there’s blogging and forums… too much to keep up! Someone needs to come up with an all-in-one app.

Anyway, just finished one interview today, two more on Thursday. Sent in application to IDG Japan’s English webzine yesterday, finally. Gotta contact a headhunter today. Lots of stuff happening (maybe not that much?) so hopefully I get something decent!

The editor job is sounding more and more attractive now. I think it’s because I just like to read, write and discuss about what I like. Plus, I like to create, and I like to manage people, and I love being a little on the inside of the industry as a legit person (not kossori sneaking around like some fangirl). If I got this job, it’d be a pain but it’d also be great fun, and it matches my hobbies, and it’d give me great contacts.

Then again, my chances are slim. As always. Career change is never easy.

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More life in Tokyo

Quick roundup…
- went to check out a venture company
- did some design work
- had drinks with old friends (and getting pretty trashed on just two cups of sake and spouted a ton of rubbish)
- got up the next day for sushi at Tsukiji with a new friend, at 7am no less, but the guy at the sushi place remembered me, and the sushi was amazing, so no regrets even if the weather sucked
- went to see ELT concert at Tokyo Kokusai Forum Hall A on Saturday (running into another friend at Hall C)
- had dinner, chatted about first impressions and how we got in to Hekiru, got slightly trashed on one cup of sake and spouted some other rubbish about Hekiru and how I’d want her to be known as someone who puts on an amazing live, and whatnot
- did more design work, and thought about rehauling my Hekiru page
- went to see ELT again on Sunday (hey, Mochida is cool! Weird, but cool, in a weird different way…)
- had looooong talk with another friend about Hekiru
- back in room, sat down and watched some Mai-Hime

So, didn’t get my scheduled resume makeover down. Ugh. Yeah, gotta rewrite it for the IDG editor job. Now, that would be pretty cool!

Dammit, I need to secure a job in Japan, for sanity’s sake. I like it way too much here and have too much hanging in the balance. If I had to give up and go home, I would not be a very happy camper…

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Memories

I’m sitting here, in the office of my old company that I worked for between 1998 and 2001. Back then it had barely 20 people, then it grew to like 70 when I left, since then it’s been up and down times. They don’t do what we used to do anymore, they’re a serious systems integrator company. I know it’s necessary for business and profit, but it feels sad to see with my own eyes the evidence that most organizations can’t really survive on creating and selling and producing in “fun” areas.

I contrast what I used to know, what I went through, what I see now, with another small venture I went to visit yesterday. They reminded me so much of the old days at The Old Company, it was almost painful. But you know, that atmosphere is like a drug, you want it, you want to swim in it. I don’t care much for making tons of money and building something huge, I just want to make cool stuff with cool people.

But, in the end, if it doesn’t last, if it doesn’t leave an everlasting footprint, you still feel a bit empty. So perhaps it’s not the fortune, it’s the fame.

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Procrastination

It’s 11:41pm and I can’t sleep. No, it’s not that late, but I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf and keeping regular hours seemed like an easy place to start. For some reason though, I just haven’t been able to sleep much past 6 or 7 hours a night, and it’s annoying to say the least. I mean, when you don’t have much to do, sleeping is usually the best way to pass the time. Sucks that I can’t even do that.

Anyway, another habit I have to break is putting off annoying things. For example, I really should have closed my French bank account when I was in France, or at least taken the money out. Now that I’m away, I realize it’s a much bigger pain, and I’m probably losing god knows how many hundreds of euros in fees or whatever the more I hem and haw about finding a way to shut it down. Ugh.

And since I’m so free, I should also be doing more productive stuff, like writing friends and studying and whatever. Of course, I should be meeting more people and networking and job hunting like crazy. Also writing letters, updating homepage (hah! like that’s going to happen ever), and… and… well, actually, if you think about it, there’s not really that much stuff that’s absolutely critical, it’s just that what’s on the list is annoying, and so we just don’t do it. We’d be sooo much more efficient and effective if we just bit the bullet and took care of it, say by setting aside even half an hour a day.

Yep, so anyway, I did take care of one thing today already. Now, to see if I can sleep.

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Back in Tokyo

So here I am, back in Tokyo. It is both incredibly warm, and unexpectedly frustrating.

Warm, because my friends are helpful above and beyond the call of duty – one of my old colleagues is not only helping me out in the job hunt, she’s letting me stay at her place for a couple days plus park myself in her office during the day.

Frustrating, because I think I finally know what I want to do, and the job openings are either closed or I’m not qualified enough, on paper. Dammit, how can one make a career change if you don’t get a chance to prove yourself on skills? I guess experience always counts more.

Wanna get into the gaming industry. Well, all entertainment is interesting to me, but gaming is the only industry which isn’t caught in the conservative trap. They are growing, and there’s a revolution to be had.

Okay, back to writing resumes. Shit, it’s not easy. I’m starting to wonder if determination and patience and hardwork are enough to land a job, or will I have to pray for divine intervention too?

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Mata tabi wo tatsu…

Well, it’s time for the next part of my journey. After a real lazy month in Michigan punctuated by a trip to New York (to say Happy Birthday) and another to Palo Alto (to say Good Luck in Shanghai), I shall now fly to Japan to meet my destiny…

Or perhaps just find a really awesome high-paying job and settle down in a nice Tokyo apartment for a few years :P

I left Japan in March of 2001, because it felt it was time to move on. The company wasn’t doing too great and I never wanted to be in software development anyway. Plus, it was getting kinda scary how much of my life revolved around Hekiru. So it was off to Singapore and to a totally new job in i-banking, M&A to be exact. Well, that was okay but it wasn’t great either, and so, continuing my search for the answers to the age-old questions “Who am I and what do I want to do with my life?”, I went and got myself an MBA at INSEAD.

Unfortunately, while INSEAD was a blast, one month after graduation I am not much further along in the “What do I want to do with my life” part. But, I think I want to go back to Japan. I like the country and the people, I miss my friends, and I don’t want to go home yet.

So Japan it is. Now, what kinda job? Ugh, that’s an even harder question.

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Remember when…?

In my little About section to this page, I had tried to explain why I felt it was so important for me to preserve my memories. It’s so you don’t lose bits and pieces of yourself… because over time feelings change and thoughts are forgotten, but dammit they are important to me now, and so I can’t bear to think that, although as a person I would never stop changing, I would forget the things that make me what I am now.

Which brings me to this story that I just rediscovered as I was randomly surfing (I had read it before several years back). It’s a fanfic based on the anime Lodoss, so if you haven’t seen it, the impact might not be as great. In this show, Deedlit and Pirotessa were elves in love with two men who fought on opposing sides in the struggle to free/rule the land of Lodoss. In any event, it really touched something deep inside of me… perhaps in sadness, or fear, or just a strange sort of melancholy.

It’s called Through the Eyes of Infinity and is written by DB Sommer. Google that if the link becomes broken. Because hey, things always change, right?

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LCD springs back to life!

Oh my god, my LCD is back.

One week ago my LCD took a real big gulp of water, and after being confronted with ultimate deadness in display despite repeated attempts at resurrection, I had just about given up and contacted IBM to get it fixed. Heartbroken I was, because they said it would cost $895 to replace it. I had gone so far as to get them to send me a box… but couldn’t bear to take that final step because goddamit it costs less than twice that to get a new T42!! Plus I couldn’t live without my laptop anyway, even for a 4 day turnaround.

So I had been working with my laptop connected to an old monitor this whole time. Well, just now, my brother tried to get the laptop to throw something up via the S-cable to the TV so we could watch Azumanga Daiou… and when he swapped the LCD and monitor displays, oh my god the LCD came to life!!

Okay, it’s not perfect, not by a long shot. You can still see these ugly spots on the back of the screen where there’s still some water residue. But hot damn, it displays and it looks like it displays pretty fine. Time to pray to the electronic gods up in cyberheaven that my LCD won’t relapse and continues on its road to recovery.

But wow, I never knew electronics could self heal! Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!

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Lost in New York

I’m in New York, and I’m a bit upset. You see, I am now computerless. No, it didn’t get stolen (although other things did). Nope, I just happened to stick it in a bag with a bottle of water which leaked. Badly. Now, my display is dead. I am terribly upset, because that T40 has been my best friend for the better part of a year. However, looking on the bright side, it could have been a lot worse. The laptop could have been completely flooded and dead, but here it’s just the display and therefore still theoretically salvageable.

Aside from the laptop though, I also had my phone stolen. Went to a friend’s birthday party yesterday at a club/restaurant called Lotus. I left my phone in a bag which was checked. Okay, yeah, that was stupid, especially considering it was a Handspring Treo. But hey, you don’t think a chic club would have that kinda stuff happen, right? Huh… Anyway losing the phone was shitty, but even worse was said birthday friend whose camera also went mysteriously disappearing, and from behind her head no less.

Man, losing a brand new cool ass camera sucks anything, but on your birthday it really really sucks. She was pretty upset and left early. Just utter bad luck.

But bad luck and itchy fingers not withstanding, I am enjoying my time in New York. I walked all around Midtown (was staying in Pennsylvania Hotel first two nights) and then went to Central Park and the Museum of Natural History. I didn’t get to see all of the Museum, but I was actually quite overwhelmed with the dinosaur exhibit.

I’ve never really liked natural history as much as science, and I have little interest in dinosaurs. I could never quite understand why people are so fascinated with these creatures. But when I stepped into that first exhibit all and saw the sketelons of the massive tyrannosaurus and brontosaurus and raptors… suddenly I was dumbstruck in awe at the sheer scale, the size and power and unbelievable vitality of animals which stood higher than buildings and lived for millions of year across open plains, fighting and dying and conquering. And I was also moved by the loving care and devotion of the people who excavated these fossils and tried so hard to solve mysteries that no-one will ever know the answers to. There’s something tragic and touching about the whole thing.

For some reason, monster mammals didn’t make me feel the same way though. It’s hard to feel a trembling in your chest and the roaring of blood in a your head over a giant sloth. No matter how nasty their claws may be.

PS, we had dinner at this Vegan restaurant called Gobo, and the food was amazing. I have to say that, along with Original Sin, this stuff was far tastier than all the “great” food places we ate in Whistler and Vegas.

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You’ll always be an otaku…

Sometimes I wonder why I like the stuff I like. Why do I enjoy heavy metal, what is it that makes me feel so drawn to Hekiru, why do I love anime as an entertainment and art form while I have never felt the same rush from movies? (I will admit to a great fondness for “Misfits of Science” and “Something is out there” though…)

As I mentioned before, I somehow got back into anime. I’d more or less quit after 1998, still loving the old stuff of course but with no desire to see anything new, and yet suddenly after Christmas in 2004, a little over a week ago, *bam* suddenly I was acquisitioning series like no tomorrow and watching anime throughout the day.

Perhaps it had been building up. I had never really left anime completely, despite my lack of interest in new material; I was still reading fanfiction like mad, so I was still immersed in those worlds, albeit not of those from the original anime creators. For my last two Periods at INSEAD, I had devised a business plan to sell anime merchandise to the US. Even then I did not believe! I had spent seven years breaking free from anime otakudom, mainly because I thought the new stuff was crap and there was nothing that appealed to my tastes. I believed that I had outgrown anime, which by itself had degenerated into childish commercialized drivel, far removed from those revolutionary classics from the days of yore, the late 80s and early 90s. Vampire Princess Miyu, Please Save My Earth, Gunbuster, Escaflowne, Kimagure Orange Road, and countless others.

But when I decided to give it a try with Zipang, a serious show about a Japanese warship thrown into the past and Ghost in the Shell 2 (forget Full Metal Alchemist, Love Hina, or any harem anime crap!) …. well, that was the start of the descent! Soon I was watching My HIme, Maria-sama ga miteru, a smattering of Bleach, Azumanga Daioh, Genshiken, Macross Zero and School Rumble (which incidentally did not appeal at all) and before I knew it, I was chewing through Kannaduki no Miko and Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito, moving on to Noir and Madlax… And dudes, this is all in less than 10 days.

Guess you never really stop being an otaku, eh? Yeah, but anyway, I do wonder why I love anime so much. I like it because it moves me, it affects me. It’s not just mindless entertainment, but the ones I like the most are (usually) the ones which hit me emotionally on some level. Be it the Lake episode from Bakuretsu Hunter, which had Carrot befriending a Lake spirit who went from child to old woman in one day, or the grandeur of the great tree on Laputa, or just recently Himeko and Chikane completely overwrought yet still moving declarations of undying love for each other, dammit! I had tears in my eyes. And I’m usually a cold heartless bastard when it comes to sappy romance movies.

So, whassup? I dunno, I think it’s because I’m really an old school romantic. Yeah, there’s just something about love and romance the Japanese way, what with all the misunderstandings and unrequited love and the duality between the weight and unfairness of fate and the most powerful feelings one could have, of longing and selflessness and a strange innocence in it all. It echoes inside me. I’m pretty cynical about real life love, and that’s probably because deep down I’m a real idealist.

Of course, I also have a thing for kickass girls with long dark hair and swords :P Hey, it’s still mostly visual and coolness, okay? Long live anime girls! :D

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