LinBlog

never seem to see eye to eye for a long time… I have a month left in Tokyo, and I’ve left the blog post-less for the better part of my 6 month stay here. Not much to say except I’ve really enjoyed my time here a lot (enough in fact, to look into staying longer, which didn’t work out unfortunately). In my last few weeks here, I’ll be wrapping up a case, taking my GMAT, and then preparing for a 2 week vacation while also kicking business school apps into high gear. I just booked my flight back home, where I’ll be making pit stops in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Hong Kong before finally making my way back to San Francisco. Oddly enough, this 4 leg flight will cost me less than the cost of a direct flight back home (unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to do a cheap business class upgrade with this ticket - we’ll see).

It’s hard not to laugh at stuff like this: Toilets recalled due to fire

1.5 years of hard work accumulating 30k+ Starwood points, spent on 8 nights in Kuala Lampur for my Golden Week vacation. Pretty exciting.

Update: ended up spending 4 nights at a hostel, 1 night at Shertaon Kuala Lumpur, and 3 nights at Sheraton Langkawi. Reports and pictures to follow soon…

Interesting (and random) cultural observation: Japanese folks are much more diligent about using the open and close door buttons on the elevator. In my experience, Americans will rarely use those two buttons: if you want to hold the door open for someone, you stick your arm in between the doors to set off the sensors; if you want to close the door - well, you just wait for it to close. When you enter or exit the elevator, Japanese people will hold the door open for you by using the “Door Open” ‘button. The second the last person is on or off the elevator, they instantly hit the “Door Close” button. I think there’s three reasons for this (I’m a consultant - everything is in 3s):

1. Holding your hand in between the elevator door doesn’t do anything in Japan - the door still closes (I saw this today as my co-worker got her finger stuck inside a closing elevator door!).
2. The “Door Close” and “Door Open” buttons actually respond immediately in Japan (it usually takes a few seconds to trigger in American elevators).
3. There’s an overall bigger rush to get wherever you’re going in Japan (hence, the immediacy of the “Door Close” button).

 … but Friday Night Lights is the best show on TV right now. Although I still manage to watch a decent amount of American TV here, this is the one show I cannot miss. It’d be a shame if it didn’t get renewed for next year. There is no weak storyline, every actor is phenomonal, and even the most cliched scenes turn into some of the most touching moments on TV. If you haven’t see this show yet, check it out. Wednesday nights on NBC.

Just a fun picture - my co-worker (#3) is about to pass me (#5). He rides motorcycles though, so I didn’t feel too bad that he was lapping everyone on the track.

Well, actually, more like “dumpster-looking restaurant on a side street.” I visited Nathan, a friend from high school, in Yokohama, and we were looking for a place to get dinner. On one side street, I asked why there were so many dumpsters (Tokyo/Japan is genearlly a remarkably clean city, and trash is often hidden from plain view). I discover that they weren’t actually dumpsters, but restaurants. Each restaurant was perhaps 10′x14′. The picture above literally captures about 80% of the entire size of the restaurant.

It was actually quite an experience though, once we chose a random restaurant to try out. All of them were essentially serving the same food - boiled seafood. Customers basically just point to what they want and she scoops it onto your plate. There were about ~3-4 other people in the restaurant with us at the time (and thus, a full house), who were all very friendly. One woman poured Nathan and I some of the beer she bought, and another guy bought us an entire bottle (2-3 servings) before he left. All in all, quite an interesting experience. The woman in the photo runs the place by herself (and has been doing it for many years).

Not the movie, but tuna:

Most of the seafood in Tokyo comes through the Tsukiji Fish market. I woke up at 5am on a Friday to drop by and catch the action. Live auctions (even when you can’t understand what’s going on) are always fun to watch. Just to give you a sense of how big this place is - this picture probably only captures about 1/8th of all the fish laid out for auction like this. Right outside the auction area is a gigantic marketplace where the fish are sold in packages after being gutted and cut up. Quite an eye-opening (and smelly) experience.

A couple weeks ago (during an unstaffed Thursday), I made a day trip out to Kamakura with a co-worker. Kamakura is a small town about an hour away from Tokyo. It’s quite a change of pace from the intensity of Tokyo.

 ”Big Buddha”

Sandals for  ”Big Buddha”

Not to make this a blog of picture of Tokyo Tower, but this is what it looks like outside my window right now: