Christmas in Japan

Sucks.
...
This year was my first Christmas in Japan as someone who lives here.
2 years ago I was just arriving, and I was clearly just a tourist, and last year I went back to Canada.

So I had apprehension to the arrival of this Christmas.

While in Canada Christmas is mostly about Family, here it's about couples.
Being single, that wasn't really a nice sounding event.
But even as I was already not looking forward to it, I was underestimating another important fact.
Christmas is also not an holiday officially here, so there's no day off for it. And to top it up, right now at work we're doing overtime like crazy. So I spent the 24 and 25 pretty much in front of my computer working.

When I got home, since I was alone, I celebrated Christmas with Shinobu the best I could.

Merry Christmas!

Diversity bullshit (please read before complaining about the title)

This will be a really different piece from what you can usually read on my blog, so if you're not interested in this topic, please just ignore it.
Picture not really related:

Recently a lot of press has been going around about gender inequality, in life and in hiring. Google and yahoo both released "diversity reports" showing that they hire a lot more man than women, and a lot more white or Asian than any other ethnicity.

And nothing is wrong with the world.

Feminist will make you believe that a 50% ratio is a must, but that's bullshit. A company, should aim to recruit the best people they can, the fact that they are literally forced to recruit women over man because of that 50% belief is completely unfair to hard working people.

I'll give a couple examples to indicate how this works in real life, but I'll start with a "imaginary perfectly balanced world" example.
In this world, there'S as many girls as man interested in the tech sector, and they all are as skilled as each others
So when a company announce that it wants to hire 100 new employe, 300 person apply. Of these 300 persons, 25 man are extremely skilled, 25 women are extremely skilled, 50 man are skilled, 50 women are skilled, and the rest sucks.
This perfect world company (not so perfect since 150 person sucked) will then hire 50 extremely skilled person, and 50 skilled person, choosing the top 25 in both gender.
Thats how equality, and actually normal hiring process would work (if everyone's skill was perfectly equal, and could really be splitted that easily)

Now in a normal world, there's a lot of different variables, first instead of 3 levels of skills, we'll use 10, (10 being the best), and the male/female ration applying will often be REALLY different, here's an example in the normal world:
hiring 100 of 300:
skill lvl 10: 10m, 5f
skill lvl 9:   25m, 10f
skill lvl 8:   30m, 10f
skill lvl 7:   40m, 15f
skill lvl 6:   10m, 2f
skill lvl 5:  50m, 8f
skill level <5: 70m, 15f
Note that in a real situation, the female/male ratio could even be lower, my example has a ratio of ~22% but my Computer science classes had about 10% of female student.

With the Equality goal, this company would have to hire: 15 lvl 10, 35 lvl 9, 25 lvl 8, 15 lvl 7, 2 lvl 6 and 8 lvl 5.
But what a company should really do, to get the most skilled employe should be to get: 15 lvl 10, 35 lvl 9, 40 lvl 8 and 10 lvl 7.

In this "we must absolutely meet equality" world, a bunch of mans that are more skilled than women would not get a job, and a bunch of unskilled women would get one, and this is bullshit.

In real life though, there's more than 10 level of skills, and the difference between people can be greater, Highly skilled women exist in IT, I've just never met one (I've talked to some on the internet, but never talked to one in a company or at school).

People should be hired on Talent (and attitude) alone, and not on their gender or race
That is the true equality. Fuck these percentages.

In the end this post didn't have any comment about racial diversity, but in Canada (Quebec), in IT I didn't notice any bias.... but the number were really low, because there's really not that many minority groups in Quebec city. Montreal must be a whole different story though, but I never worked there, so I can't really comment on it. In Japan, I could have been a victim of racial bias, but I was lucky enough to not have to try to get in a normal company, and got hired in a company that actually loves foreigner, so once again, I can't comment on this.

I'm all about equality, but those who call themselves feminist always seem to forget that equality doesn't mean equal number, it means equal chances.

Back in Japan!

So I'm back in Japan again! This time I got a 1 year Work Visa.... which is supposed to be easy to renew... I'm kinda disappointed to have gotten only a 1 year one because it makes long term contracts harder to get (rent/cellphones)

The flight has been horrible, I don't know what happened with Air Canada... maybe it's because it was a week flight, and that's the first time I fly during the week, but I found the service to be lacking compared to the usual. Also, during the Vancouver to Narita flight, there was turbulence all the way, I've never been shaked for so long.

I'm on jet lag now, but already had a couple of nice meals.
Still looking for an appartment, waiting for the answer from an agent to whom we sent a request earlier this week.

I enjoyed my month back in Quebec, I met a lot of people I missed and will be missing in the future. But I'm glad to be back in Japan.

Nothing much more to say, I should be posting more this year, but my post will be shorter probably, I noticed that when I planned big post, I never posted them on time if I posted them at all.

That's it for now!

Pretty awesome day in Akihabara.

I'm kinda busy lately, lots of work, and I'm also filling my time off with a lot of stuff to do, and meeting a lot of people...
The end of my life in Japan might be over soon, so I'm trying to make the best of the time I have left!

That being said, 2 week-ends ago I went to Akihabara with some (new) friends.
We went to a maid cafe called @HomeCafe, it was really nice, their service right now if better than MaiDreamin's but I still thing the outfits of MaiDreamin looks cuter.

I think the best thing about this maid cafe is that they still play games with people! I got my ass kicked by a maid at Crocodile Dentist.

I ordered some latte on whcih the maid made a nice drawing of Misaka Mikoto and a puppy curry.

After that we went to a figure shop I had forgotten about since my previous travels to japan, they have pretty nice and cheap used figures and goods, I got myself an Ayano figure and a really nice To Aru Kagaku no Railgun Pocket watch, both for the for 1000 yen!

After that we went to what some of my friends already told me is the best karaoke in Akihabara. And yeah the rooms are pretty damn awesome.
And at this points come the moment I should say that my friends I went to Akihabara that day are Iron-Chino and まいなすいょん from IRON ATTACK! and　龍５１５０ from 5150.
Two of them are singers, so I felt pretty embarrassed to go there with my horrible voice lol.
But we had a great time, it was really really fun.
I actually got to sing Rain in Vain as a duet with Chino, it was a pretty awesome moment!

After that we finished the evening in a cafe, talking randomly about random stuff. It was a pretty awesome day.

When they left I went to meet another friend with whom I planned a trip to Nara and Osaka for next week-end in front of a ... soso-steak.

Q&A answers! (Finally)

So I didn't get that many questions yet, but here are the ones I got:

From the G+ post about my Q&A:

Stefano Ceci

9 Apr 2013

Hello! I am also a programmer. What is the career of a programmer in japan?

 

From the Comment thread of the Original post:

Nate River said...

Is it more stressful to work in Japan than it was back here in Quebec ?

Is being a gaijin difficult ?

Have you found a club or a group of Otaku ?

April 14, 2013 at 12:22 PM

 What is the career of a programmer in japan?

To tell the truth, it's not so different than elsewhere. I guess it's different in every company, but where I work, mostly everyone I need to comunicate with, understand english enough that the language isnt a problem. The biggest problem in that sense is, when facing complex (or just plainly badly written) code, if there's any comment, they are in japanese, which doesn'T help so much. Where I work now, I have to bring my own computer, there is no computer for the employee in the office, everyone is expected to have his own laptop. Some terms you'Re used to use may change, I forgot the exemple that hapened to me, but They told me to use, a term for a POST field, which was a really poor choice of term, but apparently "it's what everyone use in Japan".
The programming languages used stay the same, I've done PHP and Java since I got here.
Working with strings can be really complicated if they were not given to you prior.  I often just put placeholders and placeholder names for string thtb I can't write and don't have any idea what they do, then just replace them all when I get them.
If you want more specific nformations of certain points that I have forgotten, please ask again in a comment.

Is it more stressful to work in Japan than it was back here in Quebec ?

It was at first, I was really nervous, because I didn't know about how they judge people in japan on their performances, so I really wanted to look awesome. It made me nervous, but I've learned a lot since then.  First I learned that this company if really different from most company, and it's people are really nice, and understanding. They also offer me a great freedom, I can pretty much work whenever I want, as long as I finish my projects on time of course. Second: apparently, firing someone in Japan is really hard, and a really bad thing to do. So most employee never get fired, even if they do a sucky job. (it also has the reverse effect that, if you're looking for work past a certain age, it's almost impossible to find anything).
So I stopped being nervous about it. It's a pretty nice working condition, and doing my best is more than enough.

Is being a gaijin difficult ?

Yes. Especially if your japanese isnt good enough to have real discussion with other people. It feels lonely. Some people clearly avoid sitting next to gaijin in train. But it's not really that bad. Japanese people are usually nice people, and there's also a lot of people ready to help you. I was lucky to get a couple good friends from work, and they also help me a lot, which makes it a lot easier.
Though If I didn't have google maps and google in general, it would be a lot worse.

Have you found a club or a group of Otaku ?

I haven't found a club of otaku, but a lot of people who work with me are Otaku. I got a couple of friends in them, and every week i get to know more of them. I went to Reitaisai with 2 of them last week-end. I often go out to karaoke with them too.

That's all for this edition of answers, if you have more questions, of if I didn't answer your question correctly. please write a new question in the comments!

M3 2013

Once again I'm pushing back my answering of question to this post: Q&A Hoping to get more questions.

Now, about 2 weeks ago (April 29) was this year's M3.
For those who don't know what M3 is, it's like a mini-Comiket, for music only. A big event with a lot of Doujin Music circles selling their works. You can see my last year's post here: M3 and akiba day 1.

So last year we got there a little late, and didn't really know how things worked. This year I got to do the line-up prior to the event, and got in pretty early.

The lineup is clearly not as impressive as Comiket, but there was still a lot of people.
During the first hour of the event, I quickly went to all the circles I knew, and wanted their new albums. The only circle with a really long line was Asriel.
After that, a friend from work arrived around noon, and we walked around, discovering new circles for the rest of the event. I got to speak with a couple of people, especially a lot with Miko again! Speaking with Miko always makes me happy! She's so cute <3 p="">I also went to a circle I discovered last year while walking around, called Kanata Labo (last year they were dorami diego kanata but now they made a bigger circle and the former is a part of the new one). I remembered them mostly because the cute girls told us "WE LOVE YOU" before we left last year, lol. They were still as genki this year as last one! While IRON ATTACK! was present at the event, Chino was not.
Here's a picture of what it looks inside (this is one half of one of the 3 rooms)

In one of the room, there was live performances, so we got to watch TAM play the violin:

Finally, we returned home after eating dinner in Shunjuku. This is my loot from M3 this year:

Kinda small, but didn't have time to walk around the full room, and unfortunately, I think a lot of circles are saving their new releases for Reitaisai at the end of the month.

That's all for today. Expect a new post very soon, because there are two things I wanted to talk about today, but I decided to split it in 2 posts!

Atami

Hello everyone I went to Atami this weekend so I'll talk about that, and I'll answer the questions of my Q&A later this week or next week (if you still want to ask questions please go ask it in the comments here: Q&A )

For those of you who don't know Atami, or have never heard of it, well I was like you 4 days ago. Apparently it's a really famous place, near Shizuoka. The sun beach (and moonlight beach) actually reminded me of something, I'm pretty sure I've seen/heard about it before... maybe in an Anime, on TV or in a book, but I'm sure I've seen it mentioned before. I just can't remember where.

So Atami is supposed to be a really famous place, but I think it's mostly famous with older people, as there was mostly only old people everywhere. It's really beautiful though. The beach at night is pretty, and they have fireworks during summer, but there was none when I went.

I stayed at the New Akao Hotel, a pretty nice hotel built on a cliff.

Our room was upgraded to a Royal Suite for some reasons, it was huge!

First thing we did after arriving, they were serving a "welcome drink" in the lobby, so we had green tea with a sweet. It was delicious.

After that we went to the Rose Garden (don't know why they called it rose garden, while there were some roses, it was not the majority of the garden that had roses).
It a huge and beautiful garden built into 4 sections (i think there used to be 5, but one of them seemed to be closed)
Above the garden, there was a little shrine. I love shrines. while I don't believe in anything, I love the view they provide.

The first section of the garden was a japanese garden. They said they they have the biggest Bonsai in the world.

Japanese garden always feels so relaxing. The sand represent the sea, and the pants/rocks represent the land (islands). The japanese garden was separated in two. Some kids were laying and actually went into the sand. Their parent were angry, but the staff of the garden laughed. it was kinda funny, but I understand why the mother was mad.

the second section was kind of a min maze, with flower arks and many little paths.

The third section was the Wedding and Propose garden, it felt really romantic.

The last garden was filled with flowers and had a lot of statues and a nice fountain.

There was also a monkey tamer performing at the top of this garden, it was interesting, but I only got to watch the end of the show.

After that we went to eat in the huge dinner hall. A band from New Zealand was playing while we ate a really Japanese meal. After the meal (which was actually so so) we went on a night tour of the city by bus. I was told by a friend that Atami had a really nice night view, so I looked foward to that. and it was as nice and they said. In the middle of the trip, the stopped at the Atami castle, so we could take some pictures. The castle itself was looking nice, but the view from it, to the city, and the beach, was just awesome.

After the bus trip we returned to the hotel, where we had a mini lesson of Motchitsuki (beating up the Mochi). Since I watched Tamako Market lately, it felt really interesting! we got to eat the mochi after that, and it was good. (sorry no pic of that)

After that we went to listen to a live acoustic performance by the same band that was playing at the dinner. I got to speak with the guitarist, Carlos, he was a pretty nice guy.

Unfortunately, they were not so popular, as we were the only ones attending this live performance.

After that we went back to the room, watched some tv. I went to the Open air bath at midnight (because I'm way too shy to go there when there's other people), and I can confirm, I don't like ofuro/onsen. It's way too hot for me.

The next morning, we ate breakfast at the same lace than we ate dinner, after that we went on a tour of the city. we stopped at an Old Inn, that is now just a place for tourist. It's a really impressive mix of western and eastern style.

After that we went to eat in an overpriced fancy restorant, The food was really good, but... way too expensive, I took the cheapest thing on the menu, and it was 1600yen or so, the normal stuff was around 5000 yen, while there were some up to 15000 yen.

After that we took a walk near the beach, watched the many monuments and went back to the hotel, picked up our stuff and went back to Tokyo, where we finished or day with karaoke.

One of the most famous statue in Atami is this one:

It's a guy kicking a girl... why? the story is actually pretty interesting! and you can read it here:

"You have been blinded by his diamond!"
That's all for this post.
These were only a couple of the pictures I took, and you can see the rest here: Atami

Thank you!

Q&A

Hey everyone, I don't know what to post about so I though I'd do a Question & Answer.

If you have any questions about

• Living in Japan
• My life in Japan
• Japan culture 

Or any other topic that I could answer, please post a comment and I will try to answer. If I can'T answer, I will try to get the information as soon as possible, and if you're asking about something I didn't experience yet while being in Japan, I'll try to do it soon so I can answer your question.
So you can actually also take this as an opportunity to give me ideas of what to do.

I will answer every questions, but if your question is too stupid, you should expect and equally stupid answer! (Being ignorant, or not knowing something is not being stupid so even if you think your question could seem obvious to other, don't hesitate to ask it; I call stupid questions a question that is clearly meant to be impossible to answer or trying to make me something completely stupid or illegal...)

Love will find it's way!

I know I didn't talk about love much lately... mainly because, since I'm living in Japan now, most people come to this blog for the Life in Japan, and not for my personal life.But with something this big, I can't really not talk about it!

I met a really nice girl when I was watching Sakuras. Funny enough, her name is Sakura! She's really cute, small, has brown hair, and speaks a little English. We spoke a lot during the last couple of days, and we now know that this is love!

We'll be getting MARRIED! YES! the date isn't set yet, but it'll be a traditional Japanese wedding. I'm so Happy!
Sorry I don't have a picture of her, but I'll try to post one soon!

What hapenned lately part 1/2

This post is gonna be a summary of everything that happened to me since my last Japan related post (february 12). A lot of little things happened, but nothing big, so I didn't want to post about it, but it's been so long, so I should at least put everyone up to date... Thanks to Justin and SuperSugoi who helped me raise my motivation enough to write this...

most of what you will read here was previously written, or hinted at on my G+.

Valentine's day

Valentine's day in japan is not like in Canada. Girls give chocolate to guys, and it doesn't actually mean it's love, it can also be "giri choco" which is the chocolate given to pretty much every guy a girl have to interact with, as to not let them be disappointed. It's a very Japanese thing, and has it's good points and bad points... Anyway, I received a chocolate from a really cute girl. It was an obligatory chocolate, but it was still fun. Other than that, It didn't really feel like it was valentine's day so there's nothing more to say about it.

Cinema in Japan

I went to see the To Aru Majutsu No Index movie at the cinema with 2 friends from work. We wanted to go on the first week-end but it was full (and we didn't buy out tickets in advance) so we went to the Karaoke instead.

 

We went again the next week-end and reserved tickets in advance this time.
The movie was good. Even if I didn't understand everything. They pretty much used all characters, I was really happy to see the Misaka Imoutos. But unfortunately I couldn't spot Misaka 10032. Unless the movie happens before she gets her googles stolen.

The seats are actually bigger and have more leg space than Canadian's cinemas. That surprised me. The screen was small though. Beside that (and the language of course) the only difference with a Canadian cinema was that after the movie, when the credit started... nobody moved. EVERYONE watched the credits until the very end... wtf

Before the movie they gave us a copy of one of the To Aru novel (I think it was the one for the movie but I can't read it and confirm). Later I've seen copies of this novel in re-seller shops for like 3000yen, so it'S worth more than the actual cinema ticket.

Office moving

The company where I work moved it's office from Shibuya to Shimokitazawa. Before leaving the old office I took some pictures from the roof of the building, you can see them here: OldOfficeRoof
Personally I like the old office better... but the new one is cheaper.

Nakano broadway again

Well it's an Otaku hotspot so of course I'd go again. I went with one of my friend from work, and I just showed him around. nothing especially new excepted we counted the number of Mandarake inside the building... I lost count after 14.
Also one of them changed it's entrance.
It looked like this before:

Now it looks like this:

Lawson and their lottery

The convenience store chain Lawson has a lot of Anime themed lotteries. The one close to my house has one about To Aru, so I tried it a couple of times. Got 2 figure and this nice cell phone strap:

If I had more money I would have bought a whole bunch more =/

This was part 1
I'll post part 2 later this week.
(Update) Part two has been posted here!

Adieu

I'll never see you again. It pains me so... but at least now everything is clear.

Another post about love!

For those who don't know, I have a 2 blogs, this one, my real one, where I post about everything, love, my life, music, japan, etc... and another one, which is more like a "public front" only about Japan, and I tone it down a little. If you don't want to read about my life and such, and only care about my posts about Japan, please go to this blog instead: shurikntokyo.blogspot.com

I advertise this blog on G+ and twitter, but I only advertise the other one on Facebook, because... facebook people....

Ok! with that being said. Some of you may have understood by my previous posts that my GF in Japan left me, the day I got in Japan. If you didn't get it, well now it's written more directly.
And I'm back in this state of mind that I have been previously before... that state of mind where, I feel like I absolutly need to be with someone.
It's like I'm falling in love with everything that's moving, and has a vagina.

(pic only semi related because I was tired of looking for one)

 I've been there before, if you check some past posts on this blog it's easy too see. Except this time I know it. I know that what I feel is probably not really love. But how can I be sure? It's also dangerous to just tell myself this, and actually let a good opportunity at happiness slip away.
I don't want to hurt someone after going out with her and then realizing I actually still love my ex too much, or something like that, like it happened in the past.

But what if? What if what I feel is actually true?
I met this really cute girl in Japan. She's really nice. Right now I can't stop thinking about her... I just don't know if it's that post-relationship syndrome or not... and it scares me a little.

Right now I've decided to go for it anyway, because I'm in Japan, and I should have fun. I just hope I won't hurt her, or hurt myself in the process.