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!

Google I/O 2013 review

By now, I guess everything has been said, because I took my sweet fucking time before writing this post, so I'll just go over what I loved, and what I hated, really fast.

The bad:

• Google+ new design
• Nothing new about Glass

The good:

• Google+ new design
• Auto-enhance
• Hangouts
• New Maps
• Beta testing and staged rollout for developers
• Galaxy S4 with stock Android
• Larry Page

Google+ new design

You may have noticed I placed it in both good and bad, that'S because the default layout is really bad, but you can change it. If you go into settings, you can check the "Change the presentation of some pages to work better with screen readers and other accessibility tools." under Acessibility, and it will change all the layout back to single column. Also one of the bad things about the new layouts is; they removed auto-refresh, so I modified a script I found to make auto-refresh again, you can find it here: (you'll need greasemonkey for it to work).
Once these 2 problems are gone, I actually like the result. (Also +Cory Schmunsler  from G+ is working on a CSS to make the column bigger which will make it even better).

Auto-enhance

Auto-enhance is a cool new features for picture in G+, it's an "auto-fix" button for pictures, but it actually does a fucking impressive job. Most of the time, the result is pretty nice, and if you don't like it, it's 1 clink to reverse it to the Original.
I found it to best work with pics that havent been tampered with before (obviously).
Strangely it can actually do a pretty nice job on Anime pics!

Hangouts

The new Google Talk. It's overall pretty nice, and slick. The guys from #+Anime decided to move to a Hangout, and it's pretty awesome so far. It still needs improvement though, especially on the mobile.

New Maps

Not really much to say about it. It just looks good. But the 3d building is not available in japan.

Beta testing and staged rollout for developers

This is pretty awesome for developers. They can now release they apps for beta, to only certain people (like a circle) and they can also gradually release new versions.

 Galaxy S4 with stock Android

I don't like the S4, it's too big. But, the news of a Stock android S4 is a good news for what it represents. It's a first non-nexus device to get it, and if it can be the first of many, that would be awesome. I hate modified androids that take forever to update. I'd love to be able to chose any phone, and have always the lates OS, without having to install CyanogenMode. HTC One with Stock android would be nice, but it's not happening. However that does open the door to a lot of other devices in the futur.

Larry Page 

Finally, Larry Page. Why Larry Page? Because I was really impressed by his speech that closed the keynote, and by the way he handled (and actually did) the open Q&A at the end of the Keynote. This guy gained a lot of respect from me. We have similar views on a lot of matters and it actually makes me feel safer toward google after hearing the CEO speak like that.

That's all folks!

HARDCORE TANO*C Live!

I was expecting to write this closer to the last post, but I got sick and didn't feel like writing anything.
Saturday May 4th was my birthday, and while I forgot to go to a Maid Café this year, I went to the HARDCORE TANO*C Live event in Shibuya.
It was my first time attending this kind of event (Electronic music show/rave/whatever). But I was pleased with it. The show lasted 7 or 8 hours, and at the end I was exhausted. The music was great, but "dancing", mouving and bouncing like this for 7 hours really took all my energy. It really felt great though!

For those who don't know who HARDCORE TANO*C is, it's a collective of DJ's from Japan. Most of them do arrange of anime/game songs, but HARDCORE TANO*C is for their Original stuff. You can see a list of their crew here. Some of their most well know DJs are RED ALiCE, DJ Genki, DJ Noriken, t+pazolite, P*Light and USAO. To give you an idea of wat kind of music this is, you can listen to the "Anthem"of their tour



The show in Shibuya was held inside Shibuya WOMB. Apparently, it's one of the most famous Night Club around the world. The place seemed pretty normal to me, but it was great for what it had to do.

The Started at 13:30, and was opened by DJ Genki.

Dj Genki was pretty nice, it was a good warmup for the crowd.  Then came aran:

You can see what each Dj's intro looked like in that video above.
After aran came a trio of DJ, DJ Myosuke vs Massive New Krew.

Sorry, because my phone battery was depleting fast I didn't take that much video, but I do have some cool samples coming.
After them was kenta-vez:

I actually got to record a nice little sample during kenta-vez performance, it was really energetic, and gives a good idea of the mood and ambience there. Also the sound is pretty good for something recorded through a cellphone!

After that came Minamotoya (Couldn't get a good picture of his intro), who did one of my favourite songs from HARDCORE TANO*C albums, Blue sky!

After him came Hommar ju

Then came DJ Shimamura who did a nice cover of Irony, the Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai opening song

They also did some live rapping which was pretty nice, unfortunately it took me by surprise so i only got like the last part

Then came USAO. I really like USAO, but somehow, i really didn'T like his performance at this event, he only did Dubstep. :(

from that point on, my cellphone was almost dead so I only took pictures disconnected from the internet.
After Usao came Noizenecio

After that Came DJ Noriken, and DJ Noriken took his sweet time to start, it was long, he was playing with his settings, and the crowd teased him. It was pretty funny, but it was also really worth it. Noriken was cearly thr highlight of the night. His performance was so electric, it was pure Awesomeness.

After that came a guest, Kors k, it was a pretty nice performance.

And finally came RED ALiCE, finally? Yes finally, because P*Light and t+pazolite we're not present at the event. Which was a huge let down, because they are both awesome, especially P*Light, who is clearly one of my favorite DJ all around. Also, RED ALiCE was also a letdown, his performance was short, and didn't include any of his best works.

Finally the whole crew came to the stage to say goodbye and plug their new CDs.

They did a live version of the TANO*C TOUR 2013 the Anthem with the singer actually singing live, but my phone was completly dead then, so I couldn't even take a picture of it.

Overall the show was great, and the experience was awesome. I was pretty much completly drained after the show but it was worth it!

I'm sorry this post came later than expected, in part because I was sick, and also because it took me like 2 days to write ><.

My next post will probably be about Google I/O coming tonight, and the next one after this should be the answer to the Q&A.

Thanks for watching!

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...)

Walking around Shin-Nakano

I wanted to post this a little while ago, but because it was more logical to talk about the Sakura during the Sakura period, I postponed this post until now.

It's not a really awesome post, it's just me walking around where I live in Japan. Up until now I had only visited north of where I live up to Nakano Broadway. So I decided to do the East and south East this time. I walked kinda randomly so I don't know how far I went so maybe I actually did the south-west too, but I'm not sure.

I tried to take as many pictures as I could, but somehow I feel really shy to take pictures when I'm not in a "touristic" spot...

There isn't anything great near Shin-Nakano, it's a pretty simple and quiet place.
There's a big river just south of my home and there are a lot of bridges to cross it.

Walking south I actually found a part of Tokyo Daigaku, I found a nice shrine, and a couple of shops. A park and a big road to the east, close to Shinjuku.
It was an interesting walk, but I don't know if I can really make you feel it with the pictures I took, but you can see them here: South East Of Shin Nakano

I don't really have any favourite shots this time sorry, so please tell me which ones you prefer!