June 13: First Day at Work
Today was my first day of work! I got up at around 7:40 and ate the dorm-provided breakfast: chikuwa and green leafy vegetables, miso soup, tofu skins with green beans and rice. It was pretty good, which is really nice, because being able to eat it every day will be a massive money and time saver, and I wasn't planning on exploring for breakfast anyways, so I haven't really missed out on any opportunities either. Kabutoya-san came to my dorm at 9 to show me how to get to the office.
The trip to the office went smoothly. The research park is on well-forested hill, and the view is absolutely beautiful. There are rolling forested mountains/hills all over, with Yokosuka lying below, and everything is covered in that trademark Japanese mist. I'll have to find out if I'm allowed to bring my camera to the office to take a picture. The office is also very large, with at least 12 floors and it's all NTT as far as I know.
I needed to get a guest pass today, but tomorrow apparently I'll report to reception to get my own key card. Today was some kind of junior employee research poster presentation day, so there weren't many people in the office, as they were all up at the event on the 10th floor. In the morning I "worked" on a powerpoint introduction for myself. I was given until tomorrow at 1 or 3 pm (I can't remember) to finish it, but by lunchtime I honestly couldn't think of how I could put any more effort into it (EVERYTHING had a drop shadow by that point >_<, whether that's a good thing or not I'll not think about), so I showed Kabutoya-san and he said it was good. That meant I got to start reading my Programming Collective Intelligence book and learning some Ruby!
There's a bell-song-thing that signals lunch time, at which point all the lights go off to save power. We then went down the stairs as a group, as the elevator is reserved for people going up more than 3 floors or down more than 4, again to save energy. On the basement/ground floor (I kind of lost track) is a cafeteria that serves all kinds of food from curry to ramen to miso soup and korokke. I just picked up whatever Kabutoya-san did and ended up with some tofu, miso soup, chicken karaage with cabbage, and a bowl of rice. It was all quite edible. Tomorrow I'll try the curry and see how it is. It was more generously sized as well, and I was quite hungry by the end of the day today so that might be necessary. Kabutoya-san and I sat with a bunch of his colleagues, whose names I am trying my very hardest to remember, but with mixed success. They asked me all kinds of questions about myself, and when I talked about skiing, one guy said he had even been to Whistler and Blackcomb! And heli-skiing. Lucky bum. I managed to avoid looking at him like he was an alien when he said that he liked Blackcomb better because Whistler was too easy, which I consider a major victory in facial control.
We continued to talk about me and I kind of put my foot in it when Ko-san (skiing man) said his son was my age, and I said "Oh so he's in university then?" Whoops, no he's still trying >_<. Apparently he had the flu during examinations, which is really really shitty luck. I attempted a save by saying that Japanese universities are very hard to get into, while Canadian ones don't even have entrance exams. Ko-san seemed to continue to be in a good mood though so I don't think he was terribly offended.
The coolest part of lunch was paying. There was a pad I put my tray on, and it magically detected what I had eaten O_O. I'm going to have to look around more at another time, because I have no idea at all how it worked. I didn't see any cameras or anything!. You pay via either company pass by touching it to a pad, or by putting a prepaid card into a machine. I then put my tray on a conveyor belt that whisked it away to where the dishes were presumably going to be washed. It was all very Jetsons with the ultra-automation, and really quite cool.
After lunch I put my omiage on the table in the corner of our floor, and then people asked me all about myself again haha. They mused for quite a while that I was probably the youngest person in the whole building, and were fascinated by the fact that I have 4 names, and 5 which I can be called by. I showed them the strange spelling of my Daisuke, and then they asked me what the first kanji meant. Um, what?! You're the Japanese ones!!! I said I think it had something to do with a mountain in China of spiritual significance, since that's what Akira Kato's dictionary said about it in highschool as far as I can recall.
In the afternoon I Ruby'd a bit and then Kabutoya-san took me to the junior researcher poster presentation. It was really reminiscent of similar events at UBC put on by undergrads, which makes sense, given how at least two Japanese people have already told me that you don't do too much in a Japanese undergraduate program. Kabutoya-san said that the poster people would try to give me presentations of their work in English, but only two even tried (those ones were super A++ on effort marks though. I could tell they had to think through every word to try to explain their technically deep machine learning research projects in simple English).
One girl who we asked if she could try telling me about her project in English just looked at us and said "muri desu", or "that's impossible". Kabutoya-san said to me "aaah suzushii", which means "chilly". One of her co-workers ratted her out though to us, and told us that she got really high marks on her English examination, so she probably had the best English in the room. For that Kabutoya-san and I called her Muri-san for the rest of the afternoon. Kabutoya-san also introduced me to "the other Daisuke" (Satou Daisuke), who is apparently "funny guy". He certainly was funny in a number of ways. His English accent was pretty good, but I was unable to determine what he was trying to say a lot of the time. Kabutoya-san told me later that other-Daisuke said that even he doesn't know what he's saying when he speaks English. D:
Kabutoya-san ended up explaining a bunch of the research posters to me, before it exhausted him and he stopped, and we just walked around looking for people willing to try presenting in English. The projects were fairly interesting. Apparently it's in the plans for me to make one eventually, so that could be interesting. After the presentations it was close to time to go, so Kabutoya-san told me to just go early. I objected a little but we was persistent, so I left. The thing I found out about leaving early is that the bus doesn't come early for you, and you are stuck on top of a small mountain with nothing much else around. I don't think I'll be leaving early anymore haha. I met Bessie at the bus stop. She's apparently on the 5th floor (I'm on the 3rd), so I won't be seeing much of her during work. She's been here for a month, and apparently some of the co-op people get together and travel to nearby places on weekends. She invited me along, which clearly indicates that she doesn't know I've got Project Diva waiting for me. :D Just kidding. I think once I get my phone I'll try to meet up with them at least once.
I ended up getting on the wrong bus to go home. >_< They're both called #2, but they go in opposite directions. After a little while I went up and asked the bus driver if this bus went to Ikkidzuka and he was like "no". Shit. He turned out to be suuuuper sweet though. I tried to get out at the next stop and he actually held my arm to stop me, and told me to get out at a specific stop and to get the other #2 and what it was called. Once we got to that stop he held his hand over the Pasmo beeper to stop me paying and pointed wildly at a bus with the #2 and so I just booked it. He was right, and that bus went back to the research park and then back to Ikkidzuka.
Back at the dorm I had dorm dinner, which was pretty darn good. It was miso soup with enoki mushrooms in it, green leafy vegetables in sauce, some gyoza and some saucy pork and rice. The dorm mother is really smiley, and seems to have realized she needs to speak simply if she wants me to have any idea what she's saying. >_< She seems like a very enthusiastic person. Whenever I show up she's always like "OH ROBERT-KUN OHAYOO!" and I'm pretty sure most of the dorm then knows that I'm about to eat haha.
I didn't have acid stomach at all today, so I'm going to have to do some process-of-elimination trials to verify that it is indeed the Pan de Mie curry that's a no-go. I was going to go to the Seiya in Yokochuu to buy a new alarm clock, but my little post-work detour meant that I didn't get to blog at all before supper, and so I wasn't sure that I'd get there in time before they closed. I wasn't able to look up their hours online when I tried last night, so I'll just have to make sure to go when I know they'll be open, or if I have other business in Yokochuu. Apparenly Bessie lives much closer to Yokochuu that I do, but therefore much farther from the Yokosuka Research Park (or YRP, that's the office). My morning commute is seriously like 10 minutes by bus, which is super awesome after RadiSys. Kabutoya-san and co keep laying the pity on me for living in Hayashi (Ikkidzuka), but then I say "NO IT'S SERIOUSLY AWESOME I DON'T HAVE TO TAKE THREE TRAINS AND A BUS LIKE IN CANADA". Many people here know about Vancouver but don't know where it is or what it's like in the slightest, so they're quite eager to hear whatever I have to say about it.
Anyways, I'd best shower and get to bed. I don't know that the weekday blog posts will turn out to be that interesting, but I'll try to keep doing them anyways.
PS. Last night I heard the Persona 3 battle theme coming out of the guy at the end of the hall's room. I loitered around his door to see if he was playing, but it appeared that he was only listening to the song. But still!
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