Hello New Year I appreciate lots of people who support me. Thank to everyone who support me, I could get this new year 2009. We traditionally wear kimono and we have a little family serious new year party in the morning on January 1st. However we decided not to wear kimonos. It is kinda sad, but it was also hassle to wear them only for a couple of hours. We had our morning ceremony with our grandma’s maid who is 96 years old. He hardly hear us now…
After that we went to see our grandma who is in a nursing home. She can’t understand anything, but at least she opened her eyes and saw us. After the visit, we went to shrine as every year, and also went to our office to pray. Then, we drove down to Kyoto to celebrate with my other grandma. She could come to Osaka to celebrate with us but she cared about out dead grandpa and wanted us to come to Kyoto. Now she is thinking to move to Osaka and live close to us. She seems like she was pretty excited about it,
We just kept eating and eating. I love Osechi, Japanese New Year’s traditional dishes. Guess how many items we had at the dinner table? 60, sixty!!! This is the day I feel lucky myself to be born as Japanese.
First of all, this is such a good song I listen to these days, title "Continue".
I wanted to take an early flight to Osaka this morning, but got a text from my boss 6 in this morning. He goes, “Go to one convention if you’d like”. If you’d like???? No, I wouldn’t! So I text him back, “I will go if this is your order, otherwise, I would like to go back to my office in Osaka” Of course, he made me go. I don’t mind to go to convention, but I just did not like the idea that my boss did not tell me earlier. I have planed for a day everyday, so I don’t like to be messed up like this…
I was at a convention for a couple of hours, and saw two iron chefs, Sakai and Ochiai. They are both skinnier than I saw on TV. They looked around the convention and came to our booth too. It was funny to see that everyone treated them like GOD.
Took a flight home and work at my office. Since I have to go to Tokyo tomorrow again, it would be much better to stay there. However, I could not, because I have to take care of my department. Finally, recently I feel responsible for my department.
There were couple more reason why I came back to Osaka. My bed and hula lesson! Had a good lesson tonight.
Board of Director's Dinner Today was a day which all the board of directors at our company get together. I am not one of them, but they let me join. We get together and talk about one topic to make sure that all of us are looking at the same vision. We do this one-hour meeting once a month, and three times of a year, we go out for fancy dinner. This time was traditional Japanese dinner. This is our special menu there. It was a nice night.
I went out to drink with three of them after this fancy dinner. We all drunk sooo much and talked about work for hours and hours. I think I love talking about my work. I drink everyday lately…
Busy Tokyo Day I am writing this entry in a bullet train now on the way back from Tokyo. It will take 2 and a half hour to go back to Osaka, so I will get there at 23:10. I was wondering if I should do my work in a bullet train or should take a nap here and do my work at home. However, once I got in a train, soon I took a nap for an hour and half, so I guess I will have to work at home. I feel cold now; maybe I caught a cold since yesterday because of the weather in Tokyo. It was snowing quite much. Look how many people walking around the train station in this morning. I left a hotel today to go to our branch office and I took this picture. I always am amazed by this crowded town.
Today I went to office and did tons paper work that I had to do for a couple of hours. I did a right choice last night to stay at office late to do my work, because I suddenly had to visit one office by my boss’s order in this morning and did not have much time. After the visit, I could not find time to take lunch, so I went straight to the next appointment. It was a studio to finish up a promotion video of our new products. The studio was pretty cool. I was there today to direct the narration parts of the video. The stuff might have felt I was a bitch cuz I gave them so many requests… What can I say? Because I can’t be shy about work now. After the video making, I went back to office and prepared for an orientation. The orientation was for Tokyo Sales Department to get ready for a convention this month. I was a bit nervous because I am now the head of the operation of the convention but I had never been a member of any convention as an exhibitor. After I finished the orientation, I was an observer of another orientation of our normal products. Normal products are frozen cakes which R&D department produce twice a year for these 30 years. Since I just moved to R&D department this month, my boss told me to observe for the next time to be able to give a presentation to sales people by myself. There are so many things I have to study and remember. It is very hard, but I feel responsible and sometime feel good being this busy.
Tokyo Report I am in Tokyo now. I stay at a business hotel like usual. Today I am here for promotion activities. Went to a couple of magazine publish company. It was interesting to see their offices. All the offices were so messy and full of magazines. I appealed my new products to them. When I left, all of them gave me their magazines so now I have some magazines which I can enjoy tomorrow in a bullet train for free! By the way, our new products, were the topic on the top page of Yahoo Japan today. The reason why I got to know is because I got lots of calls from my office in Osaka saying, “We are getting so much calls and we can’t do our own daily work”. http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080205-00000015-oric-ent I am so proud!! I hope I will see a big success soon!
This morning, I took a flight to Tokyo and went to our branch. For me, coming to Tokyo used to be a little break. Well, I worked hard outside of our Tokyo branch, but I did not have much stuff to do when I was at the office. So I used to leave office at 6PM in Tokyo, but today, I could leave at 9PM. This is how much I am behind now… I was eating lots of snacks at office while I was working on what I had to do, but decided to eat dinner before I check in the hotel. My friend Yusuke and I went to TGI Friday’s. I only ate soup and salad; I did not eat the steak in the picture. I was sooooo sleepy and when he was blaming on me, I could not concentrate on the conversation. I felt bad that I was rude, and I regret that I did not straight back to hotel. TGI Friday’s is the restaurant where I had not eaten at when I lived in the US. But now I got there sometimes, maybe I sometimes miss American food. TGI Friday’s is very close to my office, and full of Americans. I bet lots of Americans feel TGI Friday’s in Tokyo like the way I feel Sushi restaurant in the US. I can’t wait to go to Hawaii now. It is coming up soon!
Oh, before I go, I have to mention how much I got surprised about cab in Tokyo. All the cab are non-smoking now, but not in Osaka. In Tokyo, you need a special card which you have to apply beforehand. It must be so much hassle. Wow, they are working so hard to make all people in Tokyo quit smoking. Well, I wanna tell them, “Good Luck”.
I was born in Kyoto, Japan. I always wanted to be in the US. After I graduated from Japanese college, finally I went to Denver to get another BA. I moved to SF to work at hotel afterwards. Now I came back to Japan and work for a company in food industry. I do Internet business selling special sweets. I wish I can go back to the US soon.
This blog is my journal, so I keep writing about small stuff happened to me on that day.
