Legumez

If you ain’t down with the fibrous protein, best take it up with my boyz in blue, yo.
(Taken at a store in Ikebukuro, proving that I-Town is still keepin’ it real…)

Waste not, want not

“Oh, man” The Plain mutters.
The Plain often mutters to himself. Usually it’s about things IT related — in your short time with the firm, you’ve never seen anyone more prone to software crashing, computer rebooting or hunt-and-peck typing than The Plain.
“Oh, man” he mutters again. You hear the mutter from behind you; your attention is [...]

The passing of MJ and other weird shit

Yes, the demise of Michael Jackson is by now old news and has already been blogged into the ground. But I mention it here for the following reasons:
-I have been watching the original Thriller video pretty much every day for the past week, and it still rocks. I mean, it has dancing zombies in it [...]

Really, REALLY juvenile ways of employing new technology

Inbetween doing a bit of overtime, drinking too much and watching a couple Tony Jaa movies this past weekend, I decided to try out the recently launched “computational knowledge engine” WolframAlpha and see what it was all about.
Predictably, it didn’t take long for me to sink down to the level of a 14-year old. [...]

Novel ways of fighting organized crime

I passed by this poster in the station for a week or so before taking a good look at what it had to say … and then I was pulling out my cell phone and snapping a photo.
It’s a poster released by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police concerning 暴力団 (boryokudan), or the organized crime syndicate. It [...]

To surf, perchance to Google

I do a lot of bitching about life here, dear Reader. Frankly, it’s quite easy to rant about the zombie-like freakwads that seem to make up most of Tokyo’s populace.
But today, an uncharacteristic bit of praise.
My internets have been giving me some trouble recently. Today, the connection was so slow that webpages simply refused [...]

Mr. Balls

It is your second week at the new job.
The work is challenging, but rewarding. You find yourself once again cursing your old job, which — during the year and a half in which you were employed — was of no benefit whatsoever.
Except, that’s not entirely true.
The job itself had as much merit as a [...]

Through the looking glass

You walk through the revolving doors that take you from the lobby of your new office to the sprawling concrete courtyard beyond.
A looped recording cautions you to be careful, as failure to do so could — regardless of the fact that the winged panes of that door revolve at a pace that would have [...]

Identity theft, redux

You are walking down the street drinking a beer.
There is nothing unusual about this: Since having become unemployed, it’s been pretty much a given that if you are walking down the street — hell, if you are engaged in any ambulatory act whatsoever — you will be drinking a beer. Today’s beer is a sweet, [...]

Fast times at Ojisan High

This is my first entry into the Japan Blog Matsuri. Thought I’d give it a shot.
You are in the bathroom.
You’ve been in Japan for just over a week. Having studied the language before you got here, you’ve been able to at least navigate your way around this new environment … but to say that things [...]