Monday, April 30, 2007

Do you think that this product is good?

If you look very very carefully you can see a problem with its name I think! For those of you who are not very good at the "Where's Waldo" aspect of this, then make look for the part where is you see the name in big black letters... CRAP BK5.



Gotta love it with other cultures make nice little acronyms for their products. I have a hunch that this one will not do very well in the North American market... not sure about EMEA either!

Rode to Yokohama

So have done about 90KM in the last two days. Making me pretty tired. Hope the weather holds and I can do a little more tomorrow morning. That will be the challenge of getting up and getting out to do stuff like that!

Some picutres of my ride today to Yokohama and back.

Just passed a station called Musashikosugi (differetn from my station - Musashikoyama) I passed a small little garden show in a park by the rode. The park is big and looks nice, I guess people enjoying themselves for goldenweek.



My travels then took me near Tsunashima. I first heard of this many years ago, as I my old roommate Manjit would head out to do some work here for Shane English school.



A nice little picture near Kawasaki on the final leg of my way back. Was pretty tired by this point but hit a nice flat bit with few lights and was really able to go along nice and quick!

Thanks to Arch and Miyuki!

Yesterday had a really fantastic Barbeque over at Arch and Miyuki's new house. The weather was fantastic, and I rode over there so that Arch could help me fix up my bike. Do not know how well this picture turns out but we cleaned all the crap off my chain and the thing looks 1000 times better. Also performs a lot smoother than it was. One of the better things was learning how to tune my brakes.

Check out the picture of my clean rear components of my bike!



The BBQ was great fun too, we drank and ate more than our fill (thanks for all the hard work there Miyuki! - you kept all the boys happy). Then after that took the train home. It was a little dicy as you are not supposed to take bicycles on to trains here in Japan. But we took the wheels off and Paul (thanks to Paul) carried them onto the train. After that just cycled home from Nakameguro. Was a good day that is for sure but was pretty shattered by the end of it.

Did also hit 70 in World of Warcraft!

Golden Week!

For those of you who are excited about having May Day off tomorrow, well you should look at us with envy in Japan. We only have two days of work this week! I have them off, but will be doing some work for some projects for a couple of days. Nothing too bad, ans till means that I will pretty much work in My boxer shorts :).

Kiyomi took a couple of days off and went to Guam with some of her old co-workers from MCI worldcom. Seems that they had a good and relaxing time while they were there. Also seems that Kiyomi did not actually use the camera which I let her take with her! Oh well too bad, will use it myself on any of my rides this week.

Plan to do as much Riding as I can while I am out.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

A Big English School Goes Down

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/comment/1088
A bit surprising. I know these guys, although I have to say that I do not know anyone who really worked for them. I do know a few folks who did attend their classes, as they offered a lot of business related English courses, more so than the typical conversational school. It is interesting that they went down at this time, and I do wonder what the cause was. Is there a bigger down turn in people studying English than before in Japan? Or were they just pushed out by their bigger competetors Nova/Geos/Shane?

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

So What else is new...

Whoa... some really big news here. Kiyomi and I have bought a house. Not to far from where we live now, near a station called Omori. It was good to finally find a place that we both liked in what appears to be a good area. The place is great, it is the size that we liked, and were happy with the layout (I think a first). Anyhow the station is one that we are a not that familiar with but I am sure that we will grow to really like the place. It will be about the same commute to work either by bike or by train. I do not think there will be much change in that. I am really looking foreward to having a new place to live with newer stuff, and something that is really something that I can call my own.

Here is a small little floor map that we get in Japan. Anyhow I hope that everyone gets the chance to visit and stay with us in the new place. We will have access to a car, so could even make it a little bit easier to get out to get you from the airport!

A few More Hanami Shots






The hanami season has come to an end over here. For those brief few weeks of the year that the blossoms are out Tokyo is a different city. It is a city of pink and white, and of colour. The other big difference is all the parties and people out and about, walking and enjoying the city that they live within. The amount of parties under the blossoms in the evening at night are pretty impressive too.

Here are a few more picutres I took as Kiyomi and I walked around Nakameguro. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, and everyone was walking down by the Meguro river.