Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

With Dec 31st steadily approaching its end, I would like to reflect on my experiences during 2010, a year of undoubtedly major transitions from college to work for me that is bound to have major consequences for my future careers. But in the back of my mind, there always seem to be that thought of "am I really doing the right thing? Am I really moving in the right direction?" as listen to more and more complaints from my fellow coworkers, words of doubts from prospective employees, and most importantly, stories of major responsibilities and progress from my classmates back at Yale. Well, first, lets see what we, the new employees here in Rakuten, have done for our first three months since entering on Oct. 1st. We have been subject to continuous lectures on the core values and ideologies of the company from Day One, our hopes of being identified as the leaders of English-nization at the company and working at our own favorite departments are mostly dashed for the time-be

Another weekend, another day trip. Last weekend, I had the fortune of stopping by Kurihama (久里浜), a beautiful little seaside neighborhood in Yokosuka (横須賀) City in Kanagawa (神奈川) Prefecture. Yokosuka, besides being famous as the largest base for the US Navy here in the Far East with aircraft carriers making it their home port, is, somewhat relatedly, the first landing spot of the first US Navy visit to Japan in 1852. The gunboat diplomacy of the Commodore Matthew C. Perry at the time successfully forced a Japan closed to the world to sign a trade treaty with America. So, why am I sitting in my room at 8pm on the first day of New Year's break reminiscing what I did last weekend? Besides the fact that I am bored (yes, true that), the impact of that sudden visit by a bunch of American ships in 1852 has deep social implications for Japan that particularly resonates in a time like the New Years. To be specific, the behaviors of people during such vacations precisely display that c

After finishing some company work in the morning, I finally got to sit down, read the news, and relax a bit on this fine Christmas day (well, like I said in the last post , before going off and getting drunk somewhere). But even as I am finally relaxing a bit, I know that some of my colleagues are still working hard at their desks, finishing certain documents for the Monday that seems so close from now. My immediate superior is certainly up to that, making some documents based my work for this morning and calling me a couple of times to clarify my wording in the little note I submitted.

Living in Japan, one starts to think of Christmas not as a day for family gatherings (thats done on New Years), but as day to get together with your significant other (i.e. a second Valentine's) and if one is unfortunately single, get together with a bunch of friends and get drunk (i.e. the same role as New Years in the West). I, on this joyous day, happen to fall into the latter category, but before I go off getting drunk somewhere, I would like to get some sober writing finished. So, like I was saying, being single on Christmas is an unfortunate thing here in Japan. So, to help reduce my misfortune, some people have been asking me what kind of girls am I looking for (of course, since it is Japan, the question is generally ethnocentric ). So having stayed in Korea for awhile, I tend to say that I have an interest in Korean girls (which I indeed do, not lying) to which the stereotypical response (from anyone, not just the Japanese) would be something about plastic surgery. Indee