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...

Sometimes even I myself wonders exactly why some many thoughts about racial divisions race through my mind when I live and work in a country known the lack of it (almost everyone walking down the street dress the same way, talks the same language, sports the same behavior, and racist enough, really does look very similar to each other underneath the same makeups...) And I, with my salary-man outlook and behavior , does not exactly stick out like a sore thumb as most other foreigners seem to experience. So I thought, until someone at work opens his/her mouth and start going off on their knowledge or willingness to learn more about...those foreign people. Oh, do they just love saying that word, especially in these days of globalization. "We the Japanese need to learn English (or any other non-Japanese language, for that matter) so we can better communicate with those foreign people." Indeed, they certainly do need to speak better English, but that kind of attitude really mak...

My story from the last post was not quite finished and I will continue my thoughts in this post...So, as I was reflecting on the indifference of Japanese people toward their helpless compatriots throwing themselves into the train tracks with horrifying frequency, the train arrived to take me home (fortunately, no one jumped the tracks here). As with my usual behavior, I look up at the little TV screen above the door after I got in the train. The news of the day was on. And surprisingly enough, it was about a guy who randomly stabbed 17 people amidst the weekend crowd of Shinjuku shopping area, turning the happily commercial country into another self-inflected bloodbath. The headline of the news quoted the arrested stabber: "I don't want to live anymore." The train full of people, in the same way as they reacted to the 「人身事故」announcement, just went about their business as usual, playing games on their PSPs or having quiet conversations. "Well, another one just s...

Ok, sounds like this is gonna be another one of those cynical posts criticizing Japanese society....so let me start on a "high note" for this topic. One of my favorite horror movies of all time is a Japanese classic called "Suicide Club" (or 「自殺サークル」 in Japanese). It portrays a modern-day Japan in which large segment of people simply lost the will to continue living. Suicides, in the forms of jumping off buildings, cutting themselves, and what not become so common in everyday life that people, especially the young, started to take life as a joke and suicide as a game. I recommended the movie to people in the States and got absolutely horrified responses. In a Western culture were the continuation of life is probably the most basic human right there is (well, guess thats true everywhere, but the outer manifestation of that willingness to protect life is just so powerful in the West), the idea that people can possibly take the voluntary destruction of it as a laug...

As both my blog content and readership expand in size, some negative feedbacks are bound to arise. To be fair, I have been a writer of controversy, and I fully admit this point (and am quite proud of it, despite the "unfriendliness" I sometimes receive). But as a paid full-time white-collar worker that I have now become, the trigger-happiness and the joy of lashing out at anything and anyone I feel like, inherited from my college days, may become a serious liability to my future directions in life, career, and plainly said, amount of cash I will receive. Yes, I am talking about the many job-related posts I have been writing on this blog. All of them have been shared on Facebook, on which I already have many "friends" who are from Rakuten, not to mention some who happen to be in very high places and can easily derail my long-term plans in the company by putting in some light complaints. Right, an easily replaceable new graduate with a big mouth, certainly an unco...

In my original motivation to begin , I did mention that I will write at least "a few" posts in foreign languages (i.e. other than English)...It took me literally took me more than 5 months before I actually go back to fulfill that promise. So 76 posts (more than 45000 English words later), I give you my first post in Chinese. The article was originally written with an intent to publish in Taiwan (where I was actually mentioned once in a negative fashion), Hong Kong, or North America. So the article was written in Traditional Chinese, which is used most often outside mainland China. Of course, the decision to put the article on here is also a little SEO strategy to draw more traffic from these areas (Blogger is blocked in mainland China anyways, so no point doing SEO for that market...)

So last week, I finally get my job assignment at Rakuten after two months of "training" that involved brainwashing us with Rakuten ideology. After weeks of anticipation and should I say, annoyance and anxiety, we the new guys were finally given our assigned places at a rather formal-looking ceremony on Tuesday morning. On the surface, everything appeared calm, but below the tranquility some jumped for joy while others quietly shed tears in their hearts. All the poetic stuff aside, I have to say that most of the assignments are, really honestly, quite puzzling in many aspects. Yes, I did mention how the company have absolutely no idea where to place us , but the randomness of the end result goes much beyond just "let's put this guy there and see what happens." Not to mention the language ability and communication problems, the type of work and the field of studies for each individual just see little connection if any. But all in all, it somehow feels that the...