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Concentration Time Redux
In today’s interoffice memo, the official English language nomenclature was revealed: CONCENTRETION TIME. This filled me with great joy for some truly inexplicable reason, and I was immediately tempted to stab my eyes out with a sharp pencil. // In other news, the supposed 60-year holdouts of the Japanese Imperial Army in the mountains of Mindanao are proving to be more elusive than Yamashita’s gold. (There’s a Leon Uris novel in there somewhere, I know it.) And now, back to concentretion.
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The Tabasco Marketing Team Reads This Blog
Is real life imitating my weblog? You decide: Soy Sauce in TABASCO vs. TABASCO brand Soy Sauce (via)
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Amagasaki Train Wreck Followup
By now, everyone is probably familiar with the theory of the rookie driver derailing the train by attempting to speed through the curve, as well as the story of several JR employees going bowling on the night of the accident, but get a load of this: An obsession with being on time was also seen in the behavior of two JR West drivers who were aboard the derailed train. The drivers, neither of whom was hurt in the accident, left the scene without helping to rescue passengers and headed straight to work. According to JR West officials, one of the two called his supervisor by cell phone to say he…
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Adventures in Software Licensing
The girl’s PC died a couple weeks ago so I decided to piece together a new one from a mix of old parts and new, which was both fun and worrying, as always. I was mostly worried about having to buy another copy of Win XP (Professional, because I have bad luck with Home), since I kind of assumed authentication would be denied since the new PC had a new motherboard, chipset, and CPU (went from old SiS chipset/Athlon XP 1800 to Intel 865PE/Celeron 2.4). Hoping for the best, however, I built up the box with as many of the previous components as possible: 2 PC2100 DIMMS Optical drive GF…
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Flexed burials making a comeback?
I’ve never seen these for sale at the Costco in Amagasaki. Update: There aren’t any hitching posts, either.
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Concentration Time Liveblogging
Wow. Talk about killing the party vibe, dude – the old man ain’t even here today! He wussed out and went on a trip or something, so our protesting stunts are kind of pointless… Yet it’s funny to mock the lauded Concentration Time even in his absence, so the office is a flurry of activity right now. People are talking loudly on the phones about totally nonsense shit, having group discussions from across the office, and the guy next to me is singing (softly, granted, but still…). I, myself, drank a liter of water during lunch and have gone to the head three times in the past twenty minutes. Just…
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Just a thought…
Maybe I can appeal tomorrow’s Concentration Time by pleading time proactively served by my relatives at Manzanar… I really did try to get work done today, but I was too pissed off.
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Americans in Japan, Rejoice!
They were selling Dr. Pepper at FamilyMart today! We have been waiting for this moment since… well, since the end of the war, I guess. This is truly a milestone in Japanese-American relations, especially since the majority of Japanese think Dr. Pepper tastes like Chinese herbal medicine. Just in case you were wondering: Yes, there is a cheesy Flash site to commemorate this great event. UPDATE: TODAY’S MOMENT OF ZEN Peppy, ex-Harajuku girl/Dr. Pepper “freak”
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Nuttery
Damn, I should have entered this photo in the b3ta Phallic Logo Awards.
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whereupon, I rant.
I’ve put up with the various quirks and idiosyncrasies common to westerners working in corporate Japan for quite some time now and I think I’ve done very well, overall. But today I came this close to blowing my stack, just going COMPLETELY FUCKING NUTS, in front of the whole office, because MOST JAPANESE ADULTS ARE ACTUALLY JUST (SLIGHTLY) OVERGROWN CHILDREN… Ahh, now I feel much better with that off my chest. So what set me off? (this time) Our senior manager, in his infinite wisdom, has decided to enstate a “concentration period” from 12:25 to 2:40 PM every day, when we will not be allowed to leave our desks except…
