Category: Work

Did you know that FedEx actually has FOUR official FedEx Box sizes?
Small, Medium, Large, and unmarked. The unmarked size is larger than all the others… and the very existence of an unmarked box size annoys the shit out of me for some reason. Logically, it should be Extra Large or X-Large or oh!oh!oh! I know!… FedEx Large!
Fucking office work marginalizing my Medulla again. Tomorrow I might report on the danger of paper cuts in the workplace and the Japanese solution of thick orange condoms for your fingertips.

When I quit working in Osaka five years ago, this would have been my dream job:
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As the worldwide leader and innovator in the creation of interactive entertainment, Nintendo Co. Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, manufactures and markets hardware and software for its popular home video game systems. The systems include Game Boy?, Nintendo? 64, Game Boy Advance and the NINTENDO GAMECUBE. Since the release of its first home video game system in 1985, Nintendo has sold more than 1.4 billion video games worldwide, creating enduring industry icons such as Mario and Donkey Kong and launching such franchises as Zelda and Pokemon. As a wholly owned subsidiary, Nintendo of America Inc., based in Redmond, Wash., serves as headquarters for Nintendo’s operations in the Western Hemisphere.
We are looking to fill 6 Contract Bilingual Technical Writer/Translator positions.
Description of Duties
– Coordinates the production and distribution of technical documentation related to manufacturing, repair, and quality control of Nintendo products
– Translates/localizes manufacturing engineering and quality control documentation issued by the parent company and other technicaldocumentation
– Coordinates document project priorities and scheduling
– Assigns and archives localized documentation in the document control system (AGILE)
– Maintains the accuracy and quality of technical documentation localized from Japanese to English
– Researches and formulates technical information for publication
– Coordinates translation activities
– Initiates new publishing and localization procedures that improve current practices
– Supports other technical writing, translation, and localization projects as required
– Provides assistance on quality control and manufacturing engineering projects
Qualifications
– 3-5 years translation experience
– Written and verbal fluency in Japanese and English
– Excellent writing skills
– In-depth knowledge of Japanese and English, grammar, spelling and punctuation
– Ability to ascertain and formulate the information needed to complete localization of technical publications and content required to support English/Japanese and Japanese/English translations
– Excellent organizational and project management skills
– Ability to work independently with minimal supervision
– Experience using various document publishing software (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Visio, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator)
– Familiarity with Agile CM
– Experience in a technical environment is desirable
Education
– Undergraduate degree in English/Business or equivalent
** Applications and resumes will only be accepted through Nintendo’s website at http://www.nintendo.com/corp/jobs.jsp as we no longer accept paper, faxed, or emailed resumes.
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Luckily, I found another one, pink shirts be damned. I wonder what Nintendo company uniforms look like, though. I’m guessing something like this:

I received the jacket part of my company’s uniform this week. Oh my. Photos are of course forthcoming, possibly tonight.
It depends on if Hello Kitty is in the mood for modeling when I get home.

There’s this special needs/mentally challenged/invertedly endowed/lugubriously entertaining/whatever the fuck the PC demigods are calling it this month (I’ll just use “retarded”) guy working in my building who worships me because I stood up for him my first year here. Some newly-made manager/fucknut wanker was just letting loose on the poor guy for stacking boxes wrong or some such bullshit, and went so far as to slap him around a bit, at which point I intervened and shoved said fucknut on his ass and told him to shut the fuck up. Long story short, the retarded guy really took a liking to me after that (I never got in trouble even though everybody in the company heard about it; the manager got shipped off to Bumfuck, Kyushu to oversee a 3-person production line for replacement AC parts a couple years ago. Ha-ha.).
Now I have a problem because my retarded friend has started expressing this affection in a physical manner – by hitting me. At first it was just a soft jab in the arm or a friendly tap on the shoulder, but homeboy must be watching Rocky movies at home or something, because he punched me in the kidney this afternoon after lunch and I doubled over, nearly crying out for my mommy.
You see, this guy’s job is to move boxes of product around the factory by handlift all day long, which requires a lot of heavy lifting and the like. He is muscular and fit; the reason he didn’t unload on the fucknut manager guy that day long ago, or any of the apparently numerous times before that, was not because he lacked the physical capability to do so. It is just that he frightens like a small child, and can be cowed into submission by tiny-pricked little bullies even half his size, because he is so sweet-natured. Even so, I know one day he might actually hurt me with an unluckily-placed strike. Yet I feel guilty doing anything to prevent this rite of male bonding.
The way I see this going is that one day he’ll break one of my ribs while playfully socking me with that big shit-eating grin on his angelic face, and then I’ll have to show him who the big dog is again. After I’m done crying, of course. I just hope nobody’s around to watch me slapping a retard at work- oh, well. Life has a funny way of running things out the way they are supposed to be, and who the fuck am I to change that?

… for I will never eat sharkfin soup again.
Yesterday I was in Himeji on a business trip. After our meetings, we went to the top of Himeji castle in the miserable heat and walked our clients a fair distance to their posh hotel. We then walked to the inconveniently located and much crappier hotel that we were staying at (a pox on our financial dept.), changed out of our dripping-with-perspiration dress shirts into casual ones, and immediately headed out for Chinese food back at the client’s hotel restaurant.
I was on my third small glass of beer before the food came, and had just finished my bowl of sharkfin and crab soup and a couple of light entrees when I felt the rumbling in my stomach. An ominous rumbling.
To make a long story short, I suffered from either:
A. Heatstroke
B. Dehydration
C. Food Poisoning
D. Thermal shock, or
E. All of the above
I did not make it to the restroom in time.
Cupping my hand over my mouth only resulted in directing the explosive stream of sour vomit all over my shirt and slacks. My shirtfront was covered with semi-digested bits of crab meat and black fungus from the soup, plus other sour beer-smelling detritus.
I finally made it into a stall, got lightheaded, and almost dunked my head in the toilet before I realized there was an unflushed turd in it. This made me purge even more, after flushing a few hundred times (even I cannot sink so low as to puke on another man’s turd).
After I washed off my face and most of the puke off my clothes, I attempted to dry my shirt so as not to make it immediately noticeable that I had lost my cookies when I returned to the table. I fooled nobody for very long, since I turned green after smelling the greasy Chinese food again.
I excused myself before the next wave of nausea hit, weakly stumbled to the hotel lobby and hailed a cab outside. The cabbie was being a fucking cunt and seeing my still-damp shirtfront, asked if I’d been drinking. I said “what’s it to you,” and he threatened to stop the car and kick me out. I threatened to puke on the floor if he stopped before we reached my hotel… Thus I got back in a precarious state of stalemate.
I collapsed on the hotel bed and the world went away for a few sweet, blessed hours. I woke up before midnight feeling completely restored, and was unable to sleep again. I took a walk on the empty streets of the city, swearing off sharkfin soup and remembering the most important things in life.
With work, I am disenchanted.
The most important thing in life, at any given time, is not to be puking your guts out.

Today I wasn’t allowed to correct the phrase, “for you apploval,” on an official letter because it was “written by someone on the board of directors.” The guy who told me this rolled his eyes as he said it, too. I almost snapped him in two like a pencil, but thought better of it. Instead, I asked the ficus in the break room why the hell they even bother running this crap by me if they won’t let me make corrections.
The ficus thought about it for awhile, then came up with a fairly satisfying answer: Apparently, demi-gods are allowed to make up their own grammar. Duh! Stupid me…

Because today did not start off so well (I almost got in TWO accidents on the way to work, where I was promptly chastised for not buttoning down the button-down collars on my new pink shirt – how could I make something like that up?), I was happy to read my mom’s commentary on the party they had at home. Apparently, we in the Land of the Big Red Rising Riceball missed out on:
– Hot Dogs
– Barbecued Kalbi
– Silver Queen corn
– Homegrown zucchini, eggplant, Maui onions, and bell peppers
– My Auntie Betty’s potato salad, fresh-baked cookies, and a “crusty, crunchy coffee toffee cake”
– 20 pounds of King crab legs
– Case of oysters
– Lumpia
– Auntie Ling’s steamed ginger/scallion flounder and deep-fried flounder
…and to top it all off, S’mores.
The thing that really gets me though, is that they were able to make S’mores in our fireplace. Living in Japan for so long, I basically forgot those things existed.

Awash in pink sea,
Workers in new uniform,
Banzai off a cliff.
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Explanation: Today the Nihon Keizai Shimbun leaked that my company is laying off 10,000 employees! Can’t help but wonder how many could have been saved, say by not changing the uniforms for the entire workforce. And I’m sure that the 10,000 that get the axe will be thrilled to have learned their fate from a newspaper!

And so it shall be. Tomorrow, July 1st, is the beginning of my end. Yes, tomorrow I will be wearing light bluish-gray trousers with elastic waistband, and a short-sleeve pink button down shirt w/red accents. It is unfathomably bad.
Yet I know you are all with me in spirit, yes?
Apparently so, for I have heard requests for pictures of the new duds from around the world! You are all bad people, and will burn in hell for teasing me. And yet, it somehow seems fitting (the hell part).
The thing is, I have never actually revealed my company on this blog – you may find it interesting that I made writing about my work experiences permissible part of my contract, back when I started the job 5+ years ago (although I only started blogging a couple years ago, I started writing the Salaryman Adventures in late 2000.) They basically told me to use discretion and not sell any blueprints to the Soviets, and I have honored those conditions. Posting a uniform is a gray area in my mind, insofar as that if you don’t know what major electronics company has a manufacturing base on Awajishima, neither should you be able to guess by our new metrosexual uniforms.
Plus, what am I? Your puppet? A dancing bear? Your biiiiiooooooootch? Must I heed your every whim and post humiliating photos of myself for your pleasure?
As a Japanese Yoda would say, “pondering, I must.”

Gatson came by the house last night to install the English version of MS Project, and he told me about our new work uniforms, which we will be issued around the end of the month and have to wear from July 1st. I came into work today and confirmed the new design with the other guys in the office:
– Pink shirts with red collars
– Light green pants
An alternative title for this post is, “The REAL Reason I’m Leaving This Job and Country.”
Apparently there is a leak at our company at a higher level, because they are ripping this decision to threads over at 2ch. Pretty funny shit, but it would be a lot funnier if it were happening to someone else…
BTW, there’s still no news about which board member’s fashion school dropout nephew designed this abortion of a color scheme.