New Year, So Here’s A Post

The picture above shows my oldest son and I out in the “Inland Empire” golfing at Eagle Glenn during Christmas break, which ventures into Cleveland National Forest.  It is a cool golf course.

My lack of posting should not indicate that I am doing nothing.  For there is activity in my life, even if my blog does not show it.  The household is going through some real changes, as I rocket toward my fifth decade of life, and fully into middle age.

I was listening to Greg Laurie, one of my favorites because he is incredibly insightful yet very accessible to all that listen to him.  He was describing a situation similar to myself in terms of his personality.  However, he is almost exactly 10 years old than I am, so he is there roughly one decade before me.  He says in his radio broadcasting that “50 is the youth of old age.”  I will know youth next year.

While I am getting older, and I am finding out that I cannot do all of the things that I could do when I am younger, I am thinking that years upon years of supplementing my body with minerals and vitamins (and quite frankly drugs) that promote life extension is extremely helpful.  As a side note, the one wonder drug, which I have preached about often, is Omega-3, or PUFA N-3, or what is commonly called fish oil.  Because your brain is made up of this substances, and your body cannot make it, it only makes sense to provide a system of material to keep the brain refreshed.  I feel as if my cognitive skills are very, very high.

As my children roll toward the driving age, with one actually driving, I am noticing some of the things that I have been told about from others.  My girls are 100% girls with all of the odds and ends that come with this.  Girls are simply wired differently due to estrogen forming their brains differently, and are much more introspective and critical of themselves and of others. 

My boys, on the other hand, have their moments, but they are able to throw themselves into external activities.  This makes my relationship with them more simple, as if I can find some type of a physical activity, we can relate.  To stereotype, a potential true stereotype, women bond through talk.  Men bond through working on something together.

My physical activity is now golfing because this an easy thing to do with my son.  Over Christmas break, we did a lot of golf together.  I hit from the longer tees, and often my son can beat me.  Some day, I’ll be hitting from the shorter tees, and he’ll still beat me.  Funny thing about being a Dad, you really don’t mind being beat by your son.

My youngest son is turning 12.  I never thought that he had an particular athletic skills, and his hand eye coordination is not as good as my older son.  However, he took up swimming, and really wasn’t all that good.  Yet, by sticking with swimming, and hitting all the work outs, he has steadily improved.  So much so, that he is now one of the better swimmers on the team, and recently moved up to being in some of the critical relays.  I’m amazed at this change, and it goes to show that you should never under estimate the power of simply showing up and working hard.

The swimming has packed on some serious muscle, and he looks to be the potentially strongest of my kids.  He really doesn’t even know his own strength.

My oldest son and I are hoping to introduce him to golf this summer so we can do a “man thing together.”  While I don’t want to overly force, I know some times you need to push a little to get it going.  So, I delayed his introduction until I thought that he was old enough to have cognitive skills to understand that the frustration of hitting a small white ball is simply something that takes time to over come.

We’ll see this summer.

Reflections On My 49th Birthday

I was telling Brent, our lawyer at work, that golf was a perfect vehicle for finding out the true nature of a person.  He was intrigued but a bit doubtful, so I decided that I would relate of interviewing success by looking at somebody’s room or talking to them.  If you had the choice of interviewing an employee or looking at their bedroom, what do you think would be the better way of figuring out if they would be a good employee?

It turns out that looking at their bedroom is the important one.

Golf is just like that, only it is with a different twist.  how somebody golfs tells you about themselves. Now, there well may be some amount of deception on the golf course, but generally, the play of the game keeps people thinking about the game rather than just the people.

I play golf like I play my life.  When I was younger, I was more “go for it” and more aggressive.  Now that I’ve aged, I am still very competitive but I play for the sure thing.  I wait until the other guy blows up.

I believe that I am rather controlled on the golf course.  When I hit a bad shot, I say “nuts” or “rats” but no swearing.  I try and generally be upbeat, and congratulate the other player on a good shot. 

I also like to score better than the other guy. 

But life, similar to golf, also goes on for a long time, and as you draw close to the end of the game, you start to think that it is a good time to go home.  As I stand one year away from my 50th birthday, I realize that I am on hole 13 of of the course.  I have finished the front nine, and even if I have a brilliant last five holes, I am not going to finish like a pro.  That decision was made a long time ago.

However, my wife and I have done a bunch of different stuff to keep ourselves young.  I look at my companions when I play golf, and they ride around in golf carts.  I walk.

The walking is hard.  It is a lot of calories and a lot of effort, but it keeps me young.  My wife is a hard core athlete. As she reaches her 50th year, she is still waking up early in the morning and swimming like a maniac.  We also have to keep young because we decided to have our final child when my wife was forty.  This means that we need to act like young parents.

Yet, we are getting closer to the age where we will not have the children at home.  Our oldest daughter has been in a phase of great growth and stepping out to extend her reach in this world.  She is the Senior Class president, and she is trying to be totally engaged in this activity, but only in her own way.  This week she was called out as “athlete of the week” for her last cross country race, where she seriously improved year over year.  That is her pictured above:  In her cross country sweat shirt with the “Toy Story” cupcakes that she made for her senior class meeting. (The theme this year is “Toy Story” for their class.)  If she could only get some more sleep, I would truly say that she was on top of the world.

However, the fact that our daughter is a senior is coming home to roost.  The other night, my wife made dinner for our kids and myself, except my oldest daughter was at a senior event.  As we sat down, there was an empty seat at the table.

We have a play whiteboard next to the table for the kids to have fun with.  My wife walks over to the whiteboard and grabs a pen.  She writes on the whiteboard “This is what it is going to be like next year. “, with the frowning smiley on the board. Our daughter is going away to college, and we are going to be 3 at home, then 2, then 1, then zero in the years ahead.

My wife says, “I want my grandchildren.”

Reflections Returning From Japan At 30,000 Feet

As always, I like to greet you with my smiling face, and this picture is when I got off the train 3 hours from Tokyo to go to the Sony factory.  However, that is not where I am now.

I am flying back from Japan on an ASA flight to LAX.  Although I left at 5:10pm, I will arrive on the same day at a little after 11am.  The Japan flight is the best because the actual flight time is “only” 10 hours.  While is long, it is nothing like the long flight to Taipei.

I am sitting next to a very famous name.  I don’t know the person, but the name is well known and the name is used in a famous company name.  This individual works for the world bank, and he is a very talkative person.  He proceed to tell me about the dire situation of the worldwide finance metrics, and how the unemployment is really 20% in the USA, and how our real debt makes is at a third world debt level from a relative standpoint.

He then proceeds to tell me how we are at “peak oil productions” (a common phrase that one of my energy exploration friends uses, but this individual doesn’t like), and how energy costs will sky rocket.  He then describes that the world economy will collapse, and people are going to start shooting each other to get to each others gasoline in local neighborhoods.

I makes you glad to know that the world bank has such optimistic people.

He then goes on to order an unbelievable amount of whiskey, wine and other alcohol. ASA airlines are very responsive, so they just keep feeding him the drinks.

“I like to drink,” he informs me.  Thanks for the hint, I couldn’t tell.

I proceed to tell him that I am in hard drives, and I describe the technology a bit.  However, it does make me wonder if hard drives can save the world.

The picture above is my traveling companion and Raymond.  Raymond is Hong Kong Chinese that decided to take an adventure to Japan 20 years ago when a Japanese company wanted to hire some Hong Kong guys.  He came and met his wife.  He has been in hard drives ever since, and as I said, he is helping us change the world.

The secret to having a good economy, classically since the 20th century, is making sure that you have the following things:

1. Cheap food

2. Cheap labor

3. Cheap energy

What most people don’t realize is that with the change to the information age, cheap computing is becoming the fourth rail.  And while we don’t measure computing, hard drives are the heat of this.

Hard drives provide massive amounts of storage virtually for free.  It is as if you wanted to have all the free oil and energy, and somebody invented a machine to deliver just that.  Only in our case, it isn’t energy, it is storage.  And storage, of all your bills, of all your records, or all your information, provides an incredible amount of labor to be saved.

However, this is not my serious blog, so I will give you more pictures of my trip.

Here I am standing outside of Toshiba.  The weather had taken a turn for the hot, and I started to realize that I was uncomfortably sweaty.  Luckily, it didn’t last too long, and we moved inside to have a good meeting.

After Toshiba, we need to continue to our next customer.  So while lunch was in order, we had little time to get to it.  Japan to the rescue.  As previously described, each stations  tends to have quite a few small restaurants in them. This one served sorba, which is a cold noodle that you dump into a type of broth.

There were no chairs, and everybody would simply stand up and eat their lunch. The woman that cooked the noodles did not take money.  You would buy a ticket from a vending machine once you got into the small restaurant, and then hand her the ticket.  This way, she never touched money, and one person could simply cook and be done.

We went on to have our next meeting, and once we were done, Nagata-san was going to treat us to a real Japanese business meal for dinner, Torimatsu.

Behind me is the  restaurant, and although I can’t tell the name, Nagata-san said that it is “Chicken Name of Owners.”  So, if I ran the place, it would have been called “Chicken Theologic,”

The place is only about 8 feet across, and 25 feet long. You sit at a counter, and unlike most places, you can smoke.  The owner cooks up a variety of heaven skewered meats and mushrooms over a special bed of charcoal.  David and I said it was the best meal of the the trip.

The old owner was happy to have his picture taken, and flashed me the V for Victory sign.  He cooked to the left of the picture, and charcoal smoke filled the place even though he had a fan.  It smelled great.

His wife was much more embarrassed, and tried to hide from the camera.  However, I snapped a picture when she wasn’t looking.

The next day, we met with our last customer.  I was very excited to be done with this trip.  Not because is wasn’t enjoyable.  I have a job that is intrinsically interesting and fun. However, being away from the wife is a lonely prospect.

I was quite lively at the table, asking some silly questions to our customers (who laughed a lot) like “What is your favorite movie?  Do you play golf?  How many children do you have.”  The language is always tough, but simply questions always drive good talk.

We went out for our final night of dinner to a restaurant that served a very authentic European food.  It was heavy on the meats, and probably caused all my arteries to clog.  However, we went with the sales team, and we had a lot of fun.

The size of the finally sausages were amazing, and I simply couldn’t eat all the food, but neither could anybody else.

Rather than going to bed, I watched the final 5 episodes of Haibane Renmei.  This put me to bed at around 1:30am.  This is uncommon for me, but the plan is for me to try and stay up all the flight time to LAX and into the evening.  If I can do this, then I can go to bed very early, and hopefully get back on a good schedule.  I always find that stay up for a long time, then getting a long night’s sleep is best for me.

Regardless, I am going home and I am glad. However, after all this food, I am hating to get onto the scale.  Of well, the damage is done.  The diet starts tomorrow.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It Off to Tokyo We Go

I woke up on Sunday morning and pulled back the shades on my 30th floor hotel room at the Hilton, and this is what I saw.  Tokyo stretching off into the distance.  It may look just a little bit smoggy, but it isn’t.  It is simply that the cloud cover is down low.  The air is remarkably clean this week due to the rain drizzle that has been coming down. I spent most of the morning blogging of my adventures in Asia-Pacific, and I decided that the afternoon should be a good walking opportunity.

If you are not familiar with the Shinjuku area, it is the central point of Japan’s business and government section.  Many businesses are in this area, as is our sales office, and there are all types of skyscrapers and large building.

Although I could not capture it all, this is one of the major government buildings that lined along the central Shinjuku roadway just a couple of hundred yards from our hotel.  There are multiple buildings in the exact same style with covered walkways going over the street and to the buildings on the opposite side of the street.  It is something like a scene from a futruuistic movie where man has gotten to some type of an utopia.  Only, there are not many people about when I walked around.  Even in Japan, the government workers do not make business happen on Sunday.

The great thing about this area is that there are a ton of very nice sidewalks that are just massive.  And while the government is not around on the weekend, that is not to say that there isn’t still a lot of overall traffic in the area with people visiting some of the shops and restaurants around the area.

I decided to simply walk around and stretch my legs.  I wanted to walk about 4 or 5 miles, so when I got back to the states I could still have a little bitof shape left so I can go walk the golf course.  The first place that I headed is to Shinjuku station.  It had been a little while since I had walked from the hotel there (and in reality, this is the first time I had been at the Hilton, as I normally stay across the street at the Hyatt).  The station still had quite a few people, but nothing like rush hour on a normal weekend.  I though that I may want to eat there when my friend David got in on Sunday night because the subway stations have a ton of little places to eat. 

After I had gotten out of the station, I walked over some of the streets that surrounded the area.  This area of Tokyo is great about have elevated sidewalks that go over the street so you don’t necessarily need to wait at lights.  Although there are more than a fair share of these walkways, most people don’t want to climb the stairs, and they wait at the light.

Walking 4 miles in a crowded city is a very long ways, and you can cover a lot of ground and see many things.  After I went to the subway station, I looped bck toward the hotel.  Across the street from the hotel is a large park with shrine in the corner.  Most of the park is not used by people because it is a gather place for the homeless people of Tokyo.  However, the corner of the park has a shrine.  I I want to see if it was similar to the Rabbit Shrine in my previous post, and you can see that instead of having one prayer rope with bell at the top, it had three, and it was much larger.

It also had a wedding going on (or more likely the wedding was someplace else, and after the wedding, the bride and groom came here to tae some photos).  You can see the bride in the picture above.

As I continued to walk around, I thought that the following would be a very nice picture for my youngest son and daughter.  Well, maybe especially my son.  Next time he complains about not having something that he likes to eat (and really he is not a picky eater, so this probably won’t happen), I tell him that I plan to take him to Tokyo, and make him eat at the above restaurant where he’ll get “broiled pig & cow innards with RED HOT CHILLI PEPPER.”

Cars are at a premium in the Tokyo area.  They are expensive, and the gas is even more expensive at $6-7 per gallon.  The space to park the cars are also very limited, because there is little space, so you are going to use it for living and not parking.  Considering that the subway and trains are great, you may still need some help getting a little further away form home.  So, you often see the avove at the many condos that are in the area.  Around the side of the apartment or the condo will be a special bicycle parking area.  In this case, it was along the fron part of the building, but sometimes they will have very sophisticated double layer racks.

David rolledin that night, and I wanted to eat at the burger chain that was something like the Jpanese MacDonalds.  This is called Mos Burger.  We had a little problems finding one, but after we found it, I had a fish burger, and David had a hamburger.  The meals were served fresh, and took 10 minutes to get  to us.  It  was much better than MacDonalds.

We then got up and went to our first customer meeting.  One more person from the USA joined us, Brad.  Ebitani-san met us and we headed off to Yokohama.  I like ramen, so Ebitani-san has a special place that he took us.

The line was long, but we were in in about 10 minutes.  We must have had good timing, however, because the line got very large behind us as we got into lunch.

This might be a good time to talk about a story from Ebitani-san.  During the Tsunami, there was a massive power interruption.  if you remember some of my posts, all of Jpan depends on the trains.  However, after the Tsunami hit, all of the trains stopped.  So, he was in the office, and what should he do?  There was only one choice.  He decided that he needed to walk home.

The problem with this is that home was 25 miles away.  However, he had no other choice.  So, he stepped out of the office, and he simply started walking.  As he tells it, the streets were full and the cars were gridlocked.  However, all the sidewalks were filled with people.  He said that although everybody knew that this was a big deal, there was a sense of kindness about everybody.  I supposed that in America, there would be looting.  In Japan, they were all going to walk home.

He walked for 5 hours.  All the time, he was thinking “I should buy a bicycle.”  However, he had no way of calling or getting to the internet to find a bicycle shop, so he simply kept walking.  At the five hour mark, he found a bicyle shop.  There was an old man and old woman that were running the place.  The shop should have had about 20 or 30 bicycles, but they were down to four.  Even though he didn’t want a nice commuter bike, it was all that the shop had, so he bought the Bridgestone bike and pedaled the rest of the way home for another 1.5 hours.

He arrived at about 11:30 at night.

Maybe the other interesting thing about the bicycles in Japan is that most of them are true commuter bikes.  We really don’t have this type in the USA much if at all.

The commuter bicyle is set up to be used by either sex, but the bike is what we would call a “woman style” bike, with a lower cross bar.  The bikes all have fenders and a rack. Kick stands are a must.

There is a lock on the back wheel and a key to the lock.  The lock simply is thin and light and keeps the back wheel from turning.  The bike could easily be picked up and carried away.  However, they simply don’t need to worry about this in Japan.  In most cities in the USA, the bike would be gone.  In Tokyo, I would walk by untold number of bicycles secured with nothing more than this little lock.  Amazing!

At the restaurant, we sat at the counter.  DAvid complained that sitting next to the kitchen could make us hot.  He is a big baby sometimes.  If he was too hot, then he should take off his coat.  He seemed to enjoy the noodles, however.  He said that this was a good business because noodles were very cheap.  However, Nagata-san, who was with us, said that the trick waas not the profit, it was making a ramen that people would come in for.  Many people wanted to be in ramen business, but not many had a line up for the shop.

This was the first time of Brad in Tokyo eating ramen.  So, I told him that he needed to take a big bite so we could send a picture to his wife.  Ebitani-san seemed to enjoy the big show.

 

Brad was wondering why the Japanese systems were  not selling so well in the USA, and I said that the Japanese could not understand the way that we bought PCs.  So, to show him, I took him and DAvid to a stereotypical electronic store in  Japan.  There were 11 floors of electronics in this store.  There are special rows for each major manufacturer of PCs, with separate rows for separate types of PCs.  There were sales people all over the place, and some floors had people with megaphones calling out the selling features of PCs. 

When Japanese come to USA to sell, they ask “Where is my row?  Where is my sales person?  Where is my megaphone?”  It is very different that USA.

Afterwards, we went into the backstreets to find a place to eat.  We went around and around in circles.  I wasn’t all that hungery, and I said that I was going to pick up riceball for dinner at 7-11, if the guys didn’t decide a good plce.  They went around in the same circle about 4 times, and when I finally got our my camera to document this strange path of find a place to eat, my companions said “oh, no, now this is going to appaer on the blog.  We were waiting for this.”

The first place that they picked smelled strongly of cigarette smoke, and I said that I was going to leave.  Brad agreed, and even David didn’t like the menu much.  We went out again, and found a really great little sushi place. 

The fish was very, very fresh, and normally David won’t eat roe (salmon eggs), but he tried and liked it here. 

“It doesn’t taste fishy, “he said.  “This is good.”

Seemed a bit ironic to say it didn’t taste fishy, but I did agree that it was very fresh and tasty.

Back to the hotel and a good night’s sleep.

And Now, A Week In Japan, Part II

As I described in Part I, I had a rather spectacular day golfing.  Thinking that the day was over, I was by my friend that we should visit the Rabbit Shrine.  Unfortunately, the summer festival was the week before.  Of course, I could not see the summer festival because the businesses were closed, and my purpose of coming was to talk to people.  However, I was still excited as we walked down the crowded street to the shrine.

The shrine is not enormous, but there are rabbits everywhere.  It is the shrine that is dedicated to the Rabbit, as in year of the Rabbit, known both to the Japanese and the Chinese.  The original shrine dates back 1800 years, and I’m not sure if there is dirt in California that is that old.

 

In the small court yard there is a covering over a Rabbit fountain.  ou are supposed to dip out the water in front of the rabbit and put over your hands for purity.  I didn’t do it, but thought it interesting of the washing of water to be clean.

This is the main shrine in the area, although it is not 1800 years old (and we’ll see that in a minute.)  It is a scared place, in which you can go to the front of the porch where there is a red and white rope.  You say your prayer, then you ring a bell that the rope is tied to.

This old woman was doing exactly that.  There is another inner room that you can go into during certain times of the year (or maybe if you have a certain donation level.)

 

There was a young woman there that explained the history to my friend.  Then he told me in English.  I was afraid somebody would ask me to stop taking pictures, but they didn’t seem to mind.

They had some very ornate carving on the beams, and as I said before, almost all of the carvings featured the rabbit in one way or the other.

As I said before, the big impressive shrine is not the original one.  The original one is this one.  It is much, much smaller, and it make more sense.  At one time, may years ago, this was a small grove, with no city around it.  People would come to this small place to pray to the rabbit god.

The shrine didn’t take long, and afterwards, Ebitani-san suggest that we find a tea house that he had seen on the internet.  We walked through some houses to find this on the back lot.  We walked up to the screen door and took off our shoes.  And walked into the moderately sized sitting room for room for about 30 people.

This woman told us of the history of the house.  It was about 120 years old and was part of a tea factory that had been in this place.  The house had survived several big earth quakes, and had been a central feature of the area for many years.  If not for the internet, however, I have no idea how anybody would find it.

Ebitani-san selected cold green tea because the outside weather had warmed a little bit, and a sweet snack, which was made of some type of gelatin and some inner filled bean curd.  The tea was excellent Japanese green tea over ice.  It had a nice bite to it, and the snack was generally pleasing.  Our hostess came back and told us that we should upstairs to the paintings.

 

We headed to the back of the building, and up the rear stair case.  The ceiling was low, and ready to bang me on the head. One the way up, you could clearly see the construction of the house.

The walls were mixed mud and straw.  A common building material used by many cultures and people in many lands.  However, it it had been holding for 120 years, it seemed like a good choice.  Obviously, they had done a lot of work to modernize this house, and it had electricity and air conditioning.  But the original frame was there.

 

We got up to the top floor, and while the beams were ready to kill me, there ws an artist and two rooms of her pictures.  Evidently, there had been multiple earth quakes in Tokyo over many years.  During these times, people had moved out to Saitama area, and the area had lots of artists and writers. 

She was doing abstract art.  This is not my favorite type, but I did see one picture called sunrise that I liked.  I didn’t’ think it fair to take a picture of her work, but you can see a little bit of a picture behind me in the picture below with the head threatening beam.

Ready to make the most of the day, Ebitani-san picked up his two daughters so we could all go to Korean dinner together. 

 

It was very neat to see a family that lived together.  His youngest is a freshman and the old is graduating in just a few months.  My friend is very proud of his daughters, and they have tested well.  He confessed to me that he was so into playing the bass in high school (he is a very good musician) that he did not get good grades.  However, his old daughter has just gotten a good company job selling mainframe computers, and he is very, very happy.

I asked him, “Does this mean that she moves out?”

He said, “I hope not, it is good for her to be home until she gets married.”

I would like to call out to my old daughter that all good fathers think this way.  I agreed this was a good idea.

After a very large Korean meal, my friend drove me into my hotel in Tokyo.  I offered to take the subway, but he would not hear of it. 

It was a very enjoyable and amazing day in Japan.  Not often do you get to see so much in such a little time.

And Now, A Week In Japan, Part I

Here I am waiting for the ON Liner to Saitama-Shin Station.  I am waiting just infront of the Narita bus stations.  As can be seen in the picture below, it is number 7.  While, there is a bit of English on the LED sign, it is going to be te last of the English that I will seeing for the rest of the day.  I am ready to get off the the beaten path.

Once you get onto the bus, they don’t allow talking on your cell phone.  So, I didn’t feel that I couldn’t take any pictures.  The bus was rather full, and I was sitting on the window side.  You need to remember that most things are rather low in Japan, as I am a giant, and I rapped my head on the overhead rather hard.

I wasn’t expecting anybody to sit by me, but up comes a guy that sticks both a foam cooler and backpack next to me.  Then climbs in a 50 year old Japanese woman next to me.  She stuck her foot up on the cooler, and was sitting there with a plastic bag of 3 cartons of cigarettes.  She was wearing a cap and silvery shoes with a little frill by the toes.  I caught a slight glimpse of her, and she seemed to have a bit of a maligant skin conditiion, where she had a series of very small flesh color bandages on her arm, an a slight growth by her mouth.  I didn’t care, but in these types of case, you always wonder what the persons background and issues is.  I would have loves to asked, but it would be rude in English, and I didn’t even speak Japanese.  She proceeded to close her eyes, and hang onto her knees as if she was asleep. Once around a curve, she lost she balance and swung into me.  I waved at her, as her eyes flew open, and her hands flew to her mouth, and she said “Sorry!”  She looked very embarrassed hitting the giant of the Westerner.

When I got to the Station (which is a major subway station), my friend Ebitani-san picked me up.  Since I had the weekend in Japan, we decided that it would be fun if he and Nagata-san would play a game of golf with me on Saturday. Ebitani-san is a very good host, and I must repay his kindness somehow. He picked me up in his car, and packed away my bags for me.  I was going to stay in the Pine Woods hotel close to his house so we could leave early in the morning.

Because the space is so precious in Japan, there are hoists in the parking garage.  You drive your car onto the platform, and then the platform raises up and allows you to park another car.  I’m not exactly sure how it works, but I guess that there is a spot under the car also.  I would think somehow there must be a sensor for the top car (shown here) or a tall car would be crushed.

Saitama-Shin Station is one of the many suburbs of Tokyo.  Tokyo is the largest metro area in the world with 35 million people in it.  The suburbs go on forever, with much of this area looking like the situation beneath my hotel.  Roads in America are wide everywhere.  Roads in Japan are narrow everywhere.  There are all types of multiple mixed use building mixed in with small houses, which are normally 2 to 3 stories.  Only the main arterials get a full two lanes, with most of the streets between the houses are a little wider than a US 1 lane road, which allows cars to inch past each other when meeting in these roads. 

In all of these neighborhoods, there are people out and about at all times.  It is always amazing.  The Japanese people simply cannot find solitude in these environments.  They are always running into each other on the streets.  If you have watched much anime, it is exactly is how it is shown.

There was no English television in the hotel, but there were many different ads for weddings.  One of the things that the hotels serve in Japan is as wedding centers.  In the USA, it is churches.  In Japan, there are few churches but some shrines.  However, nobody gets married at a shrine.

I got up at 5:30am to meet Ebitani-san, who was taking us to the golf course.  It was raining as we got up to the course, which was 1.5 hours away, but we said that we were going anyways.

Ebitani-san asked me if I had ever been in the Japanese country side, and I had not.  Let me tell you, it is beautiful.  Now, it is very rustic, and for those that expect a stereotypical “neat as a pin” Japan feeling, this is definitely not what you will get.

However, there were very steep hills, with many rivers.  There were train tracks all over the place, and I wish I could have gotten some pitches of these trains delivering freight.  The gauge of he train track is more narrow, and the cars are small compared to USA trains.  However, the growth is very thick, which people from Southern California would not understand.  However, growing up in Seattle made me feel right at home.  The forest is thick.

By the time that we got to Sainomori Country Club, the whole area was wet and the clouds were down on the golf course.  The road up to the course was hilly and very thin.  I was very surprised on the path to get to the golf course.  The road there was very twisty, and all the way there it was going up what looked like a back road.

The golf course is in Chichibu, which is quite a way from Saitama, which is quite a ways from Tokyo. However, as I got up to the club house, it was very large, and many people were rolling into the parking lot.

 

Nagata-san met us at the course.  I was hoping to hit some balls with my rented clubs, but unfortunately, the rain was hard enough that we thought that we’d simply stay as dry as long as we could.

Now, Japan had been 90 degrees the week before, and never in my wildest dreams did I think that it would be in the high 60s and raining.  So, I didn’t have my normal rain gear.  However, I always carry a thin plastic poncho in my bag from Walmart.  It is a single use item, and I used it.  It was definitely better than nothing, but it definitely got in the way.  I should have brought some rubber bands to tie some parts of it back. 

I just need to remember to buy a new one and bring the rubber bands for next time.

In the USA, we normally throw out a tee to determine who goes first.  At this course, it had a little metal cup with four rods in it.  Ebitani-san held the rods up and asked me to pick one.  I pulled out one with three stripes, and he said, “Okay, you go 3rd.”  This was very neat.

The golf cart had room for four people, and a big cover for the clubs.  It was gas powered, and we have nothing like it in the USA.  It allows everybody to be together.

The teeing areas were setup to handle heavy traffic.  It was a very loose astroturf on sand that you could tee through.  It was at the first hole that I decided that this must be one of the most beautiful course anywhere.  The hills were very steep and picturesque, just like a Japanese painting.  The clouds hung down into the course, and while it was raining, it was more like a drizzle.  The weather was cool, but not cold. 

It was amazingly beautiful.

Before each shot, you would wait under the umbrella, then get ready to hit.  Then you would throw down your umbrella, then hit.  Then pick it back up again.

 

I struggled a bit on the front 9, shooting a 55.  However, as you can see from the picture above, I looked like a man in a transparent garbage bag.  I had rented clubs, Nike Slingshots, that were heavy and didn’t seem to bite quite right, and my driver was both hooking and slicing.

But, as I tell my son, golf is not about the score.  It is about enjoying oneself. To tell the truth, I may have been a little over 55, as Nagata-san was not having us putt out anything over about 8 feet.  And the putting was very hard.

The greens were very wet, and while they looked nice, I think they had been recently sanded.  This resulted in the slowest greens that I’ve ever played on.  This is a major change coming from Coto De Caza.  You would have to get up to the ball and take a good whack at it to move it.  It was like putting on shag carpet.  I just could not get the hang of it. 

After we played 9 holes, the most amazing thing happened.  We ate for an hour.

The restaurant was amazing.  It was on the second hole of the club house, with an incredible view of the golf course behind it with floor to ceiling windows.  One of the most spectacular views I have seen, with major hills in the background, the green golf course, and the clouds hanging like white cotton balls in my vision.

Here a picture from our vantage spot while we ate. Our hosts explained that this was a very good practice as golf is a business spot in Japan.  You go out for 9 holes, then you can eat lunch or have a snack and discuss business.  It is a brilliant idea, but it would not work at my home course because at the end of our 9 holes, you are not at the club house.  You are the farthest from the club house and ready to come back in.  However, this is a great idea.

After we got done with lunch, we went back out.  With toothpick in mouth, I felt great and the rain had stopped.  I was ready to drop my score.

 

We continued to see some amazing scenery on the way on the course.  There was a very long and narrow bridge over a great pond.

Really, amazing stuff.

Another great hole is pictured above.  I ended up with a 50 on the back, having greatly improved.  I should have been in the 40s, but there is one hole that is a par 3, where there is a bunker in the middle of the green!  I didn’t understand this, until I got to the hole, and then I saw it.  I had been doing really well up to that point, so I decided that I could perform a tricky chipshot over the the top of the bunker, and then gentle roll to the hole.

The problem is that I always like to chip with my lob wedge, which is a 64 degree instrument, but all I had in the bag was a 56 degree sand wedge.  I hit what looked like a perfect chip shot but it was just 1-2 feet too short, and barely caught the edge of the sand trap and rolled in. 

Now I don’t like sand traps anyway, and even worse, the green, once you were in the sand trap, was small and you could lose your ball over the edge.  So, I hit the ball gently, and it rolled up the edge of the sand trap and rolled all the way back to the exact same position. I got mad, and hit the ball again and it stuck at the lip.  With a fury I swung again at the lip and missed the ball.  I was now at 6 strokes, and not on the green.  I putted off the fringe, and holed the ball for an 8 on a par 3, where I should have been no higher than 4. 

Regardless, I finished up with a 50 on the last 9 holes, which meant that I got a 105, which was more than maybe I should have expected with no warm up and rented clubs.  I definitely am going to figure out how to bring my own clubs on the airplane next time. 

Afterwards, as is normal in Asia, you take a shower.  There is a normal Asia routine for this.  You leave the locker room and proceed to the shower area. You leave your shoes in the front of the shower area, because they want to keep shoes out.  In the first section of the shower area, you take off all of your clothes and put them into a wicker basket.  You then pick up a couple of towels and move to the shower area, which is closed off because of the humidity.  The area with the baskets often have a couple couches, places to dry your hair, and maybe shave.  Sometimes they have massage chairs of exercise bikes.

However, I had never been in a Japanese club house. The big difference here was the showering arrangements and the seats. The first thing you notice after getting into the shower room is that there are shower seats in a great big open spot.I couldn’t find a picture of the shower seat, but it is something like the above.  You have a flexible shower nozzle and a mirror and soap in front of you. You shower sitting down in a crouched position.   They did have two regular showers, one of them that didn’t work.  I just couldn’t bring myself to shower sitting down, so I stood.

After shower, you proceed to the massive long bath where all the guys are sitting.  The bath was about 10 feet by 40 feet.  The guys were sitting in the tub with a towel on there head.  I couldn’t figure out why, until later the guys told me that the towel was supposed to be dipped in cold water to help balance out the heat.  The tub opened out in onto the course.  You couldn’t see in because of the mirroring, and the window was steamy.  However, it was just great. 

You are supposed to jump into the cold tub afterwards in the other side of the room, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  So, I exited.  However, I could have staid longer, but the other guys had left.

I thought that I had the perfect day, but as we drove back, Ebitani-san said, “Now we go to the Rabbit Shrine.”

But this is for Part II.

Back To Asia Pacific

This is a familiar site: I’m getting off of an airplane in an international terminal.  In this case, I’ve just landed in Narita Airport, Japan, and I’m on my way to Taipei.

The longest time that I’ve ever been away from my wife is 25 days.  This is when I was with IBM in the early 90’s, and I left to go to Asia-Pacific for 3.5 weeks.  This trip is 18 days away, and it is on top of many other trips this year.  I have been the traveling fool.

On this trip, I was to bring along George and my supervisor.  Our industry is going through some new exciting things, and it is causing us to rethink about our storage solutions.

This is George in the lobby of the Sherwood in Taipei.  I was kidding with him about “how much he is suffering” as the violin and harp player serenades him as we wait to go to the Intel Ultrabook Symposium. 

We had some meetings with our key customers and other makers of computer parts that make up PCs, so my supervisor came over after the Intel event.  We had a big meeting on Friday, and then we decided to take out one of our customers golfing.

David is our local American in China (doesn’t speak Mandarin), and he arranged an outing at the Kuo Hua golf course.  This was a very nice golf course, and I was incredibly disappointed in realizing that I had forgotten to bring my camera to the golf course.  I took a picture with my cell phone, but it is pretty bad.  We took off at 6am in the morning to get to the course, and in my rush, I simply forgot.  I would have loved to take some more pictures.

David said that this golf course was more of a Japanese type layout of the course.  It was a little shorter, and a little narrower.  I had a set of borrowed golf clubs. The best thing about the clubs is that it had a flop wedge, which meant that I was much more equipped for the short game.  The bad news is that I had zero opportunity to practice with the driver.  It definitely was more of a hook type driver.  I hit a couple with David’s driver, and they were slices, so it was something about the driver.

So, I hooked it off of the first tee, but then I really started to find my tempo.  The biggest issue way that I was smacking the ball extraordinary far.  I was out driving the rest of the group by 30-40 yards.  This meant that I was driving the ball so far that I would constantly go into the rough, and the rough was very rough.

The caddies were excellent however.  The were covered similar to the caddies from two weeks ago, but had a great grasp of were the ball went.  Even though I out drove everybody into the rough, the caddies were always able to yell at me and tell me where the ball went.  I didn’t understand the Mandarin, but could hear them yell and point.

On Sunday, Colin wanted to go to the Harley shop in Taipei.  He figured it would be cool to get his kids a couple of Taiwan based Harley shirts.  We got the the store, as he asked Chris, one of the people that work in my group to take us, without any problems.  However, as Colin looked around in the store, he figured out that the T-Shirt were very expensive.  They were something like 300% more expensive here than in the USA.  So he decided to not buy anything.  Harley’s are a big prestige cost item.

By the way, it was ghost month in Taipei.  During this month, business owners burn money to the ghosts.  It is quite amazing to see these type of canisters on fire everywhere, with people throwing money into them.  Only it isn’t real money.  It is designed to look like money.  I’m not sure, but maybe they can fool the ghosts.

One of the office people said that Taipei was very smokey during this period.  It always looks smoggy to me.

The scooters are everywhere in Taipei.  You either walk, drive or scooter.  The scooters are pretty wild in traffic with cars pushing into groups on the road, and the scooters sneaking up on the cars.  They say there is a lot of accidents, deaths and brain injuries, although I didn’t see any problems.  However, it is always a bit wild in my trips here.

Finally, after 9 days, I’m leaving.  Not to go home, but to go to Tokyo.  I can’t say I was sad to leave the Sherwood, but the room was very nicely cool.  If you can get room 1725, it is the best.  It has a neat de-humidifier in it, and I’ve staid in room 1724, and my supervisor was in room 1726.  Neither one was as cool is one.

It’s the place to be.

Hang Out In Taipei

I’m on the 17th floor of the Sherwood Hotel in Taipei, having eaten breakfast at 7:30 and waiting for our pick up for our first meeting this morning.  The last two days started off brutally hot, but yesterday afternoon, the clouds started to gather, and last night, the rains began in earnest.  However, more of the rain was showers, and the really big rain is predicted to arrive later in the week.  I am hoping it is after we are gone.

A note to all travellers to Taipei that stay at the Sherwood: last night as we were going to go to dinner, I saw the rain starting to form.  I, the well prepared traveller, brought my pocket umbrella downstairs.

I showed David the umbrella, and I said “well, what are you going to do?”  He smiled and said, “Well, I’ll just get an umbrella from the concierge.”  Seeing that he had out maneuvered me, I took my umbrella upstairs.

They handed out the umbrellas and as the concierge opened the door to get a few more umbrellas, I saw a set of golf clubs. 

“Are those for the guests, or are those golf clubs for somebody,” I asked.

“They are for guests,” the concierge answered.

It turns out that the Sherwood keeps a set of clubs for those that would like to go golfing on the weekends.  Normally, the club rental is about $50, which is a lot of money, and if you can get clubs from the hotel, it is a nice savings.  David inquired if they had a left-handed set of clubs, but the didn’t.  Disappointed in the club selection, David grabbed the umbrella and headed outside.

My travelling companions joined us, including Roy, who works for my running a big part of the Asia-Pacific region, and we went out to a rather wonderful Thai food dinner.  I had never been up to the 101 building, a monster skyscraper in Taipei, but Cindi suggested that we should delay going if is was raining.

Into bed early, and I’m sleeping better here than at home.  I do miss my wife and kids, however, but they seemed to be out every time I call them.  I’m sure they are having fun.

Taipei, Hot Greens, and Ocean Views

I’m back in Asia-Pacific region.  Yesterday, I was in Korea, and today I am in Taipei.

Because we flew from Korea to Taipei on Saturday, I have Sunday free.  So, I sent email to one of my friends in the sales office here, and asked if we could go golfing.

When we landed on Saturday it wasn’t 2:30pm yet, and I told my friend David and we could go to the National Museum of Taipei. There are about a thousand art treasures in the building that goes through 3 floors of exhibits.  However, David could only make it through about 1.5 floors before he was done.  There is only so much jade, bronze, and old scrolls that David could take before he was ready to go and do something else.

However we still were able to take some photos outside.  My biggest disappointment over the trip is that I remembered a tea house the last time I was at the museum.  We asked one of the floor guides on where the tea house was located and he directed us to the front of the museum.  We saw a cafeteria, but it definitely was not what I remembered.  Turned out, once I got back to the hotel and Googled it, the tea house is only accessed through an elevator.  So, David never saw the coolest thing about the museum.  Oh well, maybe next time.

The next day, we woke up at about 5:20am to meet our friends downstairs.  They had rented a car to take us to Miramar golf course.

We arrived and went into a massive club house building.  Marble ever where and two big floors.  If you look behind me in the photo, you can see some flowers outside the window.  They spell out “Nicklaus” because Jack Nicklaus designed the course.  Every score card for the place has a picture of Jack Nicklaus on the cover.  The symbol of the golf course is a white bear.  Now Jack is known as the “Golden Bear” but they must of not had the gold paint ready.  So, in Taipei, the golf course symbol looks like a Polar Bear.

I hadn’t had the opportunity to get breakfast, so I picked up the “American Breakfast” for 480 Taiwanese dollars at the club house restaurant.  It consisted of a couple of eggs, a big piece of ham, and 2 pieces of toast.  It was good and it filled me up.

The golf cart that we took had two caddies, and enough room to carry 4 more people.  While the rest of the group wanted to ride, I decided that I was going to be the traditional golfer and walk the course.  Luckily we started in the morning, but it was still brutally hot.  I believe that it was somewhere in the 90 degree range.  it truly would have been unbearable, but there was a healthy breeze for most of the morning.  Luckily I was able to borrow a little sunscreen, but clearly not enough for the amount of time I was in the sun.  Luckily, I don’t think I really burned. However, I am on the edge.

What boggled me was the Chinese woman that served as caddies.  They did a very good job, but the two that we had only had their eyes sticking out of the their outfits.  They were covered head to toe, and they were wearing gloves.  They faces were almost all covered with a long scarf.  They were in the sun all day, and they were going to make sure that they wouldn’t burn.

At hole 9, I was pretty much needing more hydration, and I asked if they had Gatorade.  They didn’t but they did have their equivalent, which is called “Pocari Sweat,”and while it is served in Taiwan, it is actually a famous Japanese sports drink.  I think it one of those things that they don’t really understand what it means, but they want to use English.  I asked for a cup of ice, and they filled up what looked like a paper soup bowl, and I poured the Pocari Sweat into that.  It was a bit sweet, and it was wonderful.

David, my friend from the USA, forgot to bring shorts, didn’t have a hat, and didn’t wear sunscreen.  He is Korean, and has a little more skin color than I.  However, by the end of the day, he definitely was red.  I hope he doesn’t blister, because we have customer meetings for the rest of the week.

Overall, I had a pretty good game considering the conditions and the fact that I walked the course in blistering conditions.  I scored an even 100, with making sure that I took zero “give-me” strokes.  Most of the other guys were a little more liberal, but I still ended up with the best score in the group.  I even had one four putt, which I never do.  Otherwise, I would have broken 100.  There is no Course Rating and no slope, so I can’t enter for my handicap.

After we were done we were driven back to Taipei, and our Taiwan friend that we went golf with (who is actually Japanese American who is on assignment in Taipei) took us out to a noodle house. The other guys got spicy noodles, and I got plain noodles.  We also got some intestines (which I tried) and some ribs.

Overall, it was a good day.

Wet and Wonderful

If you are a Christian, there are a few, not many, but there are a few rituals that transcend time and the different cultures.  One of these rituals is choosing to be baptized.  Now there are multiple baptisms referred to in the New Testament of the Bible, but the type that happened yesterday is the water baptism.

In Jesus’s time, the people would hear the message from John the Baptist, and they would go to the Jordan river to be baptized.  In Orange County, we hear the message of Calvary Temple, and we go down to Pirate’s Cove to be baptized.  My children, having been thinking about it for quite a while, decided as a group that it was time.  My oldest boy, who is a bit of inward thinker, was considering holding off because he want to make sure that it wasn’t something that he was doing because of parental pressure, but he is a devoted Christian.  We told him the morning of the baptism “You’re over thinking it.  I think today is a good day to be baptized.”  He thought about it for a few seconds, and said “I agree.”

The pastor that baptized our kids is the one that normally does the announcements at church.  I don’t know him personally, but he always seemed genuine with a sense of humor.

Somehow Wesley decided to go first.

This was one of my best photos.  I was up on the cliff with my telephoto off my small Canon 1400IS.  Very cool camera for capturing our family events.

 

I was up on the cliff crying a few tears of joy.  This was a very emotional time, as can be seen of the hugs after Wesley led the procession.

 

Then Nate.

Then Casey.

She did pretty well for not liking water (much).

Mom was taking a lot of pictures too.

 

Finally, Roo.

And the family was done.

Four (five with wet mom) wet kids.  Happy to wear the badge of Christ.

Everybody but Casey went to the club to shower.  This way nobody had to fight for a shower, and there was plenty of hot water.