Today I put a pin down randomly in the middle of Tokyo on Google Maps:
Then I hopped on a train and went there.
It was this building.
I guess they can’t all be winners.
Anyway, the title says “Rakuten Tech Conference,” which I attended yesterday. Had a great time, and most of the talks are on Youtube. I gave a “lightning talk” about successfully implementing process changes on your team. In lightning talks speakers have a strict 4 minutes to talk on their topic, so I had to rush, but it was a good experience.
Afterward I got to hang out and talk with Nathan LeClaire of Docker (super smart guy working on and showing off some really neat things for a cool company) and the accomplished Jim Coplien who’s been in the software biz for decades, is well-read, and has strong and intriguing opinions on many things from scrum, kanban, & agile in general to organizational patterns and international politics, all of which were extremely fun to discuss with him over beer and Japanese food.
Now for some images and videos I’ve made recently.
The look of horror as this train realizes he’s about to kill some people.
OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN
Finn, Jake, and the Ice King keep me company at work.
Indian Prime Minister feels a 40% success rate = “near impossible.”
This atrocity is Burger King’s limited-time only black burger. The black is mostly food coloring but the cheese has squid ink in it. Try one today! hlgrk…
Open mic at Ruby Room
I probably drink one of these per day. And now you can get them from the vending machine hot!
Ate some delicious Italian style pizza here at Massimottavio.
Ate some delicious Italian style pizza here at Massimottavio.
To our customers who have food allergy and can only read English: fuck you! (At least now you know there’s something you don’t know about our food.)
My latest cat cafe visit
Me and Cope had a good time drinking and eating and talking
Walking off the train, I have to take these baby steps and get knocked around by other commuters. Watch and feel my pain.
A kitten at a cat cafe wants to chew my phone cord (of course).
A man fights sleep outside of a McDonalds and loses. I have been this dude so many times.
Thanks to this walk to Doofles, the neighborhood arcade, I’m sort of OK at Tekken Tag Tournament 2 now.
Last night I treated myself to my first Japanese pizza and just watched some old South Park episodes. T’was nice. The pizza place was called Pizza La.
It came with a fan!
The chicken was kinda gross but the pizza delicious!
Facing at least two dozen very Japanese pizza choices such as corn, teriyaki chicken, and mayonnaise sauce instead of tomato, I was a coward and just ordered the plain cheese pizza. But judge me all you want because it was delicious. The cheese covered almost the entire crust, and it all had a unique taste that’s hard to describe but not to be found in America (at least, not by me).
OK, I’ll describe it, it tasted like burned cheese, but in the good way, I’m serious. If you’ve ever had some crispy, slightly-burned cheese you know what I’m talking about. If not, you’re missing out. Go burn some cheese in a skillet or something. Moving on…
Today, I decided to head over to Denenchofu Station and visit Deco’s Dog Cafe. I thought it would be like a Cat Cafe except with cool dogs hanging out everywhere waiting to be petted and/or begging for food.
Inside Deco’s Dog Cafe
It turned out to just be a cafe that was super-accepting of dogs. I was pretty much the only dude there without one.
Hello there! Hi! I’m a dog and you’re a dog hello! (Three dogs get acquainted.)
Nevertheless, I had a delicious mango sorbet and got to pet a golden retriever, so that’s a success in my book.
My mango sorbet came out, like practically everything in Japan, looking like a picture in a catalog.
Afterward I took a walk around the station, an area called Tokyo Square Garden. I stopped in a flower shop where I saw gorgeous flowers in arrangements priced sometimes at ¥30,000 (about $300 USD).
Some of these orchid arrangements were priced around $300 USD.
Some of these orchid arrangements were priced around $300 USD.
And I visited a cake-baking shop where I saw this wall-o-flour:
No kidding: this is about a hundred different types of flour for sale.
At the nearby Starbucks I was given this hand-made (photocopied) iced coffee recipe by one of the baristas while I waited on a seat:
Adorable. And look how perfect that pitcher picture is drawn!
And finally, I visited the Shinto shrine called Tamagawa Sengen.
Tamagawa Shingen Shrine sits next to a gorgeous view of the Tama River.
There are many such holy Shinto and Buddhist sites in Japan, and while I’m sure anything can become familiar to those who have lived here their entire lives, each shrine and temple I’ve visited possesses a stillness that easily turns one’s thoughts inward. I sat for a long while taking regular shots of the sunset and just thinking about things that I usually think about when I get pensive.
It is true that nothing I do matters on its own. No single cell of the body is any more or less important than the rest. All one life amounts to is as a single grain of sand.
Grains of sand under a microscope – each individually beautiful and simultaneously meaningless. Remove even the most beautiful one and no one would notice; remove them all and there could be no beach.
It used to really bother me to consider the “vanity” of life (as the author of Ecclesiastes calls it) — the fact that all ambition is a chasing of the wind. Nowadays, in light of the reality that is the cosmic scale and the wonder that is human consciousness, I think life may simply be a precious gift.
What am I that I should be the steward of such a thing?
I have struggled for years to find that activity I should pursue which might be an adequate, fitting use of this small taste of life I’ve been given. Like a child given a toy agonizing over how exactly he should play with it, when all the giver intended was that he find joy in it.
The Computer Cheats 
You must be logged in to post a comment.