Rice and Ramen

“The young men of Silicon Valley were doing fine. They loved their industry, loved their work, loved solving problems. They had no qualms. They were builders by nature, or so they believed. They saw markets in everything, and only opportunities. They had inexorable faith in their own ideas and their own potential. They were ecstatic about the future. They had power, wealth, and control. The person with the yearning was me.” Sometimes, there are just books you read at the right time in your life. Michelle Obama’s memoir, “Becoming,” was one such book for me, as she wrote with candor about the somewhat tumultuous period of change that was her mid-to-late 20s. Anna Wiener’s techno-memoir, “Uncanny Valley,” which chronicles the time she spent working in several Silicon Valley startups, felt like it should have been that book for me but wasn’t. The premise is simple: Wiener, frustrated and disillusioned in her role as an underpaid and unfulfilled assistant in a major publish...

I have officially lost all sense of time, here in Japan.  Technically yesterday was Saturday and today was Sunday--the weekend, a joyous time for most people!--but for me I just had more job training. I'm looking forward, instead, to this upcoming Wednesday and Thursday when I have my next two days off: my newest "weekend." Conversely, I like commuting to work/training MORE on the weekends because the morning trains are much less crowded. Maybe the days of the week would matter more if I had friends I could meet up with on a regular basis, but since I can only see people I know here irregularly, if at all, if doesn't really matter much if my days off synchronize with everyone else's.   So on my last two days off I did several things, some fun and some practical. The practical side consisted of doing laundry on one of this month's rare sunny days--since everything has to dry outside, whenever there's a sunny day in the midst of the rainy period, most...

So I've made it to Japan and, more importantly, to my new apartment! I was picked up at the airport by a Nitori representative and she help me with my luggage (which was a lifesaver since I had three bags) as she took me to get my apartment key and then to the apartment itself. Here is my apartment building, run by Leopalace; I'm on the second floor. Here's the view from my window at 4am, overlooking a small farm-garden thing. The apartment, at 26.08 square meters (the .08 is important!), doesn't feel terribly small for one person. I actually have what I could call rooms--or at least designated areas for different things. I have one main room, which has my bed and table in it. I'm sleeping on a futon (which Nitori kindly provided me) on a lofted frame, underneath which is a huge empty space for storage. I also have a closet that's bigger than what I ever got at Yale. The other half of the room is my table, chairs, and TV/TV stand. As yo...