I pay for Amazon Prime, which means I’m a sucker and an Amazon fanboy. I pay too much to get free 2-day shipping, but I pay it every year. Today I tried to order something that clearly had the “Amazon Prime available” o the web page, and they still charged me for shipping. A book and an oven thermometer, all of $26, and they tried to charge me an extra $22 in shipping. To repair this problem, I had to call what sounded to be Indonesia in the morning, and what sounded to be India in the evening. Both were incredibly slow calls and the guy in the evening appeared to be a bit mentally impaired. I had to read him the order number FIVE TIMES VERY SLOWLY. And by very slowly, I mean like, “ONE (one one-thousand), ZERO (one one-thousand), etc” and that still wasn’t slow enough for the guy. I’m guessing that Amazon is updating their software before the Xmas season and they’re screwing it up.

It was also the last day to pay for property tax and get a discount and I almost forgot. I never forget these kinds of things, but the whole job situation has me a bit discombobulated. Fortunately, I keep emailing a co-worker, asking him, “What are you doing? I’m doing nothing. How many jobs have you applied for? I’ve only found one I’m qualified for,” and he replied that one of the only things he’d done today was pay his property tax. That guy is a lifesaver.

The only other thing I did was go to the gym. One of the women there was pretty darn surly. It was around peak time (5PM) and I finally found an open cardio machine, but it had a cell phone on it. I wanted to get it back to the owner, so I asked her if she saw who was on the machine. No dice. She said she didn’t know and I got the attitude that she didn’t care because it would take 15 seconds of her precious time. I wanted to say, “Listen bitch, this is Oregon, and we have some manners here. If you want to work your flabby ass out to distract from that flabby face, fine. But at least be courteous enough to fake concern about other people so we can get this phone back to its owner. OK? By the way, your haircut is atrocious. I don’t care if you’re married, a lesbian, or a married lesbian. There’s no reason to have a haircut that looks like that.”

I’m afraid that my current situation is making me a bit surly. At least I didn’t say it out loud.

Imagine a guy on the first day of his job search, the day after he’s been told that his current job will no longer exist. You’d figure he’d send out a few emails, call a few contacts, surf a few job web sites, and then just relax because it’s his first day of externally imposed freedom, right? But for some reason it feels weird when that same guy spends all day sitting around watching TV shows that are queued up on his Tivo. Even if that guy took vacation days in the past, doing the exact same thing.

On a different note, I bet I was a lot more attractive when I had a job, compared to when I didn’t.

I went to work late today because I had a stomachache last night. Well, it was also because I was demotivated by the prospect of not having a job soon, and knowing that meant that I probably had no work to do because what can they assign you to do in a few weeks?

On a completely different note (COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. REMEMBER, THIS IS NOT RELATED TO THE THING ABOVE!) can anyone who has successfully found a job to give me any hints they have? Since 1991, all the jobs I’ve found have been through referrals. Basically, friends tell me when there are openings and get me in the door. I have been incredibly unsuccessful in finding jobs through other means like monster, the classifieds, etc.

I went to the gym for the first time in weeks and I’m underwhelmed. I suppose there could be other factors suppressing any joy I can get from life, but I’m uncertain what that could be. Certainly it couldn’t be work, or the burglary, or the strife in the neighborhood, or any other such thing, could it?

It wasn’t the best of days, but for some reason I’m not feeling all that well. Perhaps my dinner isn’t setting right.

Last night I went to sleep late and I was woken up by sirens! Apparently I slept through the gunshots, but a guy caught someone peeping in at his girlfriend and gave the alleged peeper a beat down. This happened on the other side of the school from where I live. The alleged peeper was armed and fired some errant shots and I don’t think anyone was hit. The news tonight said the fight went on for 20 minutes. The alleged peeper looked like hell in his mugshot on TV, and the boyfriend seems to have broken his hand.

So today at Megacorp, we found out how confusing it is to not have a manager. Our manager bailed on us last week. He’s known for a month that he’s transferring out and he’s been gone for a week without telling us that he’s not coming back. He said he was on a “special project” but really he secretly switched jobs. And today we had a divisional meeting where we were told that our group was targeted for reassignment. Hard to know what that really means when your manager is gone. Fortunately, we have managers “up the chain” who are going to let us know what they know. Well, a little of what they know because they can’t tell us everything. That’s the nature of things. So this means that my sister should really figure out what she wants for her birthday (which was back in August but she keeps changing her mind about what she wants) while I still have a job.

I think I just bought my sixth Mac of the year (two were for my sister and brother-in-law’s) just now. A friend is getting me a discount – a legitimate discount! – and I should have a laptop within a week or so, I bet. Whoopee!

Friday night I was so tired that I had a couple of bagel bites for dinner. This is after a spectacular two days back at work which I can’t talk about for obvious reasons. In any case, falling asleep appears to be something I’m getting even better at.

Saturday was Megan’s brother’s wedding. They had a small family ceremony and a bigger reception. Oddly enough, the reception was in a beautiful venue in Milwaukie, Oregon, where it was hard to know that you were in amongst all the auto body repair shops and strip clubs. The only other oddity is how the staff of the venue wanted to hustle us off after 8:30PM. I suppose after the bride and groom left there really wasn’t any reason to hang around. Megan took us all out for drinks afterwards and I almost fell asleep there as well.

Sunday was almost normal. I woke up to watch some football. I went for my painful, I mean INTENSE, massage in West Linn. But this afternoon my brother-in-law wanted me to to take him to the Apple store to get a new MacBook. This is the fourth Mac I’m involved in buying this year. We got it back to his place and started setting it up when my sister and Megan got back. They also had computer questions and it was a weird sight after dinner, the three of them with their laptops on the kitchen table. Even weirder was my brother-in-law checking out iTunes and singing along with old Stones tunes. Yikes!

And here I am, up too late, trying to figure out why I’m trying to catch up on the TV shows I missed while I was in Japan this late at night. I’m not too bright, I guess.

I’m back at work now and, well, things are probably going to happen. But I’m not talking about that any more.

I think I’d better go ahead and replace my lost laptop soon. My mom will be back soon enough and want her “game machine” back. I got her a DS Lite and the Japanese version of Brain Age but she’s hooked on Tumblebugs. For that she needs the MacBook. If only Apple would come through with another discount. Oh, well.

I think I’m too sleepy to think of anything else. Megan’s coming up tomorrow because her brother is getting married this weekend. Whoopee!

After a poor night of sleep in Tokyo, I got up at 7AM Japan time which was about 3PM yesterday US time. I’ve been up for about 30 hours with only very short naps of less than 5 minutes. We got on the plane about 3PM Japan time and we got into Portland early, at 6AM. Unfortunately, being early didn’t help much because customs wasn’t ready and we had to sit in the plane, on the ground, for almost half an hour. I was at my sister’s house by 7AM and I think I was home by 9. And I did nothing today.

It wasn’t really nothing. I did laundry, got my car out of my neighbor’s garage, checked out some library books, and even locked myself out of the house. Late in the afternoon, my sister called and told me that the weather was going to get bad soon. I decided to “rake the leaves” (run the leaf blower) and mow the lawn. The mail arrived in the middle of this all and I realized I didn’t have the house key. Fortunately, two different neighbors had the key and I wasn’t out for very long. I even had time to clean some of the gutters before it got too dark.

And this evening I went to the Apple store to exchange my “old” (2 week old) MacBook with one of the new ones that just came out. I had to pay a restocking fee, but now I have a fancy new motherboard or some such thing. Hiron, the graphic artist, told me that in Japan all you can do if they come out with a new version soon after you bought your computer is go home and cry. I figure a restocking fee was a little easier than than.

I tried the US version of the Green Tea Latte at Starbucks and it wasn’t quite as good, but good enough. The sweetener tasted like Japanese apple juice for some reason. And my first dinner back in town was at Jack-in-the-Box. Lunch was a chili dog from a cart in my neighborhood. Do I know how to live it up or what?

I’ve been offline at my aunt’s house in the sticks. Seriously, she lives at the end of the bus line, and there aren’t many houses further down than hers unless you get on a boat and cross over to an island. My uncle, before he passed away (the big brother of my not-really-my-aunt) built a big house out there near the ocean with a beautiful view.

My uncle spent a lot on the house and even the garden. I heard he might have spent tens of thousands on the trees in front.

The house is a little hard to use, but it made my uncle happy and I suppose that’s what matters. We spent a lot of time just hanging out with my aunt, but my mom, sister, and I took a brief shopping trip to Fukuoka where we got sort of lost and couldn’t find any stores or food that were worthwhile. Of course, after resorting to lunch at Mickey D’s, we ended up finding plenty of things we could have eaten. I had a meeting with the Colonel, but we ate dinner from a bento stand on the way home.

This morning, my sister and I loaded ourselves into a train for Tokyo. I’m not a big fan because I spent most of my time in Osaka and there’s a difference between the two. But undeterred I took the train to shop in Akihabara where they looked at me funny when I asked if they had RFID readers.

I was looking for Thanko which is really called the “Rare Mono Shop.” I was lost and I even resorted to going to an “internet cafe” which isn’t a Starbucks with free WiFi like in the US, but dark closets with computers where homeless kids spend the night. I spent the minimum for 30 minutes trying to find the Thanko store but it didn’t help. It took me about an hour and a half to find the store, which was closed! Fortunately, they had a second shop that was open, and a Japanese guy with a cowboy hat was looking for it too. With his help I found the store.

I barely got back in time to meet friends for dinner. Chico Hayasaki went to high school with my sister and she brought another artist friend, Hirofumi Nakano, or HiRON. We had dinner, and then more matcha latte’s at Starbucks.

I should shut the hell up and get some sleep because tomorrow we’re heading home. Fortunately, I crossed the last eating thing off my list: I made it to Mos Burger!

We all went to visit my not-really-my-aunt and not-really-my-uncle today. My sister ditched us to go shopping, but my not-really-my-uncle drove the rest of us around the area and I got to drop off the gifts I had for my old neighbors at the butcher’s shop and Naniwa Cycle, the racing bicycle shop I used to frequent. I also gave my buddy at Maeda Cycle some American coins I had for his kids. After that we drove around Takarazuka City which was hit pretty hard by the Kansai Earthquake and changed quite a bit. We even went to Kiyoshikoujin which is a mixed Shinto/Buddhist shrine in the hills of Takarazuka.

I’d been there lots of times and it always has festival stores out front. Today wasn’t a holiday so it wasn’t all that busy and many of the shops were closed, but it was still a uniquely Japanese spot from my old memories.

Afterwards we went looking for a place to eat and even drove through all sorts of places near my old neighborhood that used to be rice fields but now look like the city now. We just missed going to a fancy Japanese restaurant because it was too late for lunch and ended up at another “family restaurant” chain that was pretty good.

We got back to the hotel just before rush hour and hung out near the hotel for the rest of the day. I guess this means I won’t get to see the inside of the weird building with no inside but hopefully I can come back soon to see it.

This waiting 16 years to come back kind of sucks. Too many things have changed. I know the reasons I didn’t come back, including personal failure, getting dumped by my Japanese fianceé, and not wanting to see my cousins when I was jobless, but it’s not so bad any more. The rest of my cousins aren’t doing much better than I am and I’m too old to let my failures keep me from coming back more often.

Tomorrow it’s off to my aunt’s house in the country (my real aunt) and so I probably won’t be online for days. It’s probably for the best. But right now I have to listen to some more Euro dance music on my iPod to try to get the religious chants I heard at my cousin’s place out of my head.

We didn’t go very far today. We started out wandering around looking for a Starbucks. The coffee in the few places we’ve tried was disappointing, so we thought we’d get something that we knew was bad. On the way we found some ridiculously expensive stores, Gucci, Swarovski, Bulgari, and, oddly enough, Sony. Sony has a neat new Organic LED video screen coming out but I think it’s $1700 for an 11″ screen. The picture was beautiful, but I don’t watch anything that requires a $1700 screen. We finally found the Starbucks and I had the Matcha latte, which was surprisingly good.

We met an old friend from Portland for lunch and she took us to an okonomiyaki store. Her family and our family go way, way back. I think her mom moved back to Japan for a while and she grew up here, even though her grandparents were in Portland. I had “modanyaki” which I guess is really “Modern Yaki.” It has soba mixed in with the okonomiyaki.

She also took us to get some Japanese sweets, dango and matcha bean paste.

Her kids are both going to college next year, so we didn’t get to see them or her husband who almost got his PhD at Portland State University. A.B.D. is a sad place to be. I think he even had his thesis mostly finished before he moved back to Japan to take care of the family business.

After that we just did some more random shopping. When I first tried to buy a new PSP at one of the local stores and the lines were horrendous. It’s the start of the month and I think they released some new games. I did finally get the PSP, which is a replacement for the one that was stolen last week. Now to see if it will work in the US. I’m still just randomly punching buttons instead of reading the instructions for these Japanese games.

I told my mom I wasn’t sure I wanted to go with her to see Hikone castle, but it was such a nice day I decided to go. It was a nice family outing with my mom, sister, and aunt. I’m not sure what made my mom decide to go to Hikone, but it could have been a death march. It was a beautiful 70°F, but in the summertime it would have been awful. I think we had to climb at least 20 stories to get from the base of the castle to the uppermost room.

Keep in mind that the picture is of the main castle building, and that was only about 1/3 of the climb. We also had to cross a moat and climb up very uneven and large stairs to make it to this point. Castles weren’t easy to access because easy access would reduce their security.

The interior of the castle wasn’t very easy to access either. The stairs were more like ladders and I was surprised to see all the elderly people successfully going up and down them.

Finally, the castle town is as bizarre as most tourist spots here, and a cartoon mascot is plastered all over the signs and museums. We saw chrysanthemum shows, creepy dolls in beautiful kimonos, maneki neko collections, and in every one of those exhibit halls was the mascot. We even saw the mascot in a stonemason’s store where it was in amongst the gravestones.

We got back in time to start some shopping. It’s the first day I’ve actually paid for anything besides a hotel room. I bought a lot of kitchen timers for gifts and I bought my mom a DS Lite to replace her stolen GameBoy. I had no idea the screen would be so small but I’m sure my mom will figure it out. I bought myself some t-shirts with odd writing, and my sister told me specifically not to buy some clothes that looked, well, incredibly gay. And by gay I kind of mean stylish and overpriced but I really mean that I would have to start dating dudes with shirts like that.

Actually, some of the shirts were kind of inexpensive and I thought of buying something just to piss off my friend Megan. I think I need to stick to buying more geek gear, like the stuff at Thanko. My sister and I are planning on going there on our last day in Japan.

What’s weirder than pulling into a Japanese rail station and seeing a giant golden Goddess of Mercy?

Maybe it’s going to your cousin’s house and seeing 3 cousins and various kids of theirs for the first time in 16 years! We weren’t going to stick around, but they invited us for dinner and told us we could meet our cousin’s kid’s fianceé. So we stayed for seafood pizza from Domino’s and sushi. Check out the squid and shrimp.

Here’s a picture of my two eldest Osaka cousins (brother Kimikazu and sister Kyoko). That’s Kyoko’s son on the left, and her grandson (the son’s nephew) on her lap. The son was telling us how he did absolutely nothing in college and how his mom wrote his final paper. We asked why it didn’t have his mom’s name on the diploma. He’s a butcher now at a supermarket and works horribly long hours wondering why he went to college at all.

Next is a blurry picture of my aunt, my youngest Osaka cousin Maki, and my mom. My aunt is my mom’s older sister. I finally figured out I had the flash turned off later in the day.

Proof that my sister is in Japan with us: a picture of my sister and my uncle (big brother to my aunt and mom, and father to all my Osaka cousins).

And finally, my Osaka cousin, his son, his kid’s fianceé, my cousin’s wife, his middle daughter, and my aunt. Last time I saw them, the son was 12 and the daughter was 9. Now he’s getting married?

I forgot to take a picture of my cousin’s youngest daughter who is 21 now. There are also no pictures of me and everyone has told me that I’ve gotten fat. EVERYONE. That’s not going to keep me from eating. Takoyaki is still on my list of things to eat, and I may have to get more Beard Papa pumpkin cream puffs. I’m going to be even fatter soon!