The Shell and Cactus

 Well, here is to my life in the biggest city in the world, Tokyo! After a grueling 13 hours flight and 2 hours in customs and baggage, and another hour or so on the train with my sweetie, I did finally make it to my new home. And let me tell you its kinda small for two people ;) But its great to be here.

I am taking this week off to adjust and finish some stuff, and next week I will start working. Monday is a holiday (national workout day or something according to my girlfriend, go figure) so Tuesday is the big day. I’m pretty stoked. I like the toolkit I am working on (BREW, a C/C++ API/environment for making cell phone applications). And I think I will have muuuuuuuuuuuuuch more fun doing that than sitting around with my thumb up my but and banging my ahead against the wall doing the support and debugging of crappy ass code that my old job entailed. Can you say good-riddance? :)

Well, I gotta go figure out what a cup is in milli-liters and see if I can pick up some butter from the local fancy grocery store. Hopefully they also have sticks of butter here.... I brought some Kraft Mac n Cheese for my honey since that’s a rare commodity here and was going to make that for her.

Oh, one thing I wanted to mention to anyone else who might come to Japan from the states: after you get your visa and Certificate of Eligibility from the consulate, KEEP BOTH! I guess keeping the visa is obvious, but the Certificate wasn't so obvious to me. I almost tossed it, but I brought it with me for memorabilia’s sake. Little did I know I NEEDED it! They don't let you in the first time with just the visa, you also have to have it. So anyways I am reeeeeeeeeeeeeealy lucky I had it, even though I packed it instead of keeping it in my carry on like I should have. (Also the visa is on your passport which I was surprised by, so that’s something else to expect.)

(You will also notice this post is now in JAPAN time!)