4 Years ago, near Shinjuku, almost getting hit by a bus:
A few months ago, on Laurier Ave, at Timothy's Coffee:
Friday, August 04, 2006
$im = @imagecreatetruecolor(50, 100)
I promised pictures showing how much I have changed in appearance since I was last in Japan. Enjoy.
4 Years ago, near Shinjuku, almost getting hit by a bus:
A few months ago, on Laurier Ave, at Timothy's Coffee:
4 Years ago, near Shinjuku, almost getting hit by a bus:
A few months ago, on Laurier Ave, at Timothy's Coffee:
location++;
There have been some events in my life recently that my close friends know all about (I'm sure they all wanted me to shut up about it). I wont go into details here but the end result was that I decided that I was going to attempt to get a job in Japan.
Ever since I was a small child I have had a love of Japan and the thought of moving there has always appealed to me.
unfortunately, I have this inertia thing I mentioned in my last post. I always would find excuses not to make the leap. These excuses caused me to miss out on a perfect chance. I could have taken a working holiday and gone there to live and work for a year. I am now too old to do that (the cut off is 30 years old). I don't have a university degree so I can't get a job teaching English to kids. Now, to get a working visa I have to somehow manage to convince a Japanese company to sponsor me sight unseen.
To this end I updated my resume (thank you Andie, I couldn't have done that with out you) and started searching out jobs in Japan. Deep down I know that the chances of me actually getting a job there is pretty slim but I will still try. As long as I keep trying I will not feel like I broke a promise to myself.
On Wednesday I spotted an ad on www.daijob.com. It was for a company called Denphone K.K.. It's a company located in Tokyo; Roppongi to be precise. They make PBX systems based on open protocols. They are looking for a PHP/UNIX programmer. When I saw the ad I rushed to write a cover letter and emailed it off to Andie to get her approval. Andie is really good at that sort of thing. Waited all night for a reply from Andie. Couldn't relax. Kept running to the computer ever ten minutes to see if she had replied yet.
At 9:30 I decided to give her a call to see if she could give my cover letter the once over. She answered her phone and instantly launched into a pity me story. Her basement was flooded and her computer's hard drive was FUBAR. She lost a bunch of physical and digital stuff on the same day in totally unrelated incidents.
And to top it off, her shower was broken. She was having a bad day to the nth degree.
I am a good listener but I am not very good at comforting people. I never know what to say. When someone gives me a sob story, I usually just listen and say "uh-huh".
After she had gotten all her frustration out I got around to asking her to go over my cover letter. Only problem was that with her computer out of commission she couldn't check her email. I ended up reading the letter to her. Between the two of us we got it polished up and ready to go.
Thursday morning, I emailed off my resume with the cover letter. I didn't expect to hear back from them. Why bother to sponsor someone from Canada when you could just hire someone who already has a visa?
When I woke up this morning I saw a email waiting for me asking me for a phone interview. If I wasn't still rubbing sleep out of my eyes I would have done a happy dance. My first attempt and I manage to get an interview. Awesome. One thing about my resume: it gets noticed. Bernard (one of the trip members) thinks it is no good but he is in the minority. Everyone else seems to love it. It stands out. I was once told by an employer that it is the single best looking resume that he has ever seen.
I have to wait for them to get back to me on a actual time for the interview. There is a thirteen hour time difference between Ottawa and Tokyo. Co-ordinating this might be difficult.
I really hope this pans out.
Ever since I was a small child I have had a love of Japan and the thought of moving there has always appealed to me.
unfortunately, I have this inertia thing I mentioned in my last post. I always would find excuses not to make the leap. These excuses caused me to miss out on a perfect chance. I could have taken a working holiday and gone there to live and work for a year. I am now too old to do that (the cut off is 30 years old). I don't have a university degree so I can't get a job teaching English to kids. Now, to get a working visa I have to somehow manage to convince a Japanese company to sponsor me sight unseen.
To this end I updated my resume (thank you Andie, I couldn't have done that with out you) and started searching out jobs in Japan. Deep down I know that the chances of me actually getting a job there is pretty slim but I will still try. As long as I keep trying I will not feel like I broke a promise to myself.
On Wednesday I spotted an ad on www.daijob.com. It was for a company called Denphone K.K.. It's a company located in Tokyo; Roppongi to be precise. They make PBX systems based on open protocols. They are looking for a PHP/UNIX programmer. When I saw the ad I rushed to write a cover letter and emailed it off to Andie to get her approval. Andie is really good at that sort of thing. Waited all night for a reply from Andie. Couldn't relax. Kept running to the computer ever ten minutes to see if she had replied yet.
At 9:30 I decided to give her a call to see if she could give my cover letter the once over. She answered her phone and instantly launched into a pity me story. Her basement was flooded and her computer's hard drive was FUBAR. She lost a bunch of physical and digital stuff on the same day in totally unrelated incidents.
And to top it off, her shower was broken. She was having a bad day to the nth degree.
I am a good listener but I am not very good at comforting people. I never know what to say. When someone gives me a sob story, I usually just listen and say "uh-huh".
After she had gotten all her frustration out I got around to asking her to go over my cover letter. Only problem was that with her computer out of commission she couldn't check her email. I ended up reading the letter to her. Between the two of us we got it polished up and ready to go.
Thursday morning, I emailed off my resume with the cover letter. I didn't expect to hear back from them. Why bother to sponsor someone from Canada when you could just hire someone who already has a visa?
When I woke up this morning I saw a email waiting for me asking me for a phone interview. If I wasn't still rubbing sleep out of my eyes I would have done a happy dance. My first attempt and I manage to get an interview. Awesome. One thing about my resume: it gets noticed. Bernard (one of the trip members) thinks it is no good but he is in the minority. Everyone else seems to love it. It stands out. I was once told by an employer that it is the single best looking resume that he has ever seen.
I have to wait for them to get back to me on a actual time for the interview. There is a thirteen hour time difference between Ottawa and Tokyo. Co-ordinating this might be difficult.
I really hope this pans out.
Hello, world
I've started this blog for the simple purpose of keeping a journal of my preparations and eventual trip to Japan. Nothing fancy. Nothing earth shattering. Probably no one will ever see this. Doesn't matter. I'll keep plugging away at it until I get bored and stop updating it. That tends to happen a lot. I don't often have a long attention span for things. Martial arts is probably the only thing I've been able to stick to.
Anyways, onto details about the trip.
Several months ago, one of my friends, Charles, had a job which would send him to Tokyo once a year or so. He had decided that at the end of the trip this year he would extend his trip out by two weeks and have a vacation there. While discussing it with his friends the proposition came up that a group of us would join him for that two week vacation. Charles has since left that job and the business trip portion of the trip was canceled but the vacation part is still a go.
The general plan was to spend a week in Tokyo and a week in Osaka (and nearby cities). We would firm up our plans over the coming months.
At first there was a lot of speculation about who would go on the trip, but that eventually settled down to just a group of five people: Charles, Bernard, Olson, Remi and myself. There was still a bit of a question about that though. Remi wasn't sure he would be able to make it and Olson didn't know if he could join us for the whole two weeks. Eventually Remi settled his issues and Olson decided to only join us for the second week.
The group has been having meetings almost every other week planning out the trip. First we planned out what were going to be doing on each day. In general we are free to follow the plan or abandon it as we see fit. It is up to each person to choose what they want to do on any given day but we have a general plan.
After we hashed out the plan we started choosing hotels. Bernard and Charles went searching the internet looking for hotels. One of the members (no names) in the group has a problem with the communal washrooms that are normal for Japanese hotels so every place we are looking at must have private washrooms. It jacks up the price by a few dollars a night but that's OK.
Around this time I finally got around to renewing my passport. During my last trip to Japan I looked very different than I do now. I will dig out a picture of myself from then and post it with a comparison picture from now so everyone can see. My old passport, while technically still valid, had a picture that looked nothing like me so I had to get a new one. I have a lot of inertia (that whole object at rest stuff that Newton was talking about) to doing things. Getting the forms and the pictures was just too much effort on most days and the days when I had the energy I always forgot. Eventually though, I managed to get myself in gear and got the forms submitted. I got my friend from my dojo Mazda to be my guarantor and some other friends from the dojo, Nicole and Kevin, to be my references. The woman at the passport office said the passport would be mailed to me in two weeks, but it arrived in my mailbox after one week. I guess there wasn't a lot of people asking for passports that week.
That brings me up to today. We have another trip planning meeting this weekend at Bernard's place.
I know this was a rambling, badly written piece of crap that was probably pretty boring to read but I needed to bring everyone up to speed. As events warrant I will add extra posts.
Andrew.
Anyways, onto details about the trip.
Several months ago, one of my friends, Charles, had a job which would send him to Tokyo once a year or so. He had decided that at the end of the trip this year he would extend his trip out by two weeks and have a vacation there. While discussing it with his friends the proposition came up that a group of us would join him for that two week vacation. Charles has since left that job and the business trip portion of the trip was canceled but the vacation part is still a go.
The general plan was to spend a week in Tokyo and a week in Osaka (and nearby cities). We would firm up our plans over the coming months.
At first there was a lot of speculation about who would go on the trip, but that eventually settled down to just a group of five people: Charles, Bernard, Olson, Remi and myself. There was still a bit of a question about that though. Remi wasn't sure he would be able to make it and Olson didn't know if he could join us for the whole two weeks. Eventually Remi settled his issues and Olson decided to only join us for the second week.
The group has been having meetings almost every other week planning out the trip. First we planned out what were going to be doing on each day. In general we are free to follow the plan or abandon it as we see fit. It is up to each person to choose what they want to do on any given day but we have a general plan.
After we hashed out the plan we started choosing hotels. Bernard and Charles went searching the internet looking for hotels. One of the members (no names) in the group has a problem with the communal washrooms that are normal for Japanese hotels so every place we are looking at must have private washrooms. It jacks up the price by a few dollars a night but that's OK.
Around this time I finally got around to renewing my passport. During my last trip to Japan I looked very different than I do now. I will dig out a picture of myself from then and post it with a comparison picture from now so everyone can see. My old passport, while technically still valid, had a picture that looked nothing like me so I had to get a new one. I have a lot of inertia (that whole object at rest stuff that Newton was talking about) to doing things. Getting the forms and the pictures was just too much effort on most days and the days when I had the energy I always forgot. Eventually though, I managed to get myself in gear and got the forms submitted. I got my friend from my dojo Mazda to be my guarantor and some other friends from the dojo, Nicole and Kevin, to be my references. The woman at the passport office said the passport would be mailed to me in two weeks, but it arrived in my mailbox after one week. I guess there wasn't a lot of people asking for passports that week.
That brings me up to today. We have another trip planning meeting this weekend at Bernard's place.
I know this was a rambling, badly written piece of crap that was probably pretty boring to read but I needed to bring everyone up to speed. As events warrant I will add extra posts.
Andrew.
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