This week was more or less made of suck on accounts of needing oral surgery. One of my wisdom teeth was removed. Yes, one. The other lower one they were going to take out turned out to be attached to a large nerve in my jaw, so no go on getting that one out this time around. The one that they did take out had three roots, which is apparently rare, so more work… yay…

On the whole, the experience was one of the worse ones in my life and not one I’d care to repeat. Unless I need something in a completely emergency-like fashion, I don’t care what they say, I’m getting the next one out while I’m completely unconscious. Sounds like the internal wrenching of a branch being torn from a tree, smells like something is burning and general discomfort at all the pressure and whatnot… >_<

Also, for some reason I can’t fathom, the music playing on the little stereo in the room was Elton John. What the hell?

The rest of this week was taking painkillers and trying not to go batshit crazy. I did manage to get to my graphics class and I’m going to have to get special permission to get the slides in that class just to keep up. Luckily the lecturer seemed to sympathise with me, so I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to keep relatively on top of it. I managed to get some work done, but not a whole lot. Still having trouble focusing for any length of time, and the pain(killers) don’t seem to be helping with that.

The week actually started off with me going to a seminar/interview for foreigners that want to work in Japan. I didn’t really follow most of the seminar (it was in Japanese), but the interview afterwards was interesting. Talked to a couple of older Japanese guys, one who’d worked for Panasonic for 40 years, the other who worked for the company that organised the seminars. Mostly advice that I expected – improve my Japanese, research the companies I target properly, Japanese companies mostly only really consider workers that are going to be around for 5 years or more… I think I’ll still look into finding something for after I graduate since I think working here for a year or so would be a great experience, but I don’t know how realistic my chances are. We’ll see.

This weekend I spent a bit of time coding on a pet project with Ian, and my brain also spent a good portion of the time in some space that meant a complete lack of function on my part. I don’t even know if I would have been able to form sentences when I got like that. As such, I missed an opportunity to go to the Tokyo Motor Show with Jon, which is a bit of a shame.

I have been a complete waste of space this week. Hopefully next week will be better.

So this weekend has to be one of the best I’ve had for a while, most of which I am going to squarely thank my new friend Jon for. Yesterday afternoon we met up in Shibuya and went for a wander to a basketball shop there called Gallery 2. I will most definitely be going back to that place… the whole thing was filled with awesome basketball gear – shoes, clothes, the works. I picked up a pair of new basketball shoes (early birthday present, thanks Dad!) and a new pair of basketball shorts and some socks while I was there.

The day just kept getting better, though. After a bit more of a wander, we stopped briefly to have Freshness Burger for “dinner” (I’m not really sure what meal it was, neither of us had eaten in a while). They serve some very decent food for a reasonable price, so I was happy to introduce Jon to them. After that, we headed to Shinjuku, where we had a date with a famous hotel. The Shinjuku Park Hyatt is where most of the film Lost in Translation (which is a favourite of mine) was filmed, and we had made it our mission to go have some drinks in the New York Bar on the 52nd floor where many key scenes from the film happened. We sat around and had expensive drinks and talked for hours about everything and nothing while being treated to some excellent live jazz.  My recommendation to anyone that comes to Tokyo is to go up there for a drink or two… even if the movie connection means nothing to you, the view is absolutely stunning. The table we sat at was square between the spot that Bill Murray sat at and the little table where Scarlett Johansson sat.

Awesome.

The weekend was then topped off by heading out to Yoyogi Park this morning, where I hooked up with Jon and played some streetball on some newly resurfaced outdoor courts. Played for hours and had loads of fun, although I pulled the muscles in my calves a few times. Some good people out there having a good time playing. In the end I actually got a bit sunburned/tanned, which I wasn’t expected. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and has been absolutely gorgeous all day.

I also got to chat with Anastasia and wish her a happy birthday (Happy Birthday again, love!) on her birthday while it was her birthday both here in Japan and over in Florida where she is. It always feels good to be able to connect with her on days like today, somehow makes the distance seem not so far.

Today I played around with writing some XML parsing in PHP. For those of you (probably all of you that read this) that have no idea what that means, it’s just me playing with a couple of web-related technologies and seeing if I could make them play nice for a pet project of mine. In the end, yes, they play nice. I haven’t played around too much with what happens when you give it unexpected results… I expect it’ll explode rather heavily, but I’ll worry about that later. It was enough to know that I could do something useful with it.

I also updated my school results page, adding in my results from last semester, which I finally just got. Since it’s my first time getting grades using a Japanese system, I’ve just put in what I think are equivalent. I also added in my classes for this semester, although they’re noted as next year since they don’t finish until next year. My research continues to be… well, I have no idea, and that’s the problem. I need to just start working on something a bit more and trust that it will work out somehow.

Caught up a bit today with Dad on Skype, that was cool. He’s still busy with his PatronBase stuff over in the UK, although he’ll be heading back to NZ next month, I believe.

Not for the first time, I wonder whether or not I’ll be able to get a job here in Japan. I don’t mean teaching English, there are tons of jobs doing that but it isn’t something I especially want to do. I’d like to avoid it if possible, in fact. Particularly in the games industry, where I want to be… all the positions that I’ve seen advertised so far have been full-time, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to find a part-time job I can somehow upgrade to full-time after I graduate. I would still really like to work here for a little while after I graduate and since there’ll be some time before Anastasia starts her PhD, I figure it’s liable to be the best opportunity to do so. But, finding a job here (especially as a foreigner) is going to be rough. Basically I need to start looking now… and that just makes it harder, since I know at the very least my Japanese is going to be better in a year’s time when I’ll actually be starting work. Sigh. Ah well, life goes on.

So, last night a big typhoon hit Tokyo. I battened down the hatches (not before getting rain in my kitchen, though) and settled in to hear it howl around outside as I went to sleep. And when I woke up. There was a hell of a lot of rain and some very strong winds and I was glad to not be out in it. My bike outside blew over, which I had to pick back up later.

Today I did not go to school. My class for the morning was cancelled due to the professor’s absence, which meant that I didn’t actually need to go to university. I did a bit of university stuff from home today (enrolled for my classes, went over some Japanese stuff, that kind of thing) and otherwise stayed in my pyjamas. I also elected not to go to basketball, despite the weather having calmed down by the evening. I ended up spending a fair bit of time talking to both Ian and Nik, about various things involving games and the making thereof. For me I’ve been trying to recognise to myself that making games is where I want to go, and trying to allocate at least a bit of time each week towards that. Lately it’s just been site building stuff, which is good, but not as instructive as I’d like (particularly when overall progress is slow). I think I’ll try to make a more concerted effort to read some of the game development books I bought.

I made a (somewhat) significant decision today – I’m going to participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’m not going to be following their rules strictly as such, as I’ll be trying to extend a story idea that Anastasia and I have been playing with for the last year and some change. That said, I’d like to really rough out some of the ‘chapters’ and do some more writing. Over the last few months I haven’t really had a lot of creative outlets, and when I’ve sat down to write it has been quite enjoyable and I’d like to really push that out. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it up despite what I’m sure is going to be a pretty heavy workload this semester (which has officially started now). I’ve added a badge to my .Leith front page, and a word count widget that doesn’t appear to be working right now, but when it does you’ll be able to keep tabs on my progress.

Last but not least, I went back to the bento place for dinner again tonight. This time, the little old lady gave me a spinach and sesame salad and told me (in that way that only little old ladies can) that it’s good for my body. Yesterday potato salad from the old man, today another kind of salad from the old lady. Yeah, I guess they know who I am at this point.

Today I got my dinner from a local Japanese restaurant I go to reasonably often. The whole place is run by little old men and women who have clearly been making hand-made food for most of their lives. I go there once a week (ish, sometimes more) and pick up a bento or two, maybe some soup. Usually I just grab a single bento and meander home. I have never actually sat at the place and eaten there, although it looks like it would be fun to do so. Some of the staff know me on sight (if not by name) and are always really friendly.

Today, they gave me a little potato salad with my bento for free, just because I keep coming back. They thanked me for my patronage sincerely and warmly and gave me a small gift.

This kindness kept me smiling all the way home, and still makes me feel good about going there. Or rather, I should say even better, since I already enjoyed going there.

It makes me think – what was it about today that made me smile and feel valued as a customer that was different from any of the rewards programs and points cards and other benefits that I know I can get from going to many other places? The only answer I can safely conclude is ‘spontaneity’ – they saw me, recognised me and decided on the spot to value me.

While I don’t expect it to happen again (such is the nature of a spontaneous gift), I will be going back there again, and I will probably go out of my way to go more often as well.

For those of you that work in a commercial capacity, how do you show that you value your customers?