Yesterday, I was stopped by a plain-clothes policeman at the station and asked for ID. The conversation went like this:
cop: Excuse me sure, stop. I’m an police officer. (cop shows police badge)
cop: please show me your drivers license.
me: uh, yes? oh, here. (I notice another plain clothes officer standing behind me)
cop: what were you doing today?
me: going to see a friend.
cop: you live around here?
me: yes.
(cop notices foreigner registration card and asks to look at it) cop: oh, your american.
me: yes.
cop: oh, well theres a lot of crime recently, please be careful
(cops go on their merry way)
I assumed he thought I was Japanese, because he didn’t ask for my foreigner registration card, but rather my drivers license. It was only after he saw the foreigner card he realized that I was american. They weren’t mean or anything, but the kicker was the part at the end where he says “there are lots of crimes recently, so please be careful”… for lack of anything else better to say. Uh, thanks for the advice?
And I thought I looked innocent. Just for kicks: Japanese cops running from crazy man!
Just came back from Poland last Friday. Although I didn’t really have time to around a whole lot, it was a fun trip! First trip to Europe for me! The pictures are here.
So anyway, the main purpose of the trip was the WISE 2009 conference, where I presented my professor’s paper (because of my excellent English skills . The conference was in Poznan, Poland, which is nice city with an apparently long history. Being on the smaller side, it seems people were quite friendly and it helped that most of them were fluent in English. There wasn’t a lot in terms of things to see, but given the limited time I was there, it was OK. Also, being my first trip there, the new experience of Europe was good enough for me. And last, but not least, the food was great as well!
Was rudely awoken at 5 in the morning by a 6-point earthquake. This one didn’t seem as long as the other once, but apparently it caused more disruption throughout Japan, particularly Shizuoka.
Part of the fun of working at a small company is that you get to work on many different things, which leads to getting the opportunity to learn all sort of new things. As part of our new website, blogram.jp, I had the chance to learn Blender, which a open-source 3d animation creation software. Here is a couple of images that I made:
My former hosting, Bluehost, wasn’t really the greatest hosting service, so I moved over to another hosting service called webfaction. Bluehost was consistently disabling my account for excessive file count, despite their claim of unlimited storage. I assume that they have the file count somewhere hidden deep in their fine print, but still in terms of customer service, it really only hurts their business when customers find out about the what their definition of “unlimited storage” is. One more customer lost for them!
Just came back from Poland last Friday. Although I didn’t really have time to around a whole lot, it was a fun trip! First trip to Europe for me! The 
. The conference was in Poznan, Poland, which is nice city with an apparently long history. Being on the smaller side, it seems people were quite friendly and it helped that most of them were fluent in English. There wasn’t a lot in terms of things to see, but given the limited time I was there, it was OK. Also, being my first trip there, the new experience of Europe was good enough for me. And last, but not least, the food was great as well! 
