{"id":480,"date":"2008-11-01T18:05:02","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T00:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.squids.ca\/Blog\/?p=480"},"modified":"2008-11-06T17:29:49","modified_gmt":"2008-11-06T23:29:49","slug":"japan-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/?p=480","title":{"rendered":"Japan Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amid a rising chorus of requests for a de-brief, I have finally <a href=\"http:\/\/www.squids.ca\/gallery2\/main.php?g2_itemId=3767\">updated the gallery with some pictures.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The trip wasn&#8217;t very long and because we were a day late getting there it was even more rushed.\u00c2\u00a0 4.5 days total I think.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wednesday: Arrived in the evening and immediately went to a meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Drinks and sushi afterwards.<\/li>\n<li>Thursday: Our trip to the fab plant.\u00c2\u00a0 We were up early, and on the bullet train to Fujitsu&#8217;s Mie fabrication plant.\u00c2\u00a0 Several meetings and a tour later, we were back in Tokyo.\u00c2\u00a0 A little late but we had a Shabu Shabu dinner and turned in.<\/li>\n<li>Friday:\u00c2\u00a0 Went to the electronics district of Tokyo &#8212; Akihabara.\u00c2\u00a0 They have the coolest new toys there, but they are still quite expensive.\u00c2\u00a0 Japan is a fairly expensive place all round.\u00c2\u00a0 Then we were back to Shinjuku (near the hotel) for a meeting that we missed when we missed our plane, and we spent the evening tooling around Ginza (The high fashion area) and Roppongi&#8230;a night club area.<\/li>\n<li>Saturday:\u00c2\u00a0 We did a little shopping and played pachinko.\u00c2\u00a0 Then went to the East Gardens.\u00c2\u00a0 When we were done there, we headed for the Harajuku district where all the Cos-Players and cool kids hang out.<\/li>\n<li>Sunday:\u00c2\u00a0 We did a little more shopping, then headed back to te airport to come home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think that summarizes the trip; fairly whirlwind, and the jetlag has been killing me all week back home.\u00c2\u00a0 The week in Japan really seems like a huge blur.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to look at the pictures to try and remember all the things we did in such a limited time.\u00c2\u00a0 I would go back.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s a pretty cool place&#8230;though I wasn&#8217;t excited about the food, the people I was with who WOULD cross the dtreet for Sushi said it was amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 But other than McDonalds, there really aren&#8217;t many options.\u00c2\u00a0 Shabu shabu, tempura or sushi.<\/p>\n<p>The pachinko story is my favourite so I&#8217;ll tell it here:\u00c2\u00a0 I had to drag my companions into the parlour because they didn&#8217;t see the point and it took about 15 minutes of &#8220;talking&#8221; with a helper and much hand waving to get going, but I put my 1000 yen in the machine and got&#8230;.maybe&#8230;100 balls.\u00c2\u00a0 I lost the first half, and then something happened (we don&#8217;t really know what), but the machine started paying out, and paying out, and paying out.\u00c2\u00a0 A crowd had formed around the ignorant North Americans.\u00c2\u00a0 We ended up with 4 big tubs of balls, and after counting, we had something like 5400 balls.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, gambling is illegal in Japan, so it works like Chuck E Cheese.\u00c2\u00a0 You get a prize for your winnings&#8230;.cigarettes, bobbles, lighters&#8230;.or GOLD.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew how this worked, so I took the GOLD.\u00c2\u00a0 We had 5.5 grams or so in 1.0 and 0.3 gram ingots.\u00c2\u00a0 We still didn&#8217;t have a clue what we had won.\u00c2\u00a0 As a grey market enterprise, there is a man ACROSS the STREET from the pachino parlour that (surprisingly) BUYS the GOLD.\u00c2\u00a0 I ended up with 205000 yen (and I kept one of the 0.3 gram ingots).\u00c2\u00a0 That works out to about $205US for an input of $10.\u00c2\u00a0 Nice return!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, that&#8217;s pretty much it.\u00c2\u00a0 It was quick and dirty, but we were there and it&#8217;s an experience for sure.\u00c2\u00a0 I&#8217;d go back any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amid a rising chorus of requests for a de-brief, I have finally updated the gallery with some pictures. The trip wasn&#8217;t very long and because we were a day late getting there it was even more rushed.\u00c2\u00a0 4.5 days total I think. Wednesday: Arrived in the evening and immediately went to a meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Drinks and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.squids.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}