Week 2 done

I did the last workout of the week last night, Cardio Intervals. Almost one hour of jumping, running, kicking etc. Kicked my ass. The schedule for the following ten weeks is the same as the last, unless I change it, of course. I'm going to have to sort out the garage though. I should really set it up a little better. I should get a TV down there, and throw out the box of rotting mandarins that Junko's Father has left there. They are starting to stink. But I know what will happen if I move the TV down stairs. – "What are you doing?" "I'm moving the TV down stairs." "Why?" "You don't need to know why. I feel silly saying it. Just let it go." Actually, I think I'll buy some speakers for my iPod. In a week or two I won't need to look at the screen, just listen to get the timing.
I can't get up early in the mornings. It's too cold. Below freezing. It's cold enough at night when I usually do it, and the evenings are a pain. When I get home from work about 6, Junko is cooking, and Will is "genki" ( a great word meaning "energetic and enthusiastic"), so I can't do it then. Then we have dinner, so I can't do it for an hour after that, and then a bath, and then a story before bed. So if Will is still genki at 9 o'clock, I get impatient, because I know I won't be finished the workout and showered until about 10:30, which is getting too late, and I won't have any time to watch TV. A few times I've gotten upset and made him cry and I've gone downstairs and done my workout in a huff and I feel like an asshole afterwards. A morning workout would solve all that. Shut up and do it!
When I went to Hawaii, I saw two types of Americans. The first type was the kind who obviously took care of themselves. They went to the gym, watched what they ate, etc. They other type, the majority, were fat. There weren't a lot of people in between. Way different to here. If I lived in America, I would be fat, because I would eat more, and that would make me want to eat more. Here, I never get enough food to be full, and I have gotten used to it. The Okinawans, the longest living people in the world, have a thing called "腹八分目" "harahachibunme" which means "eighty percent full." That's when they stop eating. I try to stick to that. But in Hawaii I went hunting. Fucking Burger King! Love it. Pizza for less than $40. Food court food at the mall. It was great. In May I went to Seoul to visit a buddy and have a look, and while I was waiting for him to finish work, I went to a bar and bought a beer and ordered a plate of chips. I was used to thinking that a plate of chips was a small plate with about eight large chips and a small cup of sauce. That's what it is in Japan. Five dollars. When the bowl came, it was piled high with French fries, hundreds of them, and a bottle of sauce came with it. I couldn't eat them all, and felt a little sick all night. I couldn't eat dinner with my buddy because I was still full! Seoul is not America, but this bar catered for Americans. I get sick of the food here. Everyone likes Japanese food, but most of it is just slop. A ladle of slop on rice. Nothing chewy or crunchy, nothing spicy, just mush. Kind of like the people themselves. The food at work is ordinary. It's cheap, about $2 a day for a bowl of rice with slop (bits of chicken, egg, onion, for example), some pickles, and a "salad," strips of lettuce with maybe a slice of tomato. I would gladly pay another dollar a day for something a little more interesting. It's so cheap because the company subsidizes it, or else all of the single engineers here would be eating cup noodles every day and dying of malnutrition. They aren't doing that well as it is now. Lot's of sickness, disease, skin disorders, and coughing going on here. Japanese people might not be fat, but they sure aren't healthy. They insist on coming to work when they are sick, which is a huge problem. One guy in my department had the flu, stayed in the hospital overnight, checked himself out in the morning, and came to work. He looked terrible, and in the morning meeting he said "I won't be able to do anything today. I'm sorry," and slept at his desk all morning. Why the fuck did you come to work then? I do understand though, in a way. Why waste a paid day off when you are just going to lie in bed all day? When you think of it, being sick is exactly the time you should be going to work, because you are getting paid to get better. But here, there is also the concept of 過労死, karoushi, death from overwork. They always say please, don't work to hard, family is important, relieve stress with hobbies etc, but really they all want to die at their desks. It's a very romantic thing here. Maybe the Western equivalent would be being killed saving a child or old lady from a burning building or something. To be called a hard worker here is probably the best thing you could say about someone. Therefore, this is exactly what they say to each other all the time.
Do you remember that Seinfeld skit when he talks about how in the office it gets more and more awkward when you see the same person throughout the day because there is nothing to say to them? First, you start of with a "Good morning," then a "hey", then a nod, then nothing at all to the point where you are ignoring them at the end of the day? The Japanese have that solved. They say "Otsukaresamadesu," which literally means "you are a hard working person." No shit. You might here it a hundred times a day. And when you here it that often, you start to believe it. And the Japanese believe it, when in actual fact studies have shown that they are some of the least productive people on the earth. There are people in my department who nobody knows what their actual job is. The guy next to me makes CAD drawings all day, but none of them are used in any manuals or reports ever. The oldest guy in my department has been making a "moving manual" for the last six months, and has nothing to show for it. He keeps saying that it has problems he is working on. I guess they all work hard at these things, but they produce nothing. The inefficiency in Japan is astounding, but if it suddenly got efficient, tens of millions of people, all having made a nice, comfortable living until now, would be instantly out of a job.
Uh oh, I'm ranting. Nearly lunchtime. Today's lunch? Guess.

Slop