School and work

Japanese, Ethics. Since it was Halloween today some of the students dressed up and many of the girls wore their school girl uniforms which was great. In the afternoon I headed to the Learning Center and got some tutoring for the math test tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to need to find the logarithm of a number or multiply matrices but it's required so I gotta try and figure it out. I've always hated math and I always will. It's gay. Accounting in the evening.

After school I headed to work taught 3 lessons and headed home.
Toady's Count: 4

School, Career fair, and work

Math class today, after class around 3:00 we had a Career fair at school. It was pretty cool. A bunch of companies that are interested in hiring TUJ students came and we were able to ask them questions submit resumes and even interview for internships. Bloomberg, Flamingo, GL Trade, Jax, Lehman Brothers, Panorama Hospitality, PTS Consulting, Shukatsu Support, Standard Charted Bank, and Sumitomo Chemical were the companies that came. The company that I found most promising was PTS consulting, they helped business relocate their systems, have a extensive training program, and have tight relationships with the companies that they work with so many PTS employees use go on to work for the larger firms that they provided a service for. They offer internships periodically, but it seems like it might be worthwhile. Being in Japan about half of the companies required fluency in Japanese, which just gives me more motivation to study.

From there I headed to work, taught three lessons and headed home.
Today's Count: 7

School

The weather today was perfect. I had Japanese, Ethics, and Accounting like usual and headed home. One of the big things in the news recently is NOVA a large chain English school filing for bankruptcy. NOVA is one of the largest English chains in Japan that employed over 4000 teachers that are now out of work. Most of the teachers hadn't received a check for over a month and I met two teachers that had suffered those circumstances in my training at GABA a while back and this past Sunday I met 3 new NOVA students at the school I teach at in Shinjuku. The president of the company disappeared, I heard a rumor that he took some company money and left the country. Unfortunately, most of the teachers here don't have a great deal of savings and don't really have anyone that they can depend on for support in Japan. Some airline companies have stepped up to help by offering discounted air fair for teachers that want to return to their home countries and some of the Embassies have offered help. Crazy Stuff. Today's Count: 7

Work and Home

Headed to work in Shinjuku and did a 4 hour shift. After I was going to meet a friend in Shibuya but she had to work so I just headed home. I guess it worked out cause I have a test in Japanese tomorrow so it gives me a little more study time.

Typhoon and the Tokyo Motor Show

Today I woke up to a E-mail from my friend telling me that she would not be able to go to the Motor Show because she had a cold. I called some other people but everyone was busy or didn't want to go out because of the typhoon, so I headed out on my own because this is the only day I am able to go. The show was at Makuhari Messe which is a huge Convention hall in Chiba, or 8 huge convention halls. It was the same place that the show was at when I was here in 2005 and probably where it’s always been held. It's big.



Nissan had generated the biggest buzz so I headed to their booth to see the new GT-R which does 0-60 in 3.5 seconds and generates 477 hp out of a Twin Turbo V6. They had the same display set up that I saw when I was there in 2005 which three large TV screens around a circular room that would move together to form one large screen. While I wasn't totally sure about the GT-R from the pictures once I had seen, in person it looks awesome. Nissan had a new version of the Pivo which is an electric car that has a pod that rotates so that the driver never needs to back out of a parking space or parallel park. It also has a funny robot head mounted on the dash that is equipped with sensors so it can read your emotions and say things to cheer you up if you are feeling bad.

Honda had some interesting cars, probably the one that got the most attention was the CR-Z which is a possible replacement for the CR-X. The CR-Z is a hybrid sports car and I think it looked pretty cool. The FCX was also there, a fuel cell electric vehicle scheduled for release in 2008. Probably the weirdest car that Honda had was the Puyo. It looks like a big marshmallow on wheels. Of course the new Fit was there and the performance version of the S2000.

Mazda had some pretty interesting stuff that looked like it was from the future. Probably the one that stood out the most was the Taiki Concept which features very advance aero dynamics and a rotary engine. They had a couple other concepts there that go with Mazda’s new “flow” theme they are establishing through their new models.

Toyota had the i-REAL, the wheel chair for non cripple people and some other crazy concepts. My favorite by them was the FT-HS, a Hybrid sports car that looked pretty cool and had awesome carbon fiber wheels.

Lexus had their LF-A, their performance car with a V10. The IS F the performance version of the IS 350 equipped with a V8 and a 8-speed transmission. The other new concept was for a Hybrid SUV.

Mitsubishi was there with the Evolution X and some other concepts.

Subaru was kinda week as usual. They had the new STI there and a concept called the Exiga.

Almost every brand of car and bike was represented at the show and there was always something interesting to see. On the way out and the way home I saw the effects of the strong winds from the Typhoon. Piles of broken umbrellas and rows of knocked over bikes.