Author Archives: peaebz

Quote Of The Week

Whatever it is that you think you want to do, and whatever it is that you think stands between you and that, stop making excuses. You can do anything.

Katia Beauchamp, Co-founder and CEO, Birchbox

Assorted Fish Highlights

Overview

Tiring week! The raging snow here in Sapporo is enough to drain my energy levels. All the snow shoveling involved is killer. I thought shoveling snow in our last couple apartments were bad…

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The house we live in now does have a car port, so I’m spared from having to clear snow off of that. However, instead I now have all this real estate in front and behind my house that I gotta shovel snow for. EVERY. DAY.

I suppose what makes it bearable this time around is that I can creative with all this snow piling up here. I’ve already made quite a large snow mountain in our backyard (still continuing to grow in size) mainly for Keimei to play on.

On a somewhat relevant note (soon to be the first of two small rants), I do realize with all this snow to shovel, eventually you’re going to run out of room to toss it.

Round 1

The other day my wife and I noticed what was clearly tossed over snow from our neighbor’s side. Like, really? They’re a senior couple that live next to us, and I was just helping out the husband the other time shoveling offering to shovel snow for him, and this is what he does when we’re not around? Not cool. We don’t need extra snow piling up in our yard!

For the record, we’ve never had any negative history with each other, and I’m gonna give the old man the benefit of the doubt and guess that he probably shoveled snow over on this side when our house was vacant before we moved in. Well, there’s folks living here now and that’s not gonna fly.

If I see this same thing happen, there were going to be some words.

This week I didn’t go out a single day, and worked from my sofa which faces directly toward the area of our neighbor’s house and our’s. And sure enough one morning this week, while I was pounding out tickets, I see a figure slowly emerge from the corner of my eye, and snow being pushed over to our side of the house. Literally, right in front of me.

I approached our glass door making it appear like I was naturally just checking outside, but really I just wanted to make my presence known. And indeed it was. Mid-shoveling he realized I was standing right there and we met eyes. I didn’t need to say anything, I just nodded my head the way Japanese people do when they see each other to say hi. Except, I put an added slowness to the nod to differentiate it this time around, and that this was not a ‘hi-neighbor-how-are-you-doing-today-on-this-lovely-snowy-morning’ nod. Nope. Oh no. This was more of a ‘no words need to be spoken to let you know what I’m thinking’ kind of nod.

And at that point, we understood each other. I watched as he skedaddled away. For good measure, I continued to work in clear view of our backyard for the remainder of the week. I noticed the days when he’d come out to shovel snow, and he’d notice me (most likely confused why I’m not at ‘work’). But since that day, no more unwanted snow on our side.

Round 2

As for the other rant I wanted to mention, I’ll keep it short because I generally don’t like ranting to begin with.

TLDR; I stepped down from a parking lot quarrel today. Parking lot battles, don’t we all love them.

I was circling the lot, a space opened up right in front me, then before moving in some old man comes up from behind, honks his horn, and gets out of his car to tell me it was his spot since there was a line waiting out back and that he was the first in ‘line’.

I know quite well that there’s no system in place for waiting in lines (in this particular lot at least), you wait only if you’re sharking a certain area, however it’s common in Japan to follow behind others like lemmings, in both a literal and figurative sense.

Aside — when people wait in the subway, they’ll line up in single file line even though there is a clear sign written on the platform to stand and line up in two columns for each side. At any rate, I could go on about this weird phenomenon at a later time.

Getting back to the story, I was simply here to get Keimei to his swimming lesson. Even though Kosato and Keimei had already entered the building, and were not with me at the time, a time when I could have flipped a switch (something my twenty-something-year-old self would have done), I did decide to just be the better man and give the old man the spot.

Senior citizens. Sometimes you folks are a handful. Really.

</rants>

Quote Of The Week

People respond well to those that are sure of what they want.

Anna Wintour, editor-in-Chief, American Vogue

Assorted Fish Highlights

Overview

Welcome to the first, of hopefully consistent, personal weekly updates. If not weekly, then bi-weekly at the very least 🤞🤞🤞

I was inspired by the idea after a series of somewhat linked events. For starters, I’m already required to do weekly updates (basically a summary of what I accomplished over the week) for my current job, and in doing so, I’ve developed the habit of consistently keeping track of the work I do on any given day. I log significant events that fall into certain criteria, then include it in my weekly update to share with my team at the end of the week.

I took the same workflow concept and applied it in my recent Assorted Fish venture, and after seeing that was something I quite enjoy doing, I figured compiling a personal weekly update using highlights I posted in Assorted Fish over the week wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.

Additionally, to spice things up a bit, I thought the structure of my weekly updates would also include a quote and some other weekly overview context that I may not have otherwise highlighted in an image. So here it is!

• I went out almost every day this week with the exception of Friday. I stayed home that day to watch Keimei because he came down with a super random fever out of the blue, nothing serious, but has since dwindled down to a common cold. Hopefully I haven’t caught it myself — starting feel a bit sniffly at the moment.
• Had quite a few gifts come through from contributing to furasato nozei, those craft beers being one of them. I received some locally raised chicken (frozen) from Okinawa, and the other was an octopus from Kobe. These aren’t random by the way, Kosato went ahead and chose them from the list of gifts we were eligible to receive.
• Maruyama Pancake was a nice change of pace. I don’t usually go out of my way to search out for sweets cafes, but I do enjoy pancakes. Unsurprisingly, these weren’t the fluffy bready kind I’m accustomed to, although I expected this and it’s fine. These soufflé pancakes were super delish in their own way. And most certainly insta–worthy.
• Had a nice side conversation with the manager of the co-working space I go to, Space Kante.
• Ordered and received a new book I’ve been wanting to read, one that Kosato has also been raving about for the past few days, Rich Dad Poor Dad.
• Became a first-time backer on Indiegogo for a product called Vinpok Split. Ads for this product were being displayed everywhere for me — IG, FB, on all my favorite tech sites. I resisted for a couple weeks I think before I finally gave in and let them take my money. This will now be the most painful wait of my life because note to self, Indiegogo ≠ Amazon… (all I ask is that it’s delivered to me sometime by the end of this year)

So why weekly updates instead of standalone posts? Well, these would be a supplement to my standalone posts. To be honest, I feel I don’t really have many things to write about to begin with, or the time and energy to put in the effort to produce well-written standalone posts on various topics. What’s more is that my site is not really targeted to a specific audience, so therefore doing personal weekly updates commenting on the micro-updates I made over the week seemed more suitable for me.

And that’s where I’ll leave it.

If this is your first time reading one of my posts, I usually write about remote work, Japanese food (and just food in general), my daily life living as an expat in Sapporo, and my occasional traveling around Hokkaido and the rest of the world. If that’s your cup of tea, by all means, please follow 🙂