Da Job

I said that I would talk about my job before and here it is:
I'm working at AOI Advertising Promotion Inc. in Osaki, a part of Tokyo. Right now I'm working in the Kokusai department, which is primarily dedicated to finding and assigning directors to the advertising shoots that AOI produces. This means they have shelves upon shelves of director's reels (a sort of visual resume) that contain a sample of the work they've done. So my job has been to watch the ones that the company hasn't catalogued yet and then input the information into a computer. This lets the company have easy access to what type of commercials or music videos a certain director has done and makes it easier for them find the director they want. I've seen some great commercials so far that I had never seen before. One had Andy Roddick playing a game of tennis vs. pong, another had a man who would wag his arm like a dog's tail whenever he had a miller light beer in it. Check out
http://www.ascheandspencer.com/main/ Go to Spots in the upper list and look at some of the commercials they did the music for. There are some pretty funny ones out there. So I've pretty much been watching commercials and doing a little organizing around the office.
There is one thing that is incredible though. In the bathroom they have a hand dryer that is the coolest piece of technology in the brief history of man. It hangs from the wall and you put your hands into this enclosed area that starts blowing gale-force wind on your hands. The front of the machine has phases that light up to tell you when to slowly remove your hands and when to take them fully out of the machine. It takes like 2 seconds and your hands are totally clean. It's freaking ridiculous. I'll post a picture once I bring my camera to work.
One last thing. I had some sushi from the grocery store downstairs in our office and it cost about $3.50 for an 8 piece roll. It was the freshest and best sushi I have ever had. My coworkers were like "yeah that stuff is ok." and I punched them all in their heads. But yeah, that's a perk. I'm gonna get back to work but you guys stay classy.

Overview of my first couple days

The flight into Japan went well, but was foolishly long. When I arrived I bought a ticket for the Limo-Bus (a service that takes you from the airport to various central locations around Japan) and immediately befriended an old Japanese lady. We sat together on the bus and she proceded to tell me, in broken english, about her trip to China and all of her grandkids. I tried out some of my Japanese and was surprised to find that what I had learned was actually words over here. After the hour and fifteen minute bus ride she waited with me at the station in Yokohama, while I waited for Akiko Tamura my host mother.
Luckily Akiko found me in the station even though neither of us knew what the other one looked like. After we met and I said goodbye to my friend she led me back to her car which was parked about 10 minutes away, due to the traffic. The walk was fun because Yokohama is attached to a giant department store and I was lucky enough to be carrying all my bags through it during the peak of the shopping day on Saturday. So I was forced to carry my bags through a sea of Japanese mallgoers in order to get out of the mall.
After we arrived at the house I had a day to acclimate myself and get to know my family. I'm currently staying with Akiko, her two english speaking kids, Sam and Julie, and their grandma. The house is great and has wireless internet. I'm up in my own room on the third floor. From my house it's about a 20 minute walk to the train station and about 40 minutes of train riding after that to get to my job.
I'm working at Aoi Advertising Production INC. in Osaka, Tokyo. Finding it was the first adventure as my computer stopped working and I didn't have my directions to the, and none of my other e-mails from my host family's computer were going through. So I went without true directions onto the Japanese trains during rush hour in order to find the company. If you've never seen pictures of rush hour in Japan then you can't really imagine how people pack onto the trains. It's just a sea of business suits by the time the train gets fully filled. Luckily I had my host-mother's cell phone and was able to call her for some directions while I was on my way. Luckily again, when I arrived in Osaki station with no idea where to go Julie Thomas, my boss at AOI, spotted me out of the crowd and led me to the office. It consists of three floors (4th 5th and 6th) of a large building and is right below the "Hello Kitty" headquarters in Tokyo. On my first day I got introduced to everyone in that office including the president, vice presideant and about any other position of power in the company. The section I'm working in now is primarily English/Japanese speaking young women so I haven't really been forced to use my Japanese all that much. Everyone is really nice at the company and I've been having a great time. I'll post a little later what my specific job is, but it's been a great time so far.
That's all for the logistical stuff of my stay and hopefully next time I can give you some more specific ridiculous events. Feel free to post on this site if you have any comments or news for me. I hope everyone is having a great summer and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

Ichi-ban!

Hello,
Apparently a lot of people have been asking for updates about my travels in japan, so this is my solution. Check here any time you want as I will probably be updating it frequently with stories about my mundane life in Japan. Thanks to everyone for showing so much interest and I hope this works out well.