I don’t have any blood relations in Japan but when I first started out here I met some very dear people that to me were family, so traditionally every summer for obon I would go back to the beginning, to Nara, and visit with them.

But times change and people move on. All of the people I grew up with in Kansai are moved or estranged, so going back now has become little more visiting with ghosts in another victim of urban sprawl and over development. It’s just as well because in recent years I’ve been working too much to really notice.

So the saying goes, “Obon mo shigoto da ze!“, which means “Obon is also work!” This is a play on a classic drama Hisatsu shigotonin where the original saying goes　something along the lines of, “Shigoto no ato wa shigoto da ze!“, which means “After work comes work!” This tongue-in-cheek line is comedy that rubs the wrong way, since so many of us in Tokyo are bound and chained to this work-centric lifestyle anyway. Nowadays the particular place it I notice it though is on pachinko ads in the trains.

2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of film series “Otoko wa tsurai yo” (It’s Tough Being a Man). The protagonist, Tora-san, deserves a proper post to himself, but here’s a shot from the Yamanote line platform at Shibuya displaying the cool countenance of Japan’s perennial hard luck lover.

My cherry tomatoes have also come of age the last couple weeks, though for the most part it hasn’t been a good harvest at the Ventura farm this year. I didn’t do any cultivation research in advance so I guess this is what I get. I know I can get more out of my crop; things have just been so hectic I don’t have time to do much more than water at midnight and in the morning. The tomatoes tasted okay; not superb, but passable. When steamed the carrots were half-decent as well.

Though the particular date often escapes me, summer always brings the terminal feelings associated with my anniversary of living in Japan. Another cycle is spent; I’ve been here five years. I don’t know what is right anymore; I act but with so much less anticipation. I’m so tuned and adept at certain things but so blind to a myriad of others that I used to entertain. It’s like being in a crowded room with hundreds of people talking all at once but over time you unconsciously develop the habit of filtering them out one by one, until it’s as if you’re the only person for miles.

The first place I lived was a weekly mansion in Takaido. I bought a used mint green Ralph Lauren oxford for five hundred yen and I wore it to work the first day after nicking my Adam’s apple shaving in the morning. The photographs I took then were beautiful to me, but now looking at them I can hardly believe that they’re mine. It’s like seeing yourself at a party as a stranger.

I am exhausted, completely exhausted: physically, mentally, emotionally– in every way imaginable. A single pint of beer makes the following day almost intolerable. It seems that 85% of my life is muscle memory, and my brain is eternally drugged. I keep thinking to myself, if I just eat a little healthier, if I just change the position I sleep in, or how I hold myself when I walk, it’ll all come together and I’ll feel like I used to, like I barely remember.

I’m learning, but how much and at what cost I can’t keep track of any more.

Too tired to sleep…

[I just noticed that this is post 700. Seven hundred in just a little over five years; though the last nine months the rate has really slowed.]

Hmm… somehow, this doesn’t seem right…

The summer that never was continues and life passes me as I sit in a puddle of convenience store sandwiches, canned coffee, and unshaved Fridays.

I will be working like this for probably another five weeks. I am stalling on using the GPU to export pixel shader contents directly to memory. Thread safety and frame rates follow me into my dreams where I ask my artists once again, are they _sure_ that the alpha is cleanly feathered in all of the UI textures?

Sample photographs are back from the ST801, and unfortunately it seems that the iris blades will not close, leaving the camera perpetually locked at F1.8. This did cost me a roll of Centuria 400 and I should have checked the mechanics of the camera before taking any pictures. Now I have the task of dismantling the lens in hopes of repairing the aperture control.

I am going to try very, very, hard to get to a highly talked of party at the end of the month, which as my good friend Futoshi says will provide, “some really great photographic material.” It is the weekend before _the_ milestone though, so my hopes of making it are waning.

A significant period off is rumored to occur in the next two months. The thought I could stop working and actually go somewhere seems unreal; I am hesitant to believe and even if it did manifest it would most certainly fall dramatically short of my expectations for the fabled multi week time off game developers supposedly get after a big project. Nevertheless, I am starting to study Italian again…my first instinct was a multi-country crawl through central Europe.

Today I am going out to the east side of town to get some precision tools for the Fujinon lens, and see an exhibition of the Japanese master painters. I also need some honest to goodness epiphany for planning my next collaborative show. We meet today and hopefully will make some significant headway towards a concept we can be invigorated by.

So…tired…natsubate.

Today I have to say goodbye to someone very important. Today I have to say goodbye to my mentor, Randy Pausch. Randy died today after a two year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was my inspiration and my teacher. He came into my life when I was lost and aimless, and he gave me something to live and dream for. He helped make me who I am.

He was intelligent, outgoing, and an excellent speaker. He talked about ideals and dreams, and what to live for, and I believed in him with my heart and soul. He was honest and straightforward; he demanded much from me because he knew what I was capable of.

From the moment I met him I admired him, and he drove me to excel beyond my wildest imagination. I sought his approval and recognition, and through my efforts and my passion, I achieved them.

When I was was joyous, he rejoiced with me, and when I was lost he showed me the way. He spoke to me plainly, and wisely. He made me feel good about who I was, and what I could achieve.

After I found out he had cancer, even though we were apart, he still continued to touch my life. As the world came to know Randy Pausch, I found an even deeper lesson to learn from him. In his suffering and trial, he endured with a strength that defines the beauty of the human spirit. He will always live in my heart.

I cannot repay a fraction of the compassion and wisdom he has taught me. I can only hope to spend every remaining day of my life to live as he did: with honor, and strength, and endless gratitude for all that I have been given.

I miss you Randy…

Though I haven’t had much time to do hardly any kind of non-programming task the last several months, my propensity for attracting vintage technology has not waned. One of my friends who worked in a care facility for the elderly inherited a mid 70s Fujica SLR some time ago, and my reputation as a connoisseur of things optic opened the doorway to its acquisition.

The Fujica ST801 was the world’s first SLR camera to have LEDs in the viewfinder for exposure readings (very useful in poor lighting conditions). It’s also a solidly built M42 screw mount with a decent 55mm 1.8 lens. The camera appears to be more or less unused. None of the usual signs of wear, scratches on the body and abrasion of the indicator paint, are present. There are a few tiny spots of mold inside the lens, however these are almost unavoidable due to normal humidity fluctuations over the course of 35 years. As far as I can tell the only significant cause for concern is the complete disintegration of all foam seals around the body orifices.

I’m just about done a test roll of Centuria, and in retrospect using my precious discontinued film wasn’t probably the smartest thing to do as the metering system could be shot to hell and all the whole roll could come out ridiculously overexposed.

But like George Michael says, “you gotta have faith.”

This is Cliff, he’s lived with me ever since my last apartment back in Honmachi. I didn’t intentionally try to bring him with me, but somehow he got into one of the moving boxes and came along. This photograph is misleading because it’s a crop. Think about half the size of your pinky fingernail.

He likes to jump, and makes rounds all through the apartment each day. Sometimes you find him behind the AV center, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes by my loft. We have an understanding built on mutual respect– I’ve never charged him for rent, and he’s never bitten me. So we live in peace. He actually has a wife now, but I’ve never seen a web.

And this is Spiffy, my salamander (or is he a gecko?). One of his brothers lived near my last apartment and frequently got trapped in the windows during summer. It was a real pain to get him back outside without either crushing him between the panes or having him scurry indoors. Anyway, this Spiffy takes advantage of my many planters, which are thankfully far away from the sliding glass doors. Here we see him taking a midnight stroll through the carrots.

One might try to paint a picture with water colors on the blue sky, but it is impossible. And it is also impossible to dry up a great river by the heat of a torch made of hay, or to produce a crackling noise by rubbing together to pieces of well-tanned leather. Like these examples, people should train their minds so that they would not be disturbed by whatever kinds of words they might hear.

They should train their minds and keep them broad as the earth, unlimited as the sky, deep as a big river and soft as well-tanned leather. — from The Way of Purification

Today is July 3rd. I don’t remember when I last wrote, but it seems like yesterday, whatever that means. Releases to client fall like rainy days and it’s a miracle I remember to pay the utility bills.

Tomorrow is America’s Independence Day, 232 years from when a group of influential Anglo-Saxan landowners decided they’d had enough of being controlled by a group of other influential Anglo-Saxans several thousand miles to the northeast across the Atlantic Ocean. Of all the major holidays I’ve had to abandon since forsaking social security and the right to bear arms, the Fourth of July is probably the most derelict. I’m always working late, but there’s no marketing support for it in Japan, so it comes and goes with only a mid-compile passing thought of so many teenage romantic entanglements amidst fireworks.

Tomorrow Chub-Du has a concert, as does a minor band that has shown interest in hiring me for photography (which I have badly managed). However, I’ll make it to neither as the gaming industry is one of the most underdeveloped, taxing, and grossly inefficient wings of software development. This is no cause for alarm, however, as I’ve long since acquiesced to the fact and simply accept is as being inevitable as mortal death.

In any case, I have two independent productions on the board right now, though the first is quite tenuous for lack of definition. If anyone is interested in providing artistic consul, I would be much obliged. You may leave comments or mail me.

Ikuno Oribe said, “If a retainer will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will able to do anything. If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day.” — Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, seventh chapter

I really can’t manage any sort of original thought right now, so I think I’m going to try posting quotes from my reading for a while, occasionally with a photograph. Think of it as pocket enlightenment.

Today’s passage is from the Buddhist scriptures:

A person who is pleased when one receives good instruction will sleep peacefully, because one’s mind is thereby cleansed.

The world is like a bubble, it is like the gossamer web of a spider, it is like the defilement in a dirty jar, one should constantly protect the purity of one’s mind.

– “The Way of Practical Attainment”, from The Teaching of Buddha