{"id":1026,"date":"2011-11-20T22:09:29","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T13:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/life-in-japan\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2011-11-20T22:09:29","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T13:09:29","slug":"happy-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/?p=1026","title":{"rendered":"Happy Thanksgiving!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Happy<\/a>

That turkey looks delicious...<\/p><\/div>\n

What time of the month is it? Time for Jason! to post another stupid picture, of course! Which I also know happens to be the one thing that makes your season complete. No need to be shy; I know how you feel.<\/p>\n

So, what else has been up lately? Not a whole lot, actually. Just getting used to my life here in Tokyo and as a 9-5 desk jockey. I’m enjoying my life here and how things are going, though it is a bit lonely. I do have some friends here, so it’s not all that terrible, but the transition period is tough no matter what you do when you start a new life. Those things will all get solved over time, though. Other than that, we’ve got a Thanksgiving party this Thursday to celebrate the day of giving thanks with my coworkers, and then a Christmas party coming up next month. It seems like a pretty fancy affair; it’ll be at a 5 star hotel, so I guess I should wear something nice. I’d take pictures, but oddly enough the firm has really strict privacy and NDA requirements, so showing the faces (or even mentioning names) of people working at the firm is actually considered private information. I’m sure I can get some nice pictures of my shoes, or the roof!<\/p>\n

After that, we’ve got a whole month of December to enjoy Christmas. I’m sure I’ve mentioned about several hundred times that Christmas (and the season in general) is my favorite time of the year. As has been the tradition my entire life, I start decorating on or after Thanksgiving day, so I need to buy a tree this week or next week. I’ve already got lights, ornaments, and Santa Claus hats, but you can never have too much stuff to decorate for Christmas. Trust me<\/strong><\/em>. It’s impossible to overdo Christmas. My sister will also be coming late next month, so I need to get some prep work out of the way for that, with stuff like prepaid cell phones (don’t want her getting lost), train passes (so she doesn’t need to read Japanese ticket machines), and make some phone calls to some of my friends to take her around town while I’m working.<\/p>\n

Now, as for a completely unrelated aside.. I have to say that I’m getting really tired of this Occupy Wall Street<\/em> movement. This issue obviously has little to do with me and, in fact, I’m probably one of the people they’d be protesting against. I work in the equivalent of Wall Street in Tokyo (in the financial district in one of the newest corporate buildings) and in a law firm no less. Yeah, I’m not making friends with that group, obviously. I live in Japan and it has little to do with me on the surface, but every day I watch the dollar vs. yen conversion, and the dollar just drops more and more every day. Part of this is the economy, yes, but another part of it is general faith in America as a whole. This is where I am<\/strong> involved, and I find it sad to see the world’s faith in America dropping like it is.<\/p>\n

Even worse is that even I’m ashamed of these people. Yes, it’s an admirable fight to want equality. I like and agree with that. But none of these people here are offering up suggestions (just complaints) and, moreover, none of them are even fighting for ‘equality’. They’re fighting for free stuff (more on that later). You say that you just want your fair share, that you just want a job and for ‘big corporate’ and ‘the sell-out government’ to stop ignoring you. Well, let’s take a look at the message you’re sending: “I don’t like what you’re doing, but I don’t know what I’d like you to do instead!” “I want a job, so I’m out here, not showering, and living in a park!” Now, how does that make any sense at all? If you came to me with a job application and I knew you spent the past two months doing nothing<\/em> with your life but sitting in a park and playing pat-a-cake while whining about life, I wouldn’t hire you either.<\/p>\n

Back to the nobleness of it all, I should first mention that I do believe the distribution of wealth is more than a bit skewed. \u00a0But has anyone noticed that there’s no one<\/em> involved in the protests that has nothing to gain? I don’t mean the rich people who have something to lose. I meant (upper) middle class Americans who have nothing to gain. Notice that they’re not protesting. So what does that mean? Well, I find it kinda funny that all these people preaching about the morality<\/em>, righteousness<\/em>, and nobility<\/em> of their actions all have something to gain<\/strong><\/span>. It puts an interesting spin on the issue.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I won’t be making any friends with these opinions, especially with people my age. But if you want to get things done, you should go out and do<\/strong> something. While standing around a waving signs seems like a way of\u00a0doing something, it sadly will achieve nothing without constructive suggestions for what to replace the broken system with. Remember that I, like you guys, didn’t get free education, don’t have free health care, and have to pay stupid bank fees. So I studied. Hard. I worked jobs I didn’t necessary like. I didn’t buy fast food or video games. Instead of thinking about what I didn’t have now<\/em>, I thought about ways to get it later<\/em>. I’m not perfect, but I can’t help but think that\u00a0looking for a job is infinitely better than complaining about not having one.<\/p>\n

So, in short: Please stop making my country look stupid.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that’s about it for me for today. Just figured I’d throw that out that because, well, I can.<\/p>\n

Enjoy your Thanksgiving!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That turkey looks delicious…<\/p>\n

What time of the month is it? Time for Jason! to post another stupid picture, of course! Which I also know happens to be the one thing that makes your season complete. No need to be shy; I know how you feel.<\/p>\n

So, what else has been up lately? Not a whole lot, actually. Just getting used to my life here in Tokyo and as a 9-5 desk jockey. I’m enjoying my life here and how things are going, though it is a bit lonely. I do have some friends here, so it’s . . . → Read More: Happy Thanksgiving!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58,3,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1029,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jrem.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}