LOL at myself

Hey, it is almost November. Time is flying!! I can not imagine about this, because already 3 months pasted since I came back to Japan. But I did not fit to Japan yet, though. In these days I found myself couldn’t speak Japanese properly. I meant I could not pronounce some Japanese word well. So, when I am at a chaser, talking to customer I have to manage to talk. Hrm, it is really ironical, because I grew up in Japan for 90% of my life, and yet I could not use Japanese well. Besides sometimes this thing happens that when I try to explain something to somebody, I can not think of any word. I know what I want to say. Just I can not get Japanese words. Oh my brain is dying or just slacking off.

Today, what I write, I forgot to bring white shirt for work. To work at the café we have to wear shirt with a collar. I forgot anyways. When I found I did not bring it, I thought I was going to get killed by my mean manager tomorrow. Because, we are not allowed to work without collar. Even nobody knows how any collar helps me to make drinks. Anyway, I was just wearing a T-shirt, printed a stupid picture on it. I tried to solve that situation. I thought that convenience stores had one; if they really want to be convenient to people, they should have had collared shirt. I mean they did not have. I was hopeless at all. When I was about to abandon, I caught a sight of a hotel. It was one of those finest hotel in Japan, named Okura. I was pretty sure they had. I went into, they did. But there was one thing, I really did not expect. They sold Shirts, but those shirts were extremely expensive. I asked how much the cheapest one was; the cheapest one was 15,000 yen which was around 145 US dollars. They nearly killed me, and actually killed my wallet. If my wallet could speak something, he would yell “don’t take my lovely smelled papers!!”

Anyway, unfortunately or fortunately, I had a chance to buy a good, but the cheapest, shirt.

Of course, as you can imagine, I was trying not to get any stain on the shirt.

Oh

I have not written for long time. I have been so tired. Just tired, I am. Yesterday, company paid me moeny. it is around 1,500 dallors. I culculated how much I made an hour. I made $4 an hour. OHHHHHH I will go to bed, so that I dont have to think about it.

Is he going to be a pity guy?

It seems it has been a while since I posted the last. Actually I have been writing my journals. Just I could not finish them, because, every time I went asleep as I wrote. And when I turned back to conscious, I just climbed under covers. Today I could finish working before 8pm so, I think I can finish before dreams catch me. In these days I have been so tired. I have been making mistake at work constantly due to that tiredness. What I did today? Come to think of it, I just worked all day, and was on trains. I sort of doubt if I am enjoying my life. I have to re-find my original destination, what I want to do and be in the future. Before I moved to Kamiya-cho’s café, the work was so fun for me, but not here. It is absolutely not, no fun at all. I will move back to Harajuku’s one from next month. I exchange with another worker, so, the other guy will work here. In advance, I have to tell him how it does look like; and what he has to care about. Many guys want to work in women. If you think so, you will be in trouble. It is crazy. You will see when you have to do.

Like or not

In these days I am getting noticed that I could not take much interesting in my job. Before I started the job, I thought I would love this job, but after I opened the dream box, shall I call, just something, that startled me, jumped out. It was a jack in a box. Somebody likes that kind of box, but me. I kept trying to pretend to myself that this work was fun. However that my efforts to make believe just does not work anymore. But it is not only bad things; I fortunately could know that I am not a café guy at all. I am kind of a guy who goes to café instead of running it. I guess keeping this job little more is kind of good for me in terms of getting abnormal experience. And I have to thank to God that now I can make latte by myself. I can not make really good one, but I can make better than 99% of people who live on the earth. You should not you don’t care if you can make latte or coffee. There is some skills how to show off. My manager told me that I ought to rise my hands higher when I poured steamed milk; then I looked I was sort of in hot shot side in pouring steamed milk. It sounds stupid and it is stupid. But it is also true when you raise your genius hands up, you look you are a great barista. I think Starbuck guys do not do this trick. I just guess they don’t need to. They already have good name. But for us whom nobody knows should do something that nobody does.

Anyway, the reason I kept stinking at work is just I could not get interested in it. Unfortunately, I can not concentrate into something which I don’t have any interesting in it.

Maybe I have to go right to my dream. It is the best way. And this was good experience, because I know it, the previous sentence.

Oh nice

I was stinking at work. I don’t know why I could not do the job properly at all. Even my co-worker who I work with told me that I was in a dangerous side. She just meant I did not make any progress in these days. Gee I don’t know why. Anyway, it is not I want to write today, anyways.

I finished working around before 11 pm but for some reason I left the café around 11:30. I did brisk walking the subway station in order to catch a train. When I transferred to another line, I saw a guy who disguised himself to a girl. But the thing was, she was absolutely a guy. He looked he was around 6 foot and got good muscle on it. He grew his hair longer and took care of his eye blows as girls do. But I felt sort of that I wanted to cheer him, encourage and all. I had met some gay guys in Tokyo and as most gays take, they looked just men. I mean you can not distinguish if they were gay or not. all of a sudden you will make out that if they are or not. For instance, one Sunday I was at somewhere in Shinjuku and kept talking to foreigners randomly. I ran into a guy who was gay. He did not say about it anything the first. But as we talked I noticed he was a gay. How did I tell? He just started touching my body. Geeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! I just ran away.

Another day, I was on my way back home; it was late night. I ran into another one. On the train we just met and started talking about general things. He suddenly started saying “You are beautiful” to me. What the!!!!!!! He tried to follow till my station. I ran away. If you saw me running, you would thing I was a madman or something. My gooseflesh had not gone off for a while. It was the most scary thing I experienced this year.

Okay, back to the first topic, I saw a gay who just disguised himself to a girl. I was sort of glad that he did. Because it was so obvious to tell what he was. He looked he did not care how people thing about him. Ops, now I lost my point. What did I want to say about?

The first it is so scary somebody who you are talking suddenly confess the one himself is a gay and start chasing you. Second it does not bother you too much, if you can tell who is gay.

Anyway, I was kinda glad that the guy who I saw on the subway today was in a visible side.

Google...

I worked today for 14 hours straight without any break. As for Japanese workers, it sounds normal, I guess. But when I read a book about “Google” I got depressed, because worker at google are well treated. Even Japanese google, they got a room named “snack room” where they can eat food and drink for nothing whenever they want. They also have service of getting massage for nothing; company pays for pro-massage. The book says if you are at the company you will overhear somebody snoring in the office from massage. What???????? I can not believe it. Hey look at me, I am standing all day; and I hesitate to go to a bathroom because, we don’t know when customer comes; I do massage on my legs myself with of course standing. How in the big difference could occur? Is that just because google is high tech company and we are just low tech? Hahahaha I am not criticizing at all. Just I wanted to write how google differs from the others. I am not sure about google much; they may have some problems between workers; social problem and all. When I see the light side of my work, I never starving; and that is good to know. If I am hungry, I can make some drink.

Anyway, today I was at the café I work at 6:30; because a drama was going to be filmed at our café. So, some celebrities ate what I cooked, for sure. But the thing is, I do not watch TV, practically I don’t have a TV. I stopped watching TV 4 years ago. I noticed that TV made me waste time. I do not say all TV programs are bad, but mostly. Yet I sometimes want to watch, long to watch movies on TV. My friend told me that this is the time to buy one. Yesterday, I went to a recycle shop and found I could buy a TV for 5,000 yen (47 bucks). Is that expensive? I suppose so. It is quite expensive for recycled one. Anyway, instead I bought a gramophone record. I don’t have one to play it; what a wasting. I just could not help buying because it was Ravel’s. I like classical music, above all I love Ravel’s music. I also bought trash can for 100 yen and was good deal for the size. It sounds funny recycled trashcan…

Anyway, I did not see the celebrity who I wanted to see. I have heard they were speaking Korean… now, in Japan “Korea” is in fashion.

Good luck with our company.

I attended a meeting that we all employees gathered up. Today was my day off, originally, buy as a person who interviewed me told me at the interview about it. About the meeting, we have every 3 months.

The meeting was for executives to explain to us about how our company was going down. It is true. Our company is not in a good circumstance and they just told about how bad it was. I checked how many times a guy who made a speech “we are in a really severe circumstance”. He said 11 times for 15 minutes. I have an advice for you. If you want to encourage somebody to do something, you should know some ward can be sound you are discouraging. As for our company, they wanted to told us how the company was getting bad, but when we heard of it, we just thought “Are we okay?” maybe some people thought to change their job. At least I did, to tell the truth.

Anyway, after they started telling us to be like a people who were working at The Ritz Carlton. Our co-worker, a senior, kept told us there was not difference between to get lots of money and give them extremely good service and to get little money and give them extremely good service. It is right and it is also ideal. At least my manager will never do like The Ritz Carlton does. She believes that the highest service is never expands from the manuals. I mean she serves people really good, but her service never goes out from the manual. You can tell if you have read my past posts.

After that great meeting our company gave me a tumbler a Seattle’s map printed on. Our sibling company is Turry’s coffee that is why. It is not too a cool tumbler but it was enough to remind me of Seattle. I lived in Tacoma and went to Seattle all the time. Seattle that was amazing town for me, people living there were really goods nice.

I made a cup of instant coffee with the tumbler; of course instant. Why not?

West

In these days, I wrote only about my job on this blog. It is just because I do not do anything except work. What the… Yesterday, my manager called me a stealer for the reason that I wrote about yesterday.

Something was supposed to happen today too. Before I would write something that drove me crazy, I want to write something “light side”. As I wrote an important worker broke down for too much working. We are pretty much short of workers; even before the woman broke down we were already short of it. For a substitute a guy came who I worked with in Harajuku. And he is a really nice guy; we have to put aside this that he like women more than he needs. Anyway, I had a good time while he was with us. Unfortunately he left after the busiest time pasted. Then the manager declared that she would leave me all the manager work for today and tomorrow. She should have told in advance. I did not prepare anything, besides today was really tricky day, busy, as it were. I could not finish even normal job, cleaning up, preparing for tomorrow and so forth. And time after time my manager called me and explained me about preparation for being a manager. Not only that some customers did not leave after shop hours. Anyway, make long story short, my manager told me to count money in order to reduce problem to zero. However, today did not finish smoothly. We were short of about 500 yen. And my manger found it and said this to me.
“You have to solve this situation as a manager.”
“How?” I asked.
“You should know. You have a wallet. That is the point
Then she left the café without giving me any good idea. So, all I could do was open the wallet and reduce my Engle’s coefficient. For pete’s sake!! Are we making money or what? As for my manager, she paid about 9,000 yen, because yesterday, somehow money was short. She just put her money into the casher to make up for the shortage. She said she was afraid that our company might tell her that she was not worth of being in charge of money. I am not a manger, but I know what is good. That is all I want to say.

Anyway, fortunately I got lots of food those are worthy of more than 1,000 yen. They are unsold products; and we could not sell tomorrow. They put me out of hungry. We call it “waste”, because we could not make money through with it. What I want to emphasize is, how my co-workers call it. They call “waste” sounds like “west”. Every time they ask me how much “west” we have a day. I don’t know how to reply and I can not answer like “maybe one”. They won’t understand my joke, anyways. I never point out it.

Am I a purloiner?

Gee, what a clumsy day today!! You know what? In a short, our co-worker broke down from work. I knew it was going to happen. The person who broke down never took rest even during her break time. I had been worrying she might. She was a key person of our work, and she knew about it. So, her responsibility for the work did not allow her to take a rest, at all.

Anyway, I got phone call from one of our worker. She told me to come right away. Then, I was in a train. I left my apart earlier, because I would buy commute pass. I was hurry to get to my work; at least I would get there earlier. But everything was counted on by how fast train would go. Anyway, at least I was hurry in a way. I got there one hour earlier than I was supposed to be. I ran all the way to the café I work. When I got there, I was out of my breath, sort of. I greeted to my co-worker and my manager. But the problem was the manager was very angry at the busy. Her feeling was horribly bad, you can not imagine how tough it was working with angry person and the angry came from where you had nothing to do with. She yelled at me
“Get to work, right away.” She said inn this really nasty voice. She kept being angry at something that was not up my alley.

A bad day causes worse things, if you know how the human’s life will go. The very end of the work, we were about to close the casher. I counted the money. We already y knew how much we made today. All I had to do was to make sure if we had exact money we should have. The answer was NO. It was absolutely NO. I want to say one more, it was completely NO. We were short of 9210 yen. It should not have occurred, especially when the manager was on crazy side. She snarled
“You took it didn’t you?” in this very nervous vice. I never expected to be called a thief, never and it was very rude to say. But my fortunate did not die yet. There was a guy who trained my manager before and tried to solve it. He did not think I took, actually she did not think that way. Just she could not help but say it for her angry which was at…I don’t know. But we could not find the reason. If the guy was not there, my manager just being crazy around. I was lucky one.
But they left me at the office to finish the close work.

The woman who broke down could not come tomorrow, so the manager and I would show up at the work in the morning.

What I had?

This morning I woke up from really strange dream. Originally I have had many crazy dreams. And yet, yesterday’s one was extremely crazy. I can not explain in English as well as Japanese. What does it represent? In my opinion, dreams should be represent something. Yesterday’s dream was built by two sections. In one part, I was flying with a kite as a hang glider. But the hang glider was something different from usual one. I was not sure if I could fly. I made up mind dying, because just I was not sure if I could fly with the kite. Actually I could, vaguely. The kite was white and something of an animal. It felt like an animal. I think I landed later then the scene was changed. There were two enormous creatures, playing around. It was on a road of a meadow; and there was a town, when you took the road you could get. I was walking toward the opposite side of the town, and found the creatures playing. Their color was white. They looked like bears as well as Totoro. But I could tell they were something up to from their innocence. They were innocent but they would do something bad as kids do all the time. They curled up themselves and started spinning toward the town to wreck it. I dodged from them.

Then I woke up. I don’t know what happened to the town and what the creatures were.
Anyway, this is what I had last night. A crazy dream.

Is she a good worker?

Oh my goodness today was Sunday. Of course, I did not notice it. Maybe I knew, but I did not recognize it. This is just like that when you see a drama on TV. It is obvious a fiction but also they use actual places to film it. You know that drama is a fiction; you also think the place is a fiction for no good reason. But if you happen to visit the place where the stupid drama was filmed, you maybe feel some kind of surprise that the place was actually. So, as for me, Sundays don’t work out as Sundays, what I want to say is this. Today was Sunday, and yet I did not spend as ordinary Sundays.

Anyway I will have a day off tomorrow. That is an only good thing to me for a whole week, I suppose. What I do? I don’t know.

Today was not too stinking. I should say today was pretty much stinking from the view point of “Sales”. We sold 30,000 yen today; we were supposed to sell at least 60,000 yen. No wonder that we could not sell much. It was because no people walking by around our café. Our company’s expectation is wrong. There was one strange thing happened again… The last one hour, we did not have any customer. So, my co-worker who was working for this company for 2 years started buying products. Even she did not need them. It made me feel uncomfortable too much. Why should she falsify sales? Our manager said that we ought to strain for sales. But why should we pretend we sell lots and kill ourselves? Another thing that killed me was, we were short of 100 yen when I checked today’s sales. I was allowed by my manager to close even money was short. I was about to close the casher. She ran up to me and said. “You should not do that. Please stop it.” Then she took 100 yen out of her purse and added it to the sales. I knew this kind of thinking that trying to hide the problem; in this case we were short of 100 yen, made many Japanese companies collapsed. If we have a problem, there should be a source of the problem. If we put off solving, it would happen again and take our money away.

It was fun to work without who were experienced.

I have not written for a while. It is not just because I was busy. Practically I was not busy as compared with real busy people in the world. Who are the people who are busy is people never say they are busy. A person who says who is busy is not busy. At least those guys are busier than people who spend time in front of a TV station and wait for some celebrity coming out in order to see them a second; getting blocked by guards. Anyway, what is the point here is why I did not write my blog for a while. It is just because I did not feel like it. That is all. I spent a quit few hours in front of my PC as fiends waiting for conceited people at the TV station; and I was just browsing around.

Today, I was supposed to manage the café I work by myself. I got co-worker who just started working, a beginner, I should say. Original manager, who I described who was mean or something got three days off. I have not seen her took a day off since I started working with her. This is the first time for her to sleep well for a month. But I had to call her up on a phone to ask something. I did around 12 pm. She sounded sleeping. I did again for another reason, she sounded sleeping. I was sorry for calling her up. But that time she was nice. Actually she is nice when she does not work. But it scarcely happens because she always works. Then she is always mean. It is just like that, some people who are obviously men, sometime declare that they are mentally girls. So, we never see them actually girl, you know what I mean? Anyway, my co-worker and I were waiting for customers and wishing many customers not to come or hope they come different time. We were not sure if we could get through. Our original manager was worrying too, but she was sleeping right in the middle of while we were struggling. In a short, many customers came at the same time. Do I have to say there is a word “Lunch” in the world? People naturally want to eat lunch at lunch time; it is of course around 12 pm or so. I have to say my co-worker is a layperson. She can make cold drink, but hot kinds and food. I was running from the kitchen to the Barista place back and force when we got order of food and hot drink same time. To tell the truth, I am a beginner too. All I could do was to pretend I was well trained Barista and cook. How to act like an experienced guy? if you want to fool people, you need exaggeration in doing anything. For instance, I lifted my hands higher than my head. It is absolutely unnecessary at all. But people like that way to see. Customers pay 300 yen for a cup of green tea. They can get a one at a convenience store and can be satisfied with it. But many customers decide to drink at our café paying for it twice as much as they pay at a convenience store. All we, Baristas do is adding value.

Anyway, we thought we would get upset when a lot of people coming. But we did not. We made lots of mistakes instead. Actually my co-worker, she made a lot…She thought she sold tea leaves for a customer. But she handed to her a sample which contained foam polystyrene which was made out of petroleum. Who in the world makes tea out of refined fossil? I ran out of our café in rain to find the customer. I found and brought the customer to the café again and gave her real one; and gave her a cup of tea to compensate for our mistake. She, the customer did not care at all.

Did I complain to my co-worker for making mistakes? No. I knew people were urgent to complain and it made the others sore. When one makes mistake, one knows it is mistake. When do we have to say, not complain, is one does not know it is mistake.

Then I got off my work around 9 pm. I had an appointment to see my friend. But he did not answer my phone. So, now I am in my room. I know he is too drunk to notice my phone call. And there is the other guy named Fumi dancing around.

Japanese are sometime strange.

I don’t think it is good idea to be proud of that I am working kind of longer than most people do. Because, it is not the point. I am supposed to be proud of that I don’t have to work too much and the result is still well. I am not sure it made sense to you or not. Anyway, people who work for our company tend to boast of their working hours. Even they don’t get much money, and day off at all; even nobody praise them. We are not working for being praised by someone; but on the other hand, if people are not appreciated, as they are, by somebody, what motivates them?

I was really surprised that my Vice manager told that she would buy some products from our café, if our café could not accomplish the daily budget, which was made by somebody. I will never do that stupid thing. I never will. That kind of action is not the proper stuff to do. If customers don’t want to buy our products, we have to figure out how we can incline them to buy. To buy our products by ourselves in passive way, just to obtain the daily sales, is the first thing we have to avoid doing. Tonight, my VMG said she would spend at most 80 dollars (approximately 8000 yen) if we could not reach the silly daily sales prospect. I doubt my ears very much when I heard it. If I asked her if she was kidding to say it, she would be very furious at me. She was serious as a believer of some kind of wicked cult. I did not add anything.

I buy drinks at our café, because they are actually good, they really are. But I won’t feel like buying products to make sales look good. Maybe persons like my VMG are typical Japanese workers. But I can not follow that crazy custom.

But our company is so funny, and my life is so funny too. Why I cannot work at any legal place?

What is the point?

I got back now…it is already Oct. Sec!! Oh my goodness!! I worked 15 hours, maybe more than that. I could have 15 minutes break. Do you think it is “only” 15 minutes? I do. I just bought drink our café using co-worker discount, and then went to Starbucks which every co-worker think it as an enemy of our company. But my company is way too small to competing Starbucks. As for Starbucks, for us to think our company is as their rival is funny. Someday we do catch up with Starbucks for sure. At least “Japanese” Starbucks will be defeated by some cafes. Their quality is getting lower and lower. One of my colleagues who I have met today was saying that Starbucks did not sell coffee much. They actually deal with something fancy drink and typical Starbucks food such as scone, bagel, and so on. Baristas are forgetting their principle and letting their skill rusty. The latte I drunk today was too heavy for Tall size. They did not steam the milk well. That product was, so to speak, espresso with warmed milk. The milk was supposed to be “Steamed” There is a big difference between “warmed” and “steamed”

But I am not complaining of Starbuck. We Japanese got to thank to them. Because the rose our idea about coffee pretty much. And still their coffee is better than instant coffee and some coffee which I drip. I am not sure the point which I am writing. I might have digressed. I have to look back how I started off…well oh, okay. I worked a lot today, and am tired…and I was wondering 15 minutes break was enough for 15 hours work. Hahahaha NO!! This is my conclusion.

Well...

I have to wake up 5 am to go to work and just now I got back from my work, it is 12:30. I got take shower and go to sleep. It does not see that I can not sleep much. But the tomorrow (officially today) I have to work from 7:30 am to 11:30. I have to work at two locations