w00kie's ramblings

my head

Hi 👋, I’m François

I’m a French engineer who moved to Japan after my studies and will soon hit half of my life spent in Tokyo.

  • Year-end tax adjustment

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    w00kie
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    I was just handed by my service’s executive assistant a 2 page “Year-end tax adjustment declaration for 2007” with a little not saying the deadline is in 5 days. The forms are accompanied by an English leaflet full of statements like this one: Special exemption for spouses Due to the change of income low (sic.),…

  • Dating guide TV show

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    w00kie
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    Yesterday I was watching TV pretty late as I was backing up my laptop to prepare for installing Leopard, and I found a pretty cool program called 恋愛百景 on TV Asahi. The name translates to “The 100 views of Love” referring to the famous series of artist Hokusai. The concept of the show is to…

  • Japanese Credit Card

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    w00kie
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    Sunday as I was going to the old apartment to give back the keys, I had the nice surprise to find both my JLPT convocation and my Flying Blue VISA credit card. Nice surprise since I was rejected twice by the Japanese VISA company and I was starting to lose hope. The situation was getting…

  • GR Digital 2 – it’s official

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    w00kie
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    After my post 2 weeks ago about rumors of a new GR Digital coming out, Ricoh has now officially announced the GR Digital II for Christmas 2007. It looks like a nice evolution over the older model: the same body with the addition of just one button on the side for manually popping up the…

  • A tip about teeth

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    w00kie
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    In exactly 4 days I will officially become a fully local employee in my company. My salary will be in Japanese Yens, I will pay Japanese taxes, be under a Japanese pension plan (although I still retain an extra pension plan in France as a bonus) and be protected by a Japanese health insurance. Although…

  • Moving Preparations

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    w00kie
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    Today, I took 2 hours out of my not so busy schedule and called all the utility companies to cancel and/or open the gas/electricity/water/internet contracts for my moving next week. To help with the process, I found this cool webservice by TEPCO, Tokyo’s main electricity provider. You enter your old and new address and it…

  • Matsuri Food

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    w00kie
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    This weekend I went to the Kawagoe Matsuri, one of the biggest in this part of Saitama, and I ate 鮎塩焼き. They are little fresh-water fish, stuck on a skewer, dipped in salt and fried around a fire. You eat the whole thing, except the head, bones and scales included.

  • Weirdest dream

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    w00kie
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    As my moving in date approaches I’m getting all the preparations done, canceling utilities contracts and setting up new ones, packing, etc; all of this stuff is racing around my head 24/7 and lately I started having really weird dreams. I remember one vividly from last week. I was showing off my new apartment to…

  • New GR Digital possibly coming soon

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    w00kie
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    According to the official Ricoh website, the GR Digital is now out of production. It had a good life, now it’s over. As you may know, I bought this camera last year after reading raving reviews and a friend of mine recommended it. A lot of photography enthusiasts own this camera in Japan and you…

  • Cameo French license plates

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    w00kie
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    Could someone explain me why I see so many cars in Japan with French or German license plates under the official Japanese plates? I might understand that car maniacs who import the cars from Europe might keep the plates for style, but this is a Mazda Premacy with the wheel on the right!

  • I found an apartment

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    w00kie
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    After waiting a week for an answer from the owner to the real-estate agent, we finally called him up yesterday and were told the apartment was ours. Now all I’ve got to do is have my company sign all the papers and we can set a date to move-in, hopefully by the beginning of November.…

  • How to print without a printer in Japan?

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    w00kie
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    Living in Japan, we are often faced with tough quandaries, for example: in a typical closet sized Tokyo apartment, having a printer at home can take up a valuable portion of your living space. But then without a printer, you’re often stuck in problematic situations, like last weekend when my girlfriend had some last minute…

  • S-Air summer ski jump

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    w00kie
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    What to do when you really want to snowboard in summer and you like stupid crazy activities? You find a place where they built a big-air jump on a hill with a pool under it. The place is called S-Air and is located in 所沢 in southern Saitama. You can get there from Tokyo in…

  • Shiodome Park Hotel – 33rd floor

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    w00kie
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    Since my girlfriend is in town and I have tons of vacations to take before the end of my contract, I organized a special night out in Tokyo with her last week. I’m such a romantic guy… First we went for drinks and dinner at her favorite restaurant: T.Y. Harbor Brewery in 天王洲アイル. It’s a…

  • Bed town

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    w00kie
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    This Saturday, my girlfriend arrived in Tokyo to look for a job, pass some interviews, etc. She’ll be staying at my place for 2 weeks or so, hopefully enough to get a good feel of the current job market. So this Sunday, we went to Kawagoe to scout out the place and see what kind…