Tarto in Japan

I have the pleasure to tell you that I have found a job! And all the conditions I had defined have been fulfilled:

• a Japanese company: because it's the best way to improve my Japanese...even though I'll most likely have a very hard time at the beginning...
• IT-related job: at some point, I was fed up with the IT field and I wanted to change, but I have regained my motivation
• in Nagoya: I could go somewhere else and start over from the beginning, but I have too many friends here and have no particular reason to go somewhere else. Plus I like this city!
• from november: it allows me to travel and go back to France before I actually start working

On the minus side, the job isn't technically challenging, it's mostly PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL-based web development, but it's perfect considering my current Japanese level. It'll be hard enough to improve my business Japanese that I don't think I could handle a technical challenge on top of that. Indeed, business Japanese is tough and there's a whole specific language to learn first. So the linguistic challenge first, then the technical one...one thing at a time! On the other hand, it's a foot in the door, which will allow me to significantly improve my language skills, which will hopefully open new opportunities in turn...

Anyway, I'm still proud about having passed interviews in Japanese. Even if, to be honest, the economic context is favorable to the applicants as there are clearly tons of IT jobs now, which makes it possible for people who, like me, don't have solid business Japanese skills (and it's an euphemism!) to get hired. I even turned down an offer!

About this post's title: 大 means "big", and 成功means "success". Shouldn't be too hard then to translate 大成功...

I've finally implemented both RSS and ATOM feeds, and I wonder why I didn't do it before considering how little time it took...Please let me know if you encounter any bug while using them.

Finally, a new skin for the site! Huge thanks to my brother for making this new design!!! You can still access the old version through the "Theme" block though.

As a consequence, I haven't updated the blog lately, I was too busy with integrating the design (those who know a little about CSS will understand that I had to find tricky workarounds for shitty Internet Explorer's bugs). It has been tested on the following browsers:

• Windows : Firefox, IE (5, 5.5, 6), Opera
• Mac : Safari, Firefox, Opera

If somebody could test IE7, or Camino (Mac) and tell me what it's like, that would be appreciated...And if you notice any bug, please let me know.

Besides, I have a new mobile phone, my number is 080-3633-0853, but you can also email me at tarto@softbank.ne.jp. I updated the "Contact" block, now you know how to find me!

Now that this is finally done, I'll start to write again about my last holidays...the best is still to come!...

I know, the title of this post won't mean anything for most of you, because I still haven't taken the time to talk about my passion for rhythm games...I'll do it, but for now I'm so happy about this accomplishment that I had to write it!

For the few who know what I'm talking about, here's the score pic:

It's not excellent, but I passed (never managed to do it before, and no bar of course) and it's still a B. Plus I passed it twice today, didn't take a picture the second time though. Now I need to reduce the number of greats and misses and I can expect to get an A...I'm still very far from all those insanely good players who can effortlessly AA/AAA the song though...

And for the others, I'll talk about that again soon!

School just restarted today and it's already going fast! Feels like this term is going to be pretty intense too. I had 4 elective classes to choose, this time I picked two cool ones: cooking and manga. Cooking because it's something I like to do and manga because it's a topic I hardly know anything about...

I also have 4 private classes. I made requests about the teachers I want to study with, I hope they'll be fulfilled. Indeed, teachers are generally pretty good but there are always exceptions (I had one last term) so...

Besides, I've planned a nice project for next holidays, I'm going to gather more information and I'll tell you more about it later.

And now that I think about it, I (at last!) want to thank my brother and my sister-in-law who made the graphics of my web site 3 months ago, and I just added links to their respective web sites.

I had an awesome and very traditional new year party. Can't tell much now as I have very little time!...

I Wish all of you the best for this new year!!!