The last time of Berkeley

I visited my friend who lives in Berkeley. We went to Gather for lunch. I came with his Taiwanese girlfriend, so I could have a change to use Mandarin that I have personalty learned for the last three month.

Carnival SF 2014

I went to see Carnival San Francisco this year again. When I arrived the street of the parade, so many people were already sitting and standing along the street. The parade got started later than the schedule, I could see all groups. It was beautiful.

The last day of internship

Finally I'm done with my internship in San Francisco. At the same day, I was noticed by my school that my graduate project (like a thesis) of writing a case study and its case analysis had been officially passed. I have spent a lot of time to commute to San Francisco for three months as well as doing my project. It was a sort of tough months for me.

As my farewell dinner of the office, I went to Ryo's Hawaiian restaurant.  It's apparently a luxury restaurant. Tastes of Hawaiian food was awesome.

After leaving the restaurant, we went to Local Edition, a bar along Market Street. My boss got me two glasses of cocktail. I was a bit drunk and became talkative, I think. Anyway, it was a nice night. I would really like to say thank you for the wonderful opportunity that I could spend time here San Francisco for a couple of months.

Easy-understand Economics

This is an awesome explanation about the economy system of our world.

This half an hour might be better than just sitting in an Econ class for a semester. I should have known this video earlier...

I agree with the idea at the end of this video that increasing productivity is very important for economic growth. It would cost a lot of money and time to make this whole video. Ray Dalio, the producer of this video, is very rich because he succeeded in managing his hedge fund as a founder. If many people are influenced by this video and the world economy improve, his funds would get better. So it is also good for him.

What if 3 billion people (approximate labor population) in the world understand this basic economic system?
Statistically, the number of people who can connect the Internet is approximately 3 billion as well. (The number of device that can connect the Internet will reach 6 billion in 2014)

On the other hand, the Internet penetration rate（available population）of many countries are still less than 10%. Only about 20 countries have over 50% of the Internet penetration rate.
Even though a good educating contents was published for free, there is still the education gap as well as economy gap in the world.

Good Vietnamese food

I found Tin Vietnamese, a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, for dinner. I was going to eat ramen but happened to find this restaurant on Google Maps. I ordered Bun Bo Hue (Spicy noodle), Canh Ga Chien (Crispy chicken wings), and Vietnamese style lemonade. Actually, this restaurant has a high rating or stars on a couple of restaurant review website, so my expectation was not low. It was actually good. When I leave, I saw a long line in front of the restaurant.

Bay to Breakers

I went to San Francisco to see Bay to Breakers, which was supposed to be a huge running event of a century-long history but was actually a costume-runners walking event Lol. The running started eight in the morning. It sounded very early but so many people came to be ready as of eight o'clock.

I followed the huge crowd of the event. I saw many interesting costumes. Some of them were walking without wearing anything Lol I wonder if it's legal or not... I spent all the time in the morning and then returned to downtown.

I ate some food at the food court of Westfield. It was a beautiful day, so I went to Yerba Buena Gardens and took a nap on the grass for a while.

Despite I ate some food, I got hungry again. I went to Dojima-Ann, a Japanese restaurant (but I guess the owner is not Japanese) and quickly ate Katsu-don.

I moved to Macy's and was watching a Luis von Ahn's TED presentation , which my colleague introduced me, at the food court.

Luis von Ahn is an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is one of inventors of Duolingo, which is a popular language learning web service in the U.S. Fortunately, I could reach a person who are on the MBA program in Carnegie Mellon after watching this video, so I wish I could meet someone who know him.

Before leaving the food court, a Chinese woman (maybe a tourist) talked to me in Chinese all of sudden. I answered "I'm Japanese.," but she kept talking in Chinese. I answered, "I don't understand.," and then she still said something in Chinese (maybe she said, "Aren't you Chinese?"<-- Why don't you first ask!? F●ck!!). She left without saying sorry or excuse me...

At the evening, I met my old friend of the same university in Japan and nd went dinner at Straits Restaurant. I ate Crispy Chicken, my favorite food here.

I showed around the financial district of downtown and Embarcadero. It was freaking cold.

Harvard professor's comment for graduates of MBA

I read an article on the Internet. The author seems to be a student of HBS (Harvard Business School). He introduced a impressive last lecture of a popular professor.

(I bet the original one would be English but the article was in Japanese, so I re-translate into English.)

"When I was young, I used to work for an university, and my wife used to work for a big company. My wife liked her workplace and had been enjoying her job. On the other hand, I was suffering from my research and anxious about my future. One day, an university in a country side offered me to be an associate professor, and I accepted it due to improve my career.

My career turned up better, and I was almost reaching my tenure. However, the university located in the middle of a rural area, and it was impossible for my wife to find a job. My wife's career had stopped and her energy was under the incomplete combustion. Our arguments were getting more frequent. Eventually, my home became non-relaxable place...

One day, I just realized that I had lived with valuing what is important. Even if my career got better, reaching happiness would be impossible if my family (household) was not doing well. Despite my wife is my better half, have I ever though how important her life is.

Eventually, even though my tenure was almost gotten, I quited the job in the university and decided to move in Boston. My wife got a job there and could re-start her new career. My household became a source of my vital spark again. After a while, I got a job offer from HBS and have been teaching for you guys as an associate professor. I'm still far from my tenure but have an invaluable happy family. Moving in Boston was the best judge in my life."

According to the article, this professor concluded, "Honor the dream of your partner."


Majority of MBA holders, especially those who graduate from the top ranked school, would pursue their brilliant career with higher salary and higher reputation. However, really important things would not be those but something irreplaceable.

Onigilly

Everyone was working from each home, I actually didn't need to come to the office. Yet, I didn't know that, so I just came in the morning Lol

I left after making sure that I didn't need to be at the office. I went to Onigilly for lunch. This was the first time. It was way better than expected.

I walked around piers including Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf.

It's a sunny day.

Lunch beer

Because no body incidentally brought lunch and very good weather, we decided to go out for lunch. We walked around near Union Square and happened to find Aquitane, an European restaurant.

I expected too much...but Caracole, the Belgium Amber beer, was good.

Visiting colleges in Merced and Lake Yosemite

I drove through Merced College and went to look around UC Merced. Merced College is closer to downtown while UC Merced is a kind of "in the middle of nowhere." I also went to Lake Yosemite, which locates next to UC Merced. I hadn't noticed that there is such a nice lake here.

I went to Sam Cafe, a Thai restaurant, and ordered Pat Thai and Thai lemonade. Both were quite good. I learned that Thai lemonade uses limes, not lemon.

They gave me a candy before leaving.

Deli Board San Francisco

For lunch, I went to Deli Board located 15-minute-walk away from our office in San Francisco. The restaurant was introduced by a co-worker. I ordered "$$$" which is a brisket sandwich. It was actually excellent!! I have never eaten such a high quality sandwich in this year. I can recommend this restaurant to my friends if they visit San Francisco.

Stanford Powwow

I left home in the morning for San Francisco. I went to a hair salon to get my hair cut. I ate shio-tonkotsu ramen at Ramen Yamada. It was very Japanese. After that I bought a Japanese stuff to desolate my graduation hat. The shop owner was a Japanese woman. She said she run her shop for 35 years. Yet, her English is not as good as I do...

I went down to Stanford University to see a native American event called Stanford Powwow. Because many people visited there, each food booth had a long line.

 I saw their traditional group dance.

Even though I didn't buy any native American items, it was an interesting event.　

Because the location was near by, I walked around Stanford Shopping Center after leaving Stanford University. I haven't come here for a long time. I found a new Apple store. Luckely, there is still Sony store in the shopping center.

And then I headed to North to buy some food and bento box at Nijiya Market.

When I was driving to go home, I was so sleepy. I stopped by Livermore Premium Outlets. What surprised me was there was an announcement in Japanese.

Yes, this day was pretty much a shopping day.

Whole Earth Festival 2014

I visited UC Davis, which locates near Sacramento because Whole Earth Festival has been held. There were so many people from the morning, and do more people ended up coming afternoon.

The shops opened there were basically natural made stuff or something related to the earth due to the concept of the event. I found a lot of interesting stuff that I have never seen. It was very exciting.

I also walked around the campus. I found horses and cows on the campus. It's very interesting.

 I went to Famous Burgers for late lunch. I ate sourdough cheese burger (sandwich?). It was new for me and was better than I thought.

Annual school festival 2014

There was a school festival. Because it is an annual event, I already knew what it was. So - it was less exciting than before. but every one in the event place looked like having fun as usual.

Noblesse oblige

Have you ever heard of Noblesse oblige? The meaning this word is that people who are in higher position in their society should have dignity and character. For example, people of aristocracy are polite and know public manner.


There is a long-time popular sushi restaurant in Tokyo.
Sukiyabashi Jiro is a famous sushi restaurant. It was even introduced in the a 3-star Michelin Guide restaurant as a three star restaurant. It was also famous for the restaurant that President Obama and Prime Minister Abe went together in April, 2014.

I just found a video of Sukiyabashi Jiro.

There is even a movie called Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Real sushi restaurants, not sushi boats, are basically expensive and decent place. Sukiyabashi Jiro is one of those high class sushi restaurant. I bet poor people cannot afford to visit. Reservations are required to go.


There is a Chinese woman who came to Japan for study abroad and has stayed since 2009.

According to a Hong Kong media, the Chinese female student went a Sukiyabashi Jiro in Roppongi with four other people. Even though they booked the restaurant but were late about 40 minutes. When they arrived at the restaurant, they no word of apologizes about their late.

After having their seats, one of them said, "I cannot eat raw food" and then left the restaurant to go to eat Tonkatsu (fried pork cutlets) at somewhere other place.

At this point, the staff member of the restaurant was already mad at the customer's behavior.

After that, they as customers required sushi to grille and wrap the sushi to go. The staff of the restaurant was in a furious mood and told them, "Sushi is not raw in your country? Didn't you know about it before coming here?"

Yet, the student woman claimed "because the volume is too much." and "I'm not the person who reserved this restaurant." in order to avoid blame.
It became an argument in the restaurant.


After leaving the restaurant, the woman complained about it on Weibo (kina Chinese Twitter). She probably expected Weibo users' supporting opinions.
However, most comments posted were opposing her opinion such as "You guys cannot eat raw food, then how come did you go sushi restaurant? and you guys were late 40 mins!?" So many comments of bashing have been left on her page. Because she might be upset, she deleted her post. Some people already saved her page, and they spread the page and told how rude the woman was. This episode ended up spreading to the mainland of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Other person commented, "40 mins late is already speechless... If you don't respect, you would not be respected. If the staff of Sukiyabashi Jiro have a predudice or nagetive image toward Chinese people, the causes are such idiots who don't know manner." Another commneted, "Despite staying in Japan for years, they don't even know sushi is raw? In spite of no acceptable of raw food, how come they went to a high-class sushi restaurant. It's disagreeably surprising."


Again, Sukiyabashi Jiro is expensive sushi restaurant. These students would be rich. I want them to know both Noblesse oblige and "When in Rome..."

Organic Grocery store

One of my favorite grocery store is Sprout. Because it was a day-off, I went shopping there. There are always amusing food including snacks here.

I just bought a snack of peas, which is actually made by Calbee, and a tasty chips called Crisproot.　Oh, and Crisproot was also good.

Henry's Hunan Restaurants

I got lunch at Henry's Hunan Restaurants. I ate chicken and pork lunch special. It was great but was too spicy, so I couldn't stop sweating.
Unfortunately, I had a stomachache later... I don't know what was the reason though...

Black water

I fond a black water at a store in Westfield.

It's very interesting... even though it looks like soda or juice, it totally tastes water.

Google Hangouts

I used Google Hangouts for chatting with my friends who live in Chile and Japan. As well known, we cannot use Skype for the video chat with more than three people for free. If you want to do it, you need to pay. However, it's free on Google Hangouts. It was awesome!! I should have used earlier.

LEAP Motion

Finally, I got a device of LEAP Motion. It's beyond the cutting-edge technology.

I feel a bit awkward, but it provides awesome experience.