If you're wondering why I haven't written to my blog in over a month or why the updates have slowed down well here's why.

I started my job on May 1st. I now work at Wow Entertainment which is part of Sega of Japan. The same group that I worked 4 years ago. I chose to stay in Japan over going back to the U.S. because I didn't find anything that sounded interesting to do in the U.S. Sega didn't actually seem that interesting either but it seemed like it would help my Japanese. I checked a few other companies in Japan but Wow had the advantages that I already had several friends there and the are in a great location, Shibuya.

It's been a month now and I'm not sure it was the right decision. The issue is that I'm mostly, for lack of a better word, a grunt. I pretty much have more experience than anybody in my department of 125 people but for various reasons I'm just a basic programmer and it bugs me.

I had forgotten how much. It's acutally it's been bugging me since I left Big Grub 5 years ago. That was arguably the height of my career so far. From Lead Programmer of Gex to one of the directors of my own company. Then I left and went to Sega 4 years ago for the chance to live in Japan and learn Japanese. That part was pretty good but that I was no longer part of the top of the team really bugged me. The same was true at Naughty Dog but for different reasons. The reason at Naughty Dog was because the top of the team was already full. Adding more people would just make it harder to make decisions. It still bothered me though not to be one of the guys actually deciding which parts of the game get made or what type of game is going to be made or even meeting with important clients etc.

After that I took 2 years off and now, last month I just started at Sega again. I thought it would not bug me but it is quite a bit. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it.

It's also, so far not turning out to be that useful for my Japanese. I pretty much stare at my computer all day long writing code. I would say I average less than 15 minutes of Japanese conversation a day. 4 years ago when I was here a group of about 9 guys went out to dinner every night from about 7:30 to 8:30. That doesn't appear to happen anymore.

That has pretty much filled up my time which is why there have not been as many updates to this site recently.