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Last night, trains on the and other lines got delayed for about two hours.  According to early reports, an object hit the front of the train near Mejiro Station. I did some overtime work last night so when I arrived at the station the trains were already at halt. I was lucky enough to avoid riding the Yamanote line and getting trapped inside its trains for about two hours.  More than 2,000 commuters though were not as lucky as me. Whenever there is a long delay like in the incident last night, train lines would usually give refunds.  In case you have a teiki-ken or regular (pre-paid) train pass, they will issue or transfer tickets that you can use in other train lines.  Many foreigners  do not know about Furikae tickets so they needlessly buy tickets when riding alternative train lines.  In my case, I asked for a free transfer ticket and rode the subway from Tokyo station to Ikebukuro station. Here is a sample image of a furikae ticket.

is one of the places in Japan where you can find relatively cheap imported items.  Thanks to our sponsors - - we are able to regularly go to Costco just like last Sunday. If you have no sponsors who can take you for a free ride to Costco, you can easily go there by train.  , together with , once went to Costco by train.   Costco is a membership warehouse club so you have to become a member first (or ask Bro. Raffy and Sis. Elkie to bring you along, hehe) before you can buy.  Annual membership fee is which is approximately 42 dollars or 2,100 pesos.   We used to go to Costco in Makuhari, Chiba but we go more often now to Costco in since its opening last year because it is nearer to the northern parts of Tokyo.  The Costco store in Shinmisato is part of Lala City Complex, so you can also visit other stores like Ikea, H&M, Uniqlo and Muji. For more details about costco in Japan, visit

Cerg and I went to look for a blue suit last Saturday. I wanted an Armani but I couldn't find one which suited my taste (read: none suited my budget), so I settled for a relatively unknown brand. If you're looking for good yet affordable suits in Japan, you may want to try going to department stores located .  Like me, you may be able to find there suits that will fit your budget. In case you didn't know, you can have the trousers shortened for free at the department store. Just ask the saleslady when you pay for the trousers and they will fix it within 30 to 45 minutes.  If you need to ask in Japanese, try saying " ". While waiting for my new trousers get altered, we ate crepe at and bought some chocolates.    

A few years ago in one of the companies I worked for, we had an ADO.NET 1.0 application that used MS Access as its database system. We needed to port it to MS SQL Server and so we had to modify the source code. What we did was to write data provider specific code each for MS Access and MS SQL Server, similar to the following sample code. It worked but it was not an elegant solution.

We were informed by one of our friends, Sis. Ester, that Manny Pacquiao has a billboard in Shinjuku, a very popular urban spot in downtown Tokyo. Does it mean Pacquiao is famous here in Japan?

Do you want to use in English but you’re running Japanese Windows OS?  Here’s what you need to do to make display English texts in menus. <SQL Developer installation folder>\ide\bin