Facebook Engineering Opens a Satellite Office in Kyoto (For a Few Hours)

Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/100 sec, f/1.4, ISO 6400 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Nadya and Ryan

At Uroko (鱗), Kyoto Japan

Facebook engineer Ryan Mack and
his wife Nadia and their
blissfully-sleeping two-year-old took time from their 10-year-anniversary
Japan trip to join me for dinner at Uroko (鱗) in downtown Kyoto the
other night.

Ryan has sometimes provided help or insight on navigating the
complexities of Facebook's third-party app API, which I must use for my
Export-to-Facebook plugin for Adobe Lightroom, so I was happy to
finally meet him in person. Meeting Nadia was a wonderful bonus, though
I didn't really get to meet his son, who slept the whole time we were together.
(Jetlag sometimes giveth, I guess.)

It's just as well I didn't get to interact with their boy, because I came down with a cold the
next day, and I think you're contagious before
you're symptomatic. I would hate to have given
any of them a cold.

I imagine that Facebook is a huge company with thousands of employees
spread out around the globe, but I was happy to find out that he actually
knew my other friends working there (Paul, Nam, and Arturo). I guess a big
world is smaller in certain circles.

Nikon D4 + Sigma 35mm F1.4 DG HSM — 1/160 sec, f/1.4, ISO 5600 —
map & image data — nearby photos

Aftermath

with Damien having joined us part way through

Uroko has an amazing (though difficult for me to read) menu, so we had a
wide variety of wonderful things. They were a bit iffy about the somewhat slimy
yamaimo potato, but seemed to enjoy everything else.

I would have liked to host them around Kyoto for a day, but not with a
cold, so perhaps when they visit on their 20-year anniversary...