OMG! I Found a new friend!

I... I think I'm in love!

Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine

You know, I read somewhere once that Japan is home to hundreds of thousands of shrines, both large and small, and after all the time I've spent here, I can sure believe it! You can't fly five feet out of the nest without bumping into a shrine, and most of them have roots going back hundreds of years, if not a thousand or more. 

This is a shot of a few of thīe famous "ten-thousand torii gates" of Fushimi Inari Taisha shrine. You know, this place: 

At first I thought it might be disrespectful to get a picture at the shrine, what with me being a rubber chicken and all, but then I saw a kid getting his picture taken with a giant Doraemon plushie, so I figured the spirit of Inari would probably forgive me. 

Fushimi Inari is one of the largest and most ancient Shinto shrines in the entire country. Turns out, the arches are paid for by individuals and businesses from all over the world, as a form of promotion and to hopefully gain the good influence of the spirit that resides at the shrine. I have to say, it was a little strange to find out that the ten-thousand torii gates were kind of like a really impressive commercial.

Sometimes it feels nice to just sit back and enjoy the sights...

Hey everybody, Clucky here! I've just been taking it easy the past few days, which is super easy in a place as nice as this. What's crazy is, this river I'm in front of isn't even anything all that unusual; it's just something I happened to see on my way to somewhere else. And the whole country is like this!

Greetings from sunny Japan, I guess!

Probably the chickens should've been my first clue, but it looks like I managed to fly all the way over to Japan! Turns out the locals are speaking Japanese too, but their non-chicken accents really threw me. Today I flew out just to see what I could see, when off in the distance I saw a white heron getting ready to take flight. Since I'm always looking to make a new friend, I decided to swoop in and say hello, only to find that it wasn't a heron, but was actually Himeji Castle! (Another disappointment: That giant chicken coop wasn't a chicken coop at all.)

Chicken coop or not, those humans really know how to build 'em. The locals were so nice, they even let me go up into the castle itself, and look out over the city.

It's a hugely impressive building, but it doesn't really make sense, does it? If an army really wanted to take it, all they'd have to do is fly right over the walls.

On the way out, I got a friendly tourist to take a photo with me!

I'm really more of a miniskirt chicken, but I think I look pretty good in a kimono! And thanks again to that kindly tourist -- a lot of the locals seemed to think that getting your picture taken with a rubber chicken was pretty funny. They couldn't stop laughing!

What the... where the heck am I!?

So, after flying for a looooooooooooooooong time, I finally sighted land! I've never flown this far before, but I must've made it at least three or four hundred miles! I'm still not quite sure exactly where I am, but I have to say, this is quite the beautiful island I ended up on. Like, look at this crazy building behind me. What is that thing!? It's like the most amazing chicken coop in the history of the world!

The people here seem very kind and friendly, but unfortunately they don't speak Chicken, and the chickens here only speak Japanese! Hopefully if I keep at it I'll find somebody around here I can get some info out of. As far as the journey of self-discovery goes, though, my heart feels light as a feather. Any people that build such fantastic chicken coops must be very wise indeed!

The time has come!

It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that Tyler Technologies, the company I work for, owes most of its success to me. After all, my insistence on reliable nightly server migrations proved to be the key to allowing the development organization to realize their full potential in delivering quality code.

And yeah, Tyler's been good to me. I've been buying into the company stock plan since I was fresh out of the egg, six years ago, and let me tell you, that ain't chicken feed! But honestly there's just not that much more for me to accomplish where I am now. Sure, I keep an eye on the dev org day in, day out, and sure, I keep an eagle eye on Andy to make sure he stays out of trouble, but honestly it's been a long time since I've had to screech about a broken build. I can't help but feel I need to get out in the world and stretch my wings.

So for now I'm bidding adieu to Tyler to head off on a journey of self-discovery! I don't know what I may find, or how long it will take, but it's a wide wide world out there. Time to hit the skies and see where my wings take me!