Japan 2012 - Day 10

Wow, can it already be Day 10?!
where does time go and why does it go so fast...
Maybe here in Tokyo it goes even faster since everyone is so busy...
Some people say "Tokyo is a fantastic place to visit, but not to live".
I think Tokyo is soooo cool, it might just be my most favourite city. There is so much to do here, to see, to taste... In Tokyo, you can get everything. Everything you can or cannot imagine. People are friendly, and regarding the fact it is such a huge city, it is a really safe and peaceful place. with a very chaotic vibe - yet everything follows a structure.
But seriously, I wouldn't want to live here. Well, I would like to live here if I had enough money and didn't need to work. Working culture here is crazy.
The husband of the couple I am staying with is around 70 and he is still working 7 days a week, at least 11 hours a day. People sleeping in the subway at all times of day are a common sight, I even saw people "sleepwalking" (walking with their eyes closed) in the street in the mornings. It seems like people here have to catch up with sleep whenever they can, and use every possibility to do that.
My friend told me that it happens quite a lot that people just burn out and die.
So, I am very happy to live in a completely different place.

What have I done the past couple of days?

First of all, I have tried my best to follow the Japanese teachers in school. It is so hard. There are so many verb forms, and so many words I don't know and somehow they don't seem to stick to my memory either. Entering one ear and exiting the other immediately... But: I have one more week to go and I will not give up just yet. I just need to study a lot more.

I have been to the SAP office, which has been great and I have met a lot of nice colleagues there, and of course I did the formal "meishi" (business card) exchange.
I have been eating a lot of tradtional food, like Ramen, tsuke-men and okonomiyaki and I love it!
I have done some shopping (an incredible experience, you can't even imagine the things you can buy here), I have been to the Sony center and really would have liked to have more money to buy all these fancy cameras in these cool colours! And I have been out in Roppongi and visited Bernd's Bar, which is a German bar.

Pitures will follow, now I have to go to bed.

Japan 2012 - Day 5

Short entry this time - need to go to bed early as school starts at 9:10. That in itself doesn't sound to bad, but if you have to calculate at least 1 hour for traveling, better make it 1h20min, then I have to get up quite early for summer vacation :-(

I am quite happy that I am doing this voluntarily, otherwise I would probably have been even more frustrated because of my language test in school today. It was a fine demonstration of how little I actually understand... Of course you might ask, why am I doing this to myself again, and honestly I don't have a good answer. Maybe sometimes you just need to challenge yourself. We'll see how far I get in two weeks...

Japan 2012 - Day 4 Tokyo

Today I met up with Geir again and we first went to Harajuku, that's the street where you can find the cosplay people and other young girls dressed up. Though I guess it's better to go on a sunday, there really weren't that many to spot here today. Nevertheless, Harajuku is a really cool place where you can see a lot of different fashion and people dressed in all sorts of ways. I guess I will have to come back for some shopping later :-)
Then we went to Shinjuku park, had a typical Japanese picnic with noodles and yummy ginger sauce and Japanese sweets such as "Baum ke-ki", which I think refers to Baumkuchen and probably was stolen from the Germans :-)

We bought the blanket from a "100 Yen" = "1 EUR" store where I also got this sleeping mask, so hopefully tonight the street light won't bother me anymore.
Later we went back to the Mitama Matsuri which was now less crowded, so I got some pictures of the variety of food represented here. No worry, the only thing I have actually tried was a gigantic pancake with a cheesecake inside :-D Think about that, they actually put a cheesecake inside the pancake. Fantastic :-)

not sure if these also were meant for eating...

fish on a stick

pancakes with cheesecake

and here is mine... :-)

Now I need to go to sleep cause I have to get up early as school is starting tomorrow. Wish me luck !

Japan Day 3 - some pictures

Here are some pics from Kamakura:

What you can find in Kamakura:

Alcohol

Buddhas

The BIG Buddha

Dogs

Men in Uniform ;-)

Fish

Japan 2012 - Day 3

Summary of first night in the house: My bed is killing my back The heat is killing me And I will kill the aggressively shining street lamp right in front of my window After a late breakfast and some studying of my Japanese books, Miriam and me went to Kamakura, which is a very old city right outside of Tokyo and used to be the capital in the old times. Kamakura is a really cozy place, much calmer than Tokyo, with a lot of old and new architecture combined. And of course a lot of shrines, one of which houses a huge Buddha statue - which we unfortunately only could see through the bars of the gates, as the shrine had already closed for visitors. ( that happens when you don't get up early...) Kamakura also has a beach and a lot of surfers. A lot! A general observation I made here is that "man purses" or "murses" as I learnt from Emma, are indeed quite popular here, it seems. And as Japan is the hotspot for all new trends, I wonder if I shouldn't take one home for Jens after all...

Japan 2012 - 2nd day

Wow, quite a long time since my last entry, but as promised on Facebook, I am trying to revive my blog - at least for the purpose of reporting to you from Japan :-) And as I don't want Facebook to know it all, I will rather give the information to google (though not sure this really is the better choice :-( )

Anyway, From July 13th to August 3rd I will be in Japan for a 2 week Japanese language course and then I will have 1 week of travel time to explore the country a bit more. And as this blog was intended to be a "culture exploration blog", i will continue in this spirit and report to you my various cultural experiences.

1. Day: Tokyo
It is really nice that my language skills now are good enough to ask for the way - now I only need to improve them that much to also understand the answer that is given to me.
This time, I also ended up in a "real Japanese" hotel, meaning in a room that is approximately the size of the bed and a bathroom of approximately 1m2, but with a bath tub and of course a fully automated washlet :-)

In the evening, I met with Geir (who is a fellow student from my Japanese class in Norway and now also studying Japanese in Tokyo) to Roppongi, had some Japanese noodles and then we went to Shinjuku for a Donut and on the way there we watched and listened to a Japanese band play on the street. They were so good and funny, I bought their CD.

Then I crashed in my bed, had weird dreams which I don't remember and tried to ignore the fact that the air condition wasn't working properly.

2. Day: Tokyo:
Check out from the tiny hotel room and off to meet my guest parents Kyouko and Yasutaka whom I'll be staying with for the next two weeks. I wish I had packed less, cause dragging around my 25kg suitcase through half of Tokyo isn't really funny. I also noticed that Tokyo subway stations really have A LOT of stairs... and they are really good at hiding their elevators.
My host mum is a really sweet old Japanese lady and luckily she speaks some English, which makes things a lot easier. I have only met the Dad shortly at dinner, but I was told he is hardly around, since he is working such long days. And this at an age of over 70!
This is really a significant cultural change to Norway and any other European country. People work so hard here and have hardly any free time. They also can't afford early retirement. I am not sure when they actually can retire or if... I was asking Kyouko whether she had any children, and she has one son. When I asked her whether she had grand children, she said "no no, my son is not married yet". Hm, when I think of my family, Kyouko and her husband are not much younger than my grand parents and they have quite mature grand children... Also, when you compare the amount of children you see on the streets with the amount of old people, the old people definitely win! This is the aging population you read so much about in action! Of course I am for women joining the workforce and having equal career opportunities as men, but with both partners working 16 hours days and wanting to have a family, something just doesn't add up. Some things needs to change, otherwise this spiral is only pointing downwards... Hm, maybe Japan could import some young Greek, Spanish or Portuguese youngsters to make up for their lack of workforce?!?!

Anyway, another funny age story that happened to me today... In this house there are several other students, among them a 17 year old girl from the States. I got my first compliment of the day from her, when she asked my age and then responded "Oh, I would have guessed you were around my age! You look really young!" Yes, indeed I do :-) It must be the good Norwegian air and the constant cold, that keeps you fresh ;-) She then offered to help me find out where my school is, and then my "Wing Woman" abilities were required to scout some pretty Japanese guys for her. Since Japanese are such a helpful people, simply asking for the way might actually already do the trick here. At least in our situation today. She was asking 3 teenage boys if there was a park nearby and where and they went so far as to personally walk with us to the park. Though, along the way we found out they had been on a way to a traditional festival (Mitama Matsuri) and as festivals are much more fun than parks, she asked whether we could join them to the festival. Of course we could :-) The festival was actually really cool. Not sure what was celebrated, but you can check out the pics (the movies were unfortunately too big to upload here). It was like a fair with a lot of stands selling all kinds of food plus traditional dancing crews. Many people came in Kimono.
I have to say, it was a very strange feeling being among all these teenagers. On the one hand I felt really old, on the other hand strangely rejuvenated ;-) For the Germans: Ich kam mir so ein bisschen vor wie Heinz Rühmann in der Feuerzangenbowle - or any other of the more modern movie versions where adult guys for some reason have to pretend to be college guys again...
Although when one of the guys bought us some Japanese sweets, that just felt a little too awkward...
On the other hand it melted my heart to see how polite, well-behaved and just so cute these guys were. What a difference to Norwegian teens... Or germans for that matter. Or probably just any European teen...



But even though teenage times were really cool and I sometimes do miss those days, I am really happy not to be a teenage girl anymore having to experience that roller coaster ride of emotions. Very glad to be where I am now!
It also got me thinking about how your perceptions, principles and criteria for partner selection (auch bekannt als "Beuteschema") change over the years. And how mean teenage girls actually are. For some reasons we only want the cool "bad boys" when we are young and either reject or just play with and use the kind ones. From what I know now, if I were to be a teenager again, I would definitely go for the sweet and kind guys - but back then... oh well... So yes, older women are more wise :-)
To all you kind and sweet teenage boys out there, I can only say "don't become desperate! you just have to wait some years and then your time will come!"

So much for today's philosophical part, which might also be due to me having had sake for dinner... I had told Kyouko that I like beer and wine and she must have taken that for "Oh this girl likes alcohol", and alcohol is what I got....